Category Archives: Religion

1677: Londoners burn live cats in wicker pope

Our European ancestors really had it in for cats, chiefly because of their association with the devil or witchcraft. Many cats have paid the ultimate price for this superstition. Documents from medieval and early modern Europe describe dozens of cases of cats being burned alive, either for entertainment or religious point scoring.

Cat burning was particularly common in France, where a dozen live cats were routinely torched in Paris every Midsummer’s Day (late June). English courtier Philip Sidney attended one of these feline infernos in 1572. In his chronicle Sidney noted that King Charles IX also threw a live fox onto the fire, for added interest. In 1648, France’s King Louis XIV, then aged just 10, lit the tinder on a large bonfire in central Paris, then watched and danced with glee as a basket of stray cats was lowered into the flames. Live cats were frequently burned alive elsewhere in Europe, particularly at Easter or the period around Halloween.

medieval cat burning
Like witches, heretics, sodomites and Jews, many cats were burned alive

Cat-burning was less common in Britain, though a few examples are recorded. One comes from the letters of Englishman Charles Hatton. In November 1677, Hatton wrote to his brother, chiefly about who might be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. He closed his letter by describing a recent celebration to mark the 119th anniversary of Elizabeth I taking the throne.

At the centre of this pageantry, Hatton wrote, was a large wickerwork figure of Pope Innocent XI, an effigy that reportedly cost £40 to make. The wicker pope was paraded through London, then erected in Smithfield and set alight. Inside its baskety innards was a number of live cats:

“Last Saturday the coronation of Queen Elizabeth was solemnised in the city with mighty bonfires and the burning of a most costly pope, carried by four persons in diverse clothing, and the effigies of devils whispering in his ears, his belly filled full of live cats, who squawled most hideously as soon as they felt the fire. The common saying all the while was [the cats’ screeching] was the language of the Pope and the Devil in a dialogue between them.”

According to Charles Hatton, these perverse celebrations were concluded with the opening and distribution of a free barrel of claret.

Source: Letter from Charles Hatton to Christopher Hatton, November 22nd 1677. From Correspondence of the Family of Hatton, vol. 1, 1878. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1637: Church elders complain of dung-hurling

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Norwich cathedral

In 1637, an order from Charles I required members of the Norwich municipal corporation to attend cathedral services, if they weren’t doing so already.

This order posed problems for the mayor and aldermen, who petitioned the king for an exemption from attending services in the city’s cathedral. Their “Humble Petition” cited “inconveniences thereof [that were] many and intolerable”. According to members of the corporation, their low seats in the cathedral were subject to gusts of freezing wind.

Not only that, the ordinary folk of Norwich, who were none too fond of the corporation, occupied the seats in the upper galleries. This gave them a vantage point for pelting city officials with anything they could find, from shoes to excreta:

“There be many seats over our heads and are oftentimes exposed to much danger… In the mayoralty of Mr Christopher Barrett a great Bible was let fall from above and hitting him upon the head, broke his spectacles… Some made water in the gallery on the aldermen’s heads and it dropped down into their wives’ seats… In October last Alderman Shipdham, somebody most beastly did conspurcate and shit upon his gown from the galleries above… some from the galleries let fall a shoe which narrowly missed the mayor’s head… another time one from the gallery did spit upon Alderman Barrett’s head…”

The king denied their request for exemption. It is not known if the Norwich elders followed the order and braved the masses in the cathedral.

Source: Tanner manuscripts, Bodleian Library; v.220, f.147. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1895: Bible quotes declared obscene, man fined $50

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Anthony Comstock, who waged war on obscenity in the late 1800s

The Comstock Act (passed 1873) was a United States federal law that made sending obscene materials through the mail a criminal offence. Under the Comstock provisions, the definition of ‘obscenity’ was very broad. Some of the prosecutions launched by postal authorities involved sexual health material, marriage handbooks, ‘coming of age’ guides, saucy poetry and love letters.

Even the most sacred of books was not sacred under the Comstock law. In 1895 John B. Wise of Clay County, Kansas was arrested and charged with sending obscene materials by mail. The material in question was a postcard containing two quotations from the Bible:

“Wise… sent a quotation of scripture by mail to a preacher friend, with whom he was having a scriptural controversy. As the quotation was obscene, the preacher got angry and caused Wise’s arrest for mailing obscene matter. The case is in the Topeka federal court… if the quotation is adjudged obscene [then] then Bible as a whole is unmailable matter.”

