I've been reading about black cats and their associated superstitions in the middle ages. It mentions at the end that "there are many accounts of cats being kept as pets, including by nuns." With the vast sects of lonely, relatively chaste monks, would you have seen any collections of pets by these monks? Were they ostracized or seen in a certain light by their fellow monks? (Same question goes for nuns!)
I and Pangur Bán, my cat
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.
The ninth century Irish missionary monk who penned an ode to his cat, Pangur Bán, was hardly alone. Medieval monks, nuns, and others who took religious vows absolutely kept animals around. And just as absolutely, this practice was met with some disapproval as well as loving approval.
The famous association between nuns and cats actually comes from the Ancrenne Wisse, a text prescribing a way of life for anchoresses: women who committed to being "buried" in a single cell that they may not leave, typically attached to a church, to spend their lives in prayer. The AW allows the anchoress to keep no other animal besides a cat.
But, it is very clear, this is not supposed to be a pet for company but simply a utilitarian allowance for pest control. It's not an accident that when the AW warns its readers not to let worldly cares and connections distract them from Christ, the text exhorts not to let "the cat of hell" drag them out of the anchorhold!
It's also evident from the AW that whatever the ideal, anchoresses did in fact keep other animals around:
It is a hateful thing, Christ knows, when people in town complain about an anchoresses' animals.
And 11th century monk Goscelin of Canterbury, writing a letter purportedly to an anchoress named Eva, advised her not to keep any animals (not a cat, nor a bird, nor any little animal) around to pull her away from the pursuit of God.
That hasn't stopped the association of cats and anchoresses being firmly, um, anchored in the public imagination. The iconographic tradition for Julian of Norwich, medieval theologian and the most famous anchorite, is replete with cats--despite the fact that she herself never mentions one.
As for our poet-monk and his Pangur Bán? The Irish monk sent to evangelize Germany, far from his home and lonely, chose his native Old Irish language--not official Latin--to commemorate his pet. This speaks on one hand to official consternation over pets, as a distraction from the sacred duties of religious life. On the other, it points to his finding a salve for homesickness in his dear cat.
