[HN Gopher] On medieval cats ___________________________________________________________________ On medieval cats Author : pepys Score : 51 points Date : 2023-11-09 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (going-medieval.com) (TXT) w3m dump (going-medieval.com) | duxup wrote: | I also have heard the stories of "the church thought cats were | evil". It always seemed a little too weird and simple to believe | it was a was a wide spread teaching. | bombcar wrote: | There may have been complaints here and there, but in general | cats were an accepted facet of life, including religious life. | Stories abound about monastery cats, and you can find them in | illuminated manuscripts: | https://www.bangor.ac.uk/news/2022-12-23-cats-in-the-middle-... | TomK32 wrote: | *facet if I may correct you. | | The self-domesticated cat had and have great use to reduce | vermin and medieval monastery had plenty of that as | monasteries were not just spiritual places but working farms. | elzbardico wrote: | The whole idea of medieval era as the dark ages is also | profoundly uninformed. | genman wrote: | It was in many ways. There were of course more enlightened | spaces, but the little they had was not very evenly | distributed. | | Btw. nice trivia about cats and plague: Venetians caught cats | from the mainland and took them to their islands to catch mice | and rats that they knew were responsible for the plague. | Therefore it was prohibited to feed the cats but there was a | special rain water collector for the cats to have enough | drinking water next to each Venetian rain water cistern. | Sharlin wrote: | > It was in many ways. There were of course more enlightened | spaces, but the little they had was not very evenly | distributed. | | Eh. The Middle Ages were hardly darker than the eras | preceding them, and the contrast with the Renaissance is much | less stark than what the Renaissance people would have you | believe. And the era spanned _almost a millennium_ and most | of Europe, and it 's incredibly simplistic to sum up such a | big chunk of spacetime with any single adjective. There's | very little similarity between, say, 7th century Scotland, | 11th century Spain, and 15th century Venice. | | If anything, you could call "dark" the centuries after the | fall of the Western Roman Empire until the early middle ages. | And obviously only from a fairly narrow Western-Europe- | centric viewpoint. | genman wrote: | Naturally. I didn't single out medieval era. And I didn't | say that it was less or more dark than other historical | eras, but if we compare it to what we have right now then | you can't claim that it was a very enlightened age. To me | the most important change over the time has been | acceptance, development and distribution of science and | civil rights. I personally see it more like a gradient, not | an on/off switch, but the more we go back in time toward | medieval era the less we have both of them. | HEmanZ wrote: | I thought that was what is meant by the "dark ages"? | Basically from the fall of the western Roman Empire until | about the carolingian empire. So 400-800 ish. And the name | works because we have so much less written evidence about | politics in Western Europe during that time, so it is in a | sense "dark" to us now. | | I am not a historian tho | quonn wrote: | Maybe. But it is difficult to say to was _less_ dark than | either the Roman empire before or the Renaissance and modern | era later. So it certainly appears to be _more_ dark. And so it | is, perhaps, not that uninformed an opinion after all. | gattilorenz wrote: | Absolutely. So many people believe that: | | 1) ius primae noctis was a thing (it wasn't) | | 2) witch hunting was a medieval thing (very late medieval | thing, maybe, but mostly it was in 15-17th century) | | 3) flat earth as a widespread belief for wise men (it wasn't, | and both Columbus and the Council of Salamanca knew that) | | We're willing to believe that for about 1000 years Europe | collectively abandoned reason, while before and after it was | there. Sure, sounds logic. | simbolit wrote: | (re1) while ipn wasn't a law, we have to keep in mind, the | lord was also the judge. so if your lord raped you, good luck | finding justice. | gattilorenz wrote: | There is no documentation of this period of it being "a | thing" (while we have, for example, plenty of stories or | fableaux talking about men and women cheating, priests and | monks having sex, etc.), afaik. | | That is to say, it wasn't a law but not even an accepted | custom. Raping is something else, unfortunately I'm sure | that happend. So are power dynamics and sex, but it wasn't | connected to the first night. | bombcar wrote: | The flat earth one is super annoying, because the argument | against Columbus _was actually correct_ - they didn 't say | he'd fall off the end of the world, they said _it was way | further than he thought and he 'd run out of food_. | | They were right, he just happened to run _into a giant | continent_ instead of dying. | hammock wrote: | >Ius primae noctis was a thing (it wasn't) | | Source? It's literally in the Talmud, and many other | histories. https://www.sefaria.org/Ketubot.3b.1?lang=bi&with= | all&lang2=... | gattilorenz wrote: | I think the consensus among contemporary historians is that | it was not an accepted custom among Christians. | | Also, that one source mentions it (I have no idea what that | says, when it is from, what is the context etc. - I'm also | no historian myself so an English translation would not | necessarily help) it doesn't mean it's true, otherwise we | would have to believe that Pegasus existed... or the myth | of Salamanca's council. | | Update: ah, I found the English translation. Indeed, by | reading it like this I see what you mean, but I have no | idea when, where and in what context it's been written, | whether it talks about a widespread thing, etc. | jcranmer wrote: | Annoyingly, the term "dark ages" is so vague and bandied about | that it's hard to rule this statement as true or false. | | The term originally refers to the idea that it's an age of | ignorance by Renaissance scholars essentially having a massive | Classical Antiquity appreciation binge. This gets amplified by | Protestants as an attack on Catholicism. Some more modern | people get even more zealously anti-religious and view it as | something pushing