Wise’s case went to trial the following year and he was convicted by jury and fined $50. He declared his intention to appeal, however press archives do not contain any mention of this.

Source: The Advocate (Topeka, Kansas), June 19th 1895. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1814: Woman carrying the Messiah actually just overweight

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Joanna Southcott, the wannabe Virgin Mary of the Victorian era

Joanna Southcott (1750-1814) was born into a poor but devoutly Anglican farming family in Devon. Southcott left home around her 20th birthday. She spent the next 30 years working in and around Exeter as a farm worker, a housemaid, a lady’s maid and an upholstery seamstress.

Sometime around 1792, Southcott claimed to have experienced voices and visions. Some of these voices predicted events that later proved true. They also instructed Southcott to take up writing. In 1801, she spent her meagre life savings on self-publishing a book of her divine prophecies. It was picked up by a small but influential group of millenarian Christians and within three years Southcott had become a minor celebrity.

In February 1814, Southcott – then 64 years old, never married and purportedly still a virgin – shocked her followers by announcing that she was pregnant with the Second Messiah. She described her immaculate conception to a follower, George Turner:

“It is now four months since I felt the powerful visitation working upon my body… to my astonishment, I not only felt a power to shake my whole body, but I felt a sensation that is impossible for me to describe upon my womb… This alarmed me greatly, yet I kept it to myself.”

The news was greeted with comedic interest by the London press, which followed Southcott’s prophecies closely. She certainly developed some of the symptoms of pregnancy, growing “great in size”. But when no baby had appeared by the start of November, the 14th month of Southcott’s ‘pregnancy’, the sceptics were in uproar.

Southcott blamed the child’s non-appearance on her spinsterhood and recruited one of her followers as a token ‘Joseph’, marrying him on November 12th, but even this could not coax out the reluctant Messiah.

Southcott, by now very ill, disappeared from sight and died two days after Christmas. Followers kept her body for four days, believing that Southcott might rise again. Instead, they were greatly disappointed when her corpse started to putrefy and stink. An autopsy was conducted on Southcott’s body to find causes for the symptoms of pregnancy, including her greatly swollen belly. One attending doctor put this down to her abdomen, which was:

“..the largest I ever saw, being nearly four times the usual size, and appeared [to be] one lump of fat… this preternatural enlargement, the thickness of fat [and] the flatus of the intestines… satisfactorily accounts for the extraordinary size of the deceased.”

Source: Joanna Southcott, Conception Communication, conveyed to George Turner, February 25th 1814; Dr Peter Mathias, The Case of Johanna Southcott, 1815. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1023: Two years’ penance for placenta fish

Burchard (c.960-1025) was the Bishop of Worms during the early 11th century. He was a ruthless political leader and administrator, as well as an influential theologian and prolific writer.

Burchard’s best known work was the Decretum, a 20-book treatise on canon law that took him a decade to complete. The 19th volume of the Decretum is a penitential, a fairly standard guide for churchgoers on what they should do to make peace with God if they have sinned. Three of the more bizarre penitentials listed by Burchard are for women who go to extreme lengths to win the love of their husbands:

“Have you done as some women are accustomed to do? They lie with their face to the floor, bare their buttocks and order that bread be kneaded on their buttocks. The baked bread they then give to their husbands; this they do so that they will burn the more with love of them. If you have done this, you shall do penance for two years on approved holy days.”

Burchard also warns against a more common form of love potion – the use of menstrual blood in food:

“Have you done as some women are accustomed to do? They take their menstrual blood and mix it with food or drink, and give this to their husbands to eat or drink, so that they might be more loving and attentive with them. If you have done this, you shall do penance for five years on approved holy days.”

Arguably the coup de grace was Burchard’s penitential for serving your husband a fish drowned in your own placenta:

“Have you done as some women are accustomed to do? They take a live fish and place it into their afterbirth, holding it there until it dies. Then, after boiling and roasting it, they give it to their husbands to eat, in the hope they will burn more with love for them. If you have done this, you shall do penance for two years on approved holy days.”

