Cats & the Devil

Within the medieval Catholic Church there were three inseparable forms of law: Canon Law, bulls and decretals. Canon Law was really 'invented' in the mid-12th century at Bologna - the Concordia discordantium canonum, or, Gratian's Decretum - an assembly and redaction of a millennia of church law and documents (bulls, decretals, various laws) backed by excerpts from the Bible and the late Roman Justinian Code. There is no mention of cats in this early iteration of Canon Law .

The Concordia discordantium canonum was then added to over the centuries, periodically re-compiled by the Papal court. The additions were often taken from bulls and decretals issued by Popes since the establishment of Canon Law in the 12th century. The difference between bulls and decretals is hazy, but most easily put down to bulls being stand-alone decrees (the bullum was the seal of the decree), and decretals being responses to legal or theological questions put to the Papacy by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities (seeking clarity and judgement). Decretals are very interesting to historians because they are re-scripts: they restate the details of problems and then provide answers which have the force of law. These problems range from marriage and consanguinity, to criminal investigations, to matters of theology.

One of the most important collections of decretals collected, sorted and added to Canon Law was by Gregory IX in the 1230's. Gregory IX was a fascinating Pope, both clear-headed as administrator and absolutely nuts about heresy. It was Gregory who effectively launched the medieval inquisitorial process to root out heresy. And testimony to Gregory's vision is his bull Vox in Rama where he describes certain heretical rites being conducted in south-west Germany:

The following rites of this pestilence are carried out: When any novice is to be received among them and enters the sect of the damned for the first time, the shape of a certain frog [or toad] appears to him. Some kiss this creature on the hind quarters and some on the mouth, they receive the tongue and saliva of the beast inside their mouths. Sometimes it appears unduly large, and sometimes equivalent to a goose or a duck, and sometimes it even assumes the size of an oven. At length, when the novice has come forward, he is met by a man of wondrous pallor, who has black eyes and is so emaciated thin that since his flesh has been wasted, seems to have remaining only skin drawn over [his] bone. The novice kisses him and feels cold, like ice, and after the kiss the memory of the Catholic faith totally disappears from his heart. Afterwards, they sit down to a meal and when they have arisen from it, the certain statue, which is usual in a sect of this kind, a black cat descends backwards, with its tail erect. First the novice, next the master, then each one of the order who are worthy and perfect, kiss the cat on its buttocks. Then each [returns] to his place and, speaking certain responses, they incline their heads toward to cat. “Forgive us!” says the master, and the one next to him repeats this, a third responding, “We know, master!” A fourth says: “And we must obey.”

This wasn't the first appearance together of cats and heretics. Walter Map, cleric, and hanger-on at the English court two generations earlier gives us this image of the cat in his entertaining De Nugis Curialium ('Trifles at the Court'):

On the subject of the body and blood of Christ, the blessed bread, they deride us. Men and women live together, but no sons or daughters issue - of the union. Many, however, have dropped their errors and returned to the faith, and these relate that about the first watch of the night, their gates, doors, and windows being shut, each family sits waiting in silence in each of their synagogues, and there descends by a rope which hangs in the midst a black cat of wondrous size. On sight of it they put out the lights, and do not sing or distinctly repeat hymns, but hum them with closed teeth, and draw near to the place where they saw their master, feeling after him, and when they have found him they kiss him. The hotter their feelings, the lower their aim: some go for his feet, but most for his tail and privy parts. Then, as though this noisome contact unleashed their appetites, each lays hold of his neighbour and takes his fill of him or her for all his worth. [De Nugis Curialium, I.30]

This image of the black cat finds itself repeated through the next few centuries, binding itself to devil-worshipping witches. See my post on this and the osculum infame (the 'Devil's Kiss') in more detail here.

This is as far as the negative view of cats goes in the high and late middle ages. There were no bulls, decretals, or other promulgations of law which outlawed, abolished, excommunicated or otherwise ejected cats from medieval society. The most cited 'evidence' given is some apocryphal quote by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484, “the cat was the devil’s favourite animal and idol of all witches.”, and Innocent VIII is usually said to be the one who 'ex-communicated' cats. This is not true, or if it is no evidence has come down to us of it. This claim is usually connected to the Malleus maleficarum ('Hammer of Witches') written in the same period. There is no mentioned of general hatred or suspicion of cats in the Malleus maleficarum; in fact a word search doesn't give much at all about cats.

If cats were excommunicated and abolished, that would have come as a surprise to the scribal monk in the 15th century whose cat walked across his work. So too would it have surprised the 15th c. English scribe whose work was visited by a cat, claimed and marked by piss, and whose nocturnal activities he commented on:

Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum istum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem ubi cattie venire possunt.

Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others [other cats] too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come. (translation from Erik Kwakkel's site above)

Incidentally, the toad shows up as much as cats in these devil-worshipping contexts, but we don't hear anything about the Church excommunicating them. I suppose we can't blame the plague on the toad, so he sits in history safely protected from invented excommunications.

TL;DR - No.