RELIGION
It is in the very nature of religion to demand that many ideas are taken on faith – and nothing is more likely to produce a mistake than the failure to check that what you have been told is true. No wonder, then, that religions have often been the cause of catastrophic errors. Nowadays, the pronouncements of religious leaders are held up to the harshest scrutiny, but the past, on the other hand, is another country.
THE GREAT CAT MASSACRE – SPREADING THE PLAGUE, 1232
In 1232 the Vatican, under the blatantly catist Pope Gregory IX, apparently made one of the most bacteria-friendly pronouncements of all time when it issued a papal circular suggesting every domestic cat was secretly in league with the Devil and should be massacred without a moment to lose. It became a very dangerous time to be furry and like fireplaces.
‘OK,’ replied the more impressionable souls of Europe, ‘this time tomorrow, Tiddles gets it.’
The cats, had they been able to speak, might have pointed out that they were only in league with people who liked to tickle their tummies. And – they may have gone on to say/miaow – somewhere around the middle of the fourteenth century when brown rats would be spreading a certain disease throughout the land, the cats’ two-legged former friends might be kicking themselves for having strung the first line of anti-rodent defences up by their tails. Oh yes, like a bowl full of cream, revenge would be a dish best served cold.
The Pope’s pronouncement was something of a reversal of fortunes for cats, who had been favoured by the Romans and even revered as divine in ancient Egypt for – yes – keeping away rats. To suddenly find that from London to Dundee it was every cat for himself must have been a bit of a shock.
The strain of Plague that hit Britain in 1348 came from Mongolia and China on merchant ships. Incredibly, it wiped out around half the population of Europe and the total extinction of the human species was not out of the question. Things weren’t quite so bad in England, though – only a third of the population of 4.2 million keeled over, with the peasantry bearing the brunt. One reason why the aristocrats of Britain fared a tiny bit better than the commoners is that many of them had considered Gregory’s animosity to anything that purred to be slightly weird. They had quite liked their cats and weren’t overly keen on turning them into pillowcases any time soon. As a result, in many of the richer houses Mr Fluffy lived to fight another day and to keep out the rats, their fleas and their little friends, the Yersinia pestis bacteria. So the nobs lived on but the peasants dropped by the field-full.
In fact, when the Black Death struck, if anyone should have guessed what was spreading the disease, it ought to have been the Pope – the illness was first recorded in the Bible (2 Samuel) as God’s revenge on the Philistines for stealing the Ark of the Covenant from Israel three thousand years ago and the text links it to an increase in the rodent population.
The disease also shocked the Vatican by killing members of religious communities as well as the common people who didn’t matter. The fifty-odd monks and friars of Meaux Abbey in Yorkshire seem to have had an especially bad time of it. On 12 August 1349 alone, the abbot and five monks died. In the end, just ten of the residents were left rattling about the place and wondering what on earth they were going to do now. Making matters worse, as the serfs keeled over, there was a decrease in supply of peasant labour so the landowners had to compete for workers for the first time, leading to payment of half-decent wages and liberation from indenture. As one of the monks of Meaux recorded in the abbey’s chronicle:
It should not be passed over in silence how our serfs at Wawne turned stubborn and refused their service which they owed to us. Those serfs, who were serfs by birth, being descended from unfree tenants of ours sought to lighten the yoke of servitude, under which they and their ancestors were subjugated. In order to turn them from their evil ways we imprisoned them.
Monks notwithstanding, the increased power and confidence on the part of the common folk resulting from the Plague thinning out their numbers led to The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Many economic historians say the necessary reorganisation of production also led to capitalism as we now know it, which replaced feudalism as the dominant structure of society.
THOU SHALT NOT SUFFER… – THE WITCH HUNTS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
While the doctrine of Papal infallibility was the ‘environmental’ factor transmuting a single foolish pronouncement of Gregory IX into a continent-wide pestilence, the slightly less infallible Protestantism was far from innocent when it came to pointless massacres. In the case of the British witch hunts, all it took was a single mistranslated word in the great King James Bible and any old ladies who lived in cottages and looked a little bit magical were being burned at the stake like it was going out of fashion.
The King James Version, the greatest legacy of a monarch who was obsessed with identifying demons walking the earth, was unambiguous. It stated in clear English: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’, thus confirming beyond doubt the existence of such child-snatchers in the minds of simpletons up and down the country. But anyone who troubled himself to go back to the original Hebrew might just notice that the word interpreted as ‘witch’ actually meant something a bit different. It is closer to ‘diviners’, ‘magicians’ or ‘people who claim to have supernatural powers’. In the time of Moses, it seems many frauds wandered around Israel claiming to be able to do magic and interpret the stars or dreams, and Moses thought it best to have them closed down by the authorities. Little did he know that a few thousand years later, Britons would be running around burning their next-door neighbours as a result. It was bad news for anyone who could be described as ‘a bit cackly’.
To be fair to their accusers, a number of those sent to be drowned on the off-chance that they were witches didn’t help matters by telling everyone that they could do magic. Normally – like modern astrologers or homeopaths – they were either boasting or crazy.
Even before King James had taken the English throne and published his own Bible, he was reigning in Scotland and showing witches no mercy. In the eminently readable book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), the Victorian journalist Charles Mackay relates the story of a coven of Scottish witches who had a tale tortured out of them by James’s authorities that would put Edgar Allan Poe to shame.
In 1591 one Dr Fian and his spooky accomplice, Gellie Duncan, were put on the rack after evidence – best described as ‘circumstantial’ – came to light that they were in league with the Devil. Mackay picks up the story, told to the court, after they have flown through the air to a church in North Berwick at night:
Arrived at the kirk they paced around it withershins, that is, in reverse of the apparent motion of the sun. Dr Fian then blew into the keyhole of the door, which opened immediately and all the witches entered. As it was pitch-dark, Fian blew with his mouth upon the candles which immediately lighted, and the Devil was seen occupying the pulpit. He was attired in a black gown and hat and the witches saluted him by crying ‘All hail master!’ His body was hard like iron; his face terrible, his nose like the beak of an eagle; he had great burning eyes; his hands and legs were hairy; and he had long claws upon his hands and feet and he spake with an exceedingly gruff voice. He commenced the preaching commanding them to be dutiful servants to him and do all the evil they could. [Two witches] asked him whether he had brought the image or picture of King James that they might, by pricking it, cause pains and diseases to fall upon him. ‘The father of lies’ spoke truth for once and confessed that he had forgotten it … When they had done scolding, he invited them all to a grand entertainment.