Source: Burchard of Worms, Decretum, Book XIX, c.1023. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1582: Cuntius, the stinking vampire of Pentsch

In 1582, residents in a village in Silesia complained of visitations from a bad-breathed vampire named Cuntius. Before joining the ranks of the undead, Johannes Cuntius was actually a respected citizen and aldermen in Pentsch. In February 1582 he was fatally injured after being kicked by one of his “lusty geldings”.

Before expiring, Cuntius lingered for several days, complaining of ghostly visions and feeling like he was on fire. According to one witness, at the moment of his death a black cat entered the room and jumped onto his bed.

As befitted his civic status, Cuntius was entombed near the altar of his local church. But within a few days several townspeople reported receiving visits from the dead man. All described a “most grievous stink” and “an exceedingly cold breath of so intolerable stinking and malignant a scent as is beyond all imagination and expression”.

A whole litany of annoyances and harassments was attributed to the vampire, including accusations of:

“..Galloping up and down like a wanton horse in the court of his house… Miserably tugging all night with a Jew [and] tossing him up and down in his lodgings… dreadfully accosting a wagoner, an old acquaintance of his, while he was busy in the stable [and] biting him so cruelly in the foot that he made him lame… [Entering a] master’s chamber, making a noise like a hog that eats grains, smacking and grunting very sonorously…”

The people of Pentsch tolerated these nocturnal visits until late July, at which point they decided to exhume Cuntius’ coffin and deal with his wandering corpse. They found that his:

“..skin was tender and florid, his joints not at all stiff but limber and moveable… a staff being put into his hand, he grasped with his fingers… they opened a vein in his leg and the blood sprang out fresh as in the living.”

After a brief judicial hearing, Cuntius’ body was thrown onto a bonfire and burned, then hacked to pieces and crushed to ashes. As might be expected, the spirit of Cuntius ceased its nocturnal visits. By coincidence, the village of Pentsch became the town of Horni Benesov – the ancestral home of former US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Source: Various inc. Henry More, An Antidote against Atheism (Book III), 1655. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1501: Pope Alexander VI likes to watch

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Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI

Pope Alexander VI (ruled 1492-1503) was one of the worst-behaved pontiffs in the long history of the Catholic Church.

Alexander was born Rodgrio Borgia in 1431, a member of the powerful Valencian clan that dominated Italian politics during the Renaissance. When his uncle Alfons became Pope Callixtus III in 1455, Borgia entered the church and became a cardinal, despite having a law degree and no clerical or theological training.

Borgia continued to benefit from a string of nepotistic appointments handed down by his powerful uncle. Borgia himself continued this favouritism after he bribed his way to the papacy in 1492 – one of his first moves was to make his 17-year-old son, Cesare, an archbishop.

Alexander VI also had a reputation for sexual excess: he had several mistresses and fathered at least a dozen children, including the notorious Lucretia Borgia. After taking up residence in the Vatican, the new pope – by now in his early 60s and overweight – celebrated by taking a teenaged lover, the noted beauty Giulia Farnese.

According to one of his ceremonial staff, the noted chronicler Johann Burchard, the Vatican occasionally hosted parties that fell away into unrestrained orgies:

“On the last day of October, [the pope’s son] Cesare Borgia arranged a banquet in his chambers in the Vatican with 50 honest prostitutes, who danced after the dinner with those present, at first in their garments, then naked. After dinner, the candelabra were taken from the tables and placed on the floor and chestnuts were strewn around, which the naked prostitutes picked up, creeping on hands and knees between the chandeliers, while the Pope, Cesare and [the pope’s daughter] Lucretia Borgia looked on. Finally prizes were announced for those who could perform the act [of sexual intercourse] most often with the courtesans, such as tunics of silk, shoes, barrets and other things.”

Just a few days later, the pope and his daughter Lucretia entertained themselves by watching papal stallions mate with a farmer’s mares:

“On Monday the 11th of November, a peasant leading two mares laden with wood entered the city. When they arrived in the place of St. Peter the Pope’s men ran towards them, cut the saddle bands and ropes, threw down the wood and led the mares to a small place inside the palace… There four stallions, freed from reins and bridles, were sent from the palace. They ran after the mares and with a great struggle and noise, fighting with tooth and hoof, jumped upon the mares and mated with them, tearing and hurting them severely. The Pope stood together with Lucretia under a window… both looked down at what was going on there with loud laughter and much pleasure.”

