The Vicious Battle Between the Vatican and Cats

[Sanguine]

In ancient Egypt, cats were venerated as the embodiment of the spirit of the goddess Bastet. So holy were even their images that when the Persians invaded Egypt in 525 BC, they adorned their shields with images of cats in the hope that the Egyptians would be reluctant to throw spears at them. The strategy worked and the Persians won the Battle of Pelusium and Egypt.

Fast forward about seventeen hundred years, and you’ll find that people in other parts of the world had quite different ideas about cats. In the 13th century, Pope Gregory IX, pope from 1227-1241, believed that cats actually carried the spirit of Satan himself within them. Since that time, black cats have symbolized bad luck, or a curse, to people not only in Europe but throughout the world.


Pope Gregory IX

How did this come about? Many of you will have heard of the Spanish Inquisition, the men who traveled Spain in search of heretics and witches....

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/04/02/the-vatican-and-cats/?utm_source=penultimate