back the industrial revolution and other | things back by 1500 years or so. This especially gets | intertwined with things like unilinear cultural evolution | models [1], where the Middle Ages end up getting classified as | going backwards in culture. Most of these beliefs are basically | complete and total hogwash in terms of actual evidence. | | Archaeology can trace a rough outline of the economic history | of Europe. We see a peak of economic activity in the first and | second centuries AD, a decline in third century, which | stabilizes somewhat in the fourth and fifth century, before | plunging. It hits its nadir in the eighth century, and then | starts recovering, surpassing its pre-collapse highs sometime | between 1000-1300, depending on which metric you're looking at. | If you want to refer to the time from ~500-1000 as a "Dark | Ages" on the basis of poor document preservation and general | economic collapse, that's actually a reasonable, grounded | definition. | | But if you're trying to use the term to indicate a loss of | knowledge somehow, well, it just doesn't work. Even during the | absolute worst depths of the post-Roman collapse, you would | still be speaking Roman, learning from Roman textbooks (if | you're fortunate enough to be learning), practicing Roman | religion, obeying Roman laws. And there's a decent chance you | might be doing that despite your village never having once been | part of the Roman Empire. | | [1] Or, more simply, Civilization-style tech trees. | reactordev wrote: | Oh how the writer was trapped by the TikTok trap. Nothing on | there is real. If you heard it on TikTok, it's probably made up. | Now comes the saddest part: an entire generation thinks it's | real, it's true, and is being manipulated by made up sh&t like | culling of cats caused the Black Death. The likes drive | engagement, because it seems plausibly true, it must be right? So | I'll like it too so I don't look dumb. (trick: you're dumb by | liking it). So in the end, it's a giant echo chamber of bad | advice and made up scenarios and dance videos (because a pole | would be low class) for likes and money. There's some legit | channels, like there are on YouTube or other platforms, but | that's not what GenZ is watching. They are learning bogus | history, bogus politics, bogus math, and bogus job skills, | through TikTok. (Maybe even intentionally, to dumb us American's | down). Who knows. I do know that more BS has come from "I heard | it on TikTok" than ever in history. Even reporters are getting | their "source" from "I heard it on TikTok". It's ridiculous. No | wonder wars are raging, people are fighting, and all while making | cute videos of cats while spreading 3rd grade history | plausibilities. | | Kudos for calling them out that nowhere, in the histories, did | any of that happen. | reactordev wrote: | Example of made up scenarios: You're a singer. You recorded a | song. How do you get people to listen to your song? You make up | a scenario where your S.O. is just some random person and you | play the song while doing something that shows attraction. | Whether it's hitting on the girl, or vice versa, or it's | puppies or something that invokes primal responses. Meanwhile | the audio plays or you say "This is my song" and you have a | dozen of your friends also promote it. Sit back and watch. A | few people I know did this to break into the country music | scene. | | Guy in Truck: "Hey, you wanna hear something?" | | Girl running: _stops_ (pulls ear buds out like she couldn't | hear) "Sure" (confirming it was BS the whole time). | | _Music plays_ | | Girl: "wow this is really good!" | | Guy: "Thanks", can I get your number?" | | Girl: _blushes_ and gives him a blank piece of paper because | they are actually secretly married. | hammock wrote: | It's a con as old as medieval cats. Not new. | | Other examples: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony | micromacrofoot wrote: | I don't think we need the "China's doing it to us" conspiracy | theories, humans have been doing this to themselves forever. | | I once got a good deal on a house because a significant number | of people in the 21st century still believe in ghosts. | ajb wrote: | Interesting that the story of cats being persecuted in the middle | ages is false. This article doesn't try to trace the origin of | the story. This one : | https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/11/05/were-cats-reall... | Traces it to a book by Donald Engels, but that was only written | in 2001 and I've definitely heard the story before that. I think | I recall it being in 'Catwatching' by Desmond Morris which was | published in 93 (but it may have been some other book from that | time period). I doubt if Morris originated the story either, as | he's a naturalist, not a historian. So I wonder where it came | from. | zolbrek wrote: | I believe I have Catwatching somewhere. If I manage to dig it | up I'll report back in. | jibbit wrote: | i wish i could understand how cats became so popular, given -> | Fleas. As far as i can tell, anti-flea treatments have existed | for about 50 years. I get that catching mice is a huge plus, but | a house full of fleas also kinda sucks. | dragonwriter wrote: | Rats, like cats, have fleas that bite humans, too, and while | cats mostly don't kill rats the way they do mice, they do drive | them away. | CapitalistCartr wrote: | Cats kill rodents, protecting stored grain. And parasites were | a fact of life. | Hizonner wrote: | It doesn't suck as much as starving to death, which could | happen if the rodents went crazy on your food supplies. | | Anyway, if your house is loaded with mice and rats, you will | also have fleas. Unlike the rodents, your cat will even let you | comb it. | | Also people weren't necessarily clear on fleas or whatever | being something you _caught_. They were more seen as things | that just _showed up_ under certain circumstances. | idlewords wrote: | Two points: | | 1) I think you underestimate how bad a rodent problem can get, | and how quickly. | | 2) Healthy cats are decent groomers, and also flea magnets. | Fleas go to them preferentially. If the cat isn't a lap cat and | doesn't sleep on your bed, it's going to be doing most of the | interacting with fleas while you relax in your mouse-free | study. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-11-09 23:00 UTC)