Source: Chronicles of Johann Burchard, Ceremoniere to Pope Alexander VI, 1501. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1814: Tibetan nobles clamour for Dalai droppings

John Pinkerton (1758-1826) was a Scottish explorer and cartographer, best known for his 1808 atlas which updated and greatly improved many 18th century maps. He was also a prolific writer of histories and travelogues.

In 1814, Pinkerton published a volume summarising his “most interesting” voyages and travels in various parts of the world. One of these chapters described the people of Tibet and their devotion to its political and spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama:

“..The grandees [nobles] of the kingdom are very anxious to procure the excrements of this divinity, which they usually wear about their necks as relics… The Lamas make a great advantage [by] helping the grandees to some of his excrements or urine… for by wearing the first about their necks, and mixing the latter with their victuals, they imagine themselves to be secure against all bodily infirmities.”

Pinkerton also claimed that Mongol warriors to the north:

“..wear his pulverised excrements in little bags about their necks as precious relics, capable of preserving them from all misfortunes and curing them of all sorts of distempers.”

Source: John Pinkerton, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels, London, 1814. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1891: Welsh man fined for dubious obscene pictures

In November 1891, William Flower, a Swansea picture framer, appeared before a local magistrate charged with:

“…wilfully exposing in his window, or other part of his shop, certain obscene pictures… suggestive of love-making on the part of the Roman Catholic priesthood”.

Flowers pleaded not guilty but was convicted and fined 40 shillings plus costs. A press report of the case described the drawings or cartoons displayed in Flower’s shop and later deemed obscene by the court:

“One represents a priest ear-holding a man, who has pushed aside a curtain and is rapturously gazing at a buxom servant tying her garter. In the companion picture… the same healthy-looking priest has his arm around the generous waist of the maid… All the figures are decently dressed and neither can anything be found of a suggestive character.”

Further investigations by the press revealed that a Catholic clergyman, Canon Richards, had noticed the cartoons on his daily walk. He immediately reported them to the police and pushed for charges to be laid. Flower said he intended to appeal the conviction and had received donations from locals to help meet his costs.

Source: The Western Mail, Cardiff, November 18th 1891. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1248: Priests warned for drinking, sex and “ball games”

Eudes Clement was a prominent French cleric in the early 13th century. Eudes was born into a prominent family in Normandy sometime in the 1190s. He entered the clergy in his late teens and later become the abbot of Saint-Denis. Eudes also became a close friend and advisor to Louis IX, after he purportedly saved the king from a deadly illness by hauling the corpses of saints out of their tombs.

In 1245, Eudes was ordained as archbishop of Rouen, a diocese in Normandy known for its corruption and lack of discipline among both the higher and lower clergy. He spent several months travelling across the diocese, carrying out surprise visits on its parishes and monasteries and keeping a register of sins and transgressions.

The nuns at St Armand de Rouen came in for strong criticism from Eudes. According to his register, they sang hymns and prayers “with too much haste and jumbling of the words”, they received wine in unequal amounts and they slept in their underwear rather than their habits.

More serious clerical misbehaviour was uncovered at Ouville, where Eudes found that:

“..the prior wanders about when he ought to stay in the cloister… he is a drunk and of such shameful drunkenness that… he sometimes sleeps out in the fields… he is sexually active and his conduct with a certain woman of Grainville and the lady of Routot are matters of scandal…”

At Jumieges, the archbishop found two monks, both named William, guilty of committing sodomy with each other. He ordered their removal to separate monasteries.

A number of other monks were placed on notice and threatened with expulsion if they transgressed again. Brother Geoffrey of Ouville was one of these given a ‘last chance’; he had fathered a son with the wife of Walter of Ecaquelon. William of Cailleville was placed on notice for his frequent drunkenness. The parish priest at Ermenouville was warned for having sexual relations with a local woman.

Meanwhile, another cleric was warned about one of his leisure pursuits:

“..the priest of Saint Vaast de Dieppedale confessed that he was guilty of playing ball games in public, and that in this game one of the players had been injured… He swore before us that if he was found to have acted thus again, his parish would be resigned from that time on.”

Source: Register of Eudes, Archbishop of Rouen, ent. July 1248, September 1248, January 1249. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.