Cats and credulity

Among a myriad of myths on the Medieval Church is the order to kill cats, millions of them. Which helped contribute to the Black Death, as it was spread by fleas on rats. While other cultures kept their cats and were far less severely hit.

One never gets used to the lack of elementary logic and research behind such stories. It shouldn't take long to see that the Black Death was not much less virulent in China and the Middle East. And that one strand of the plague was air born. Breathing the germs hacked up by someone having it, made you easily get it.

In short, looking at sources provides a different picture.

Cats suffered horribly during witch hunts, which fostered or encouraged all kinds of superstition and brutality. Yet manuscripts show them about the house, playing with the spinster's twirling bobbin, and earning their living on farms. (Excerpts from: Lost Country Life by Dorothy Hartley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979).

It is hard to avoid the feeling that while the sources tell us that cats were loved and abundant, one has to stick with the myth, as everyone just know it is true.

And it all seems alligned to modern day satanist crazes (and more here).

Still, the standard story is everywhere, even serious places.

"Though cats had always behaved in this manner, to the superstitious minds of the Middle Ages, cats were practicing supernatural powers and witchcraft. Most accused witches were older peasant women who lived alone, often keeping cats as pets for companionship. This guilt by association meant that roughly a million cats were burned at the stake, along with their owners, on suspicion of being witches".

To state the obvious, as no witches were burnt in the Middle Ages, this means that no cats were burnt either. Point proven.

Or perhaps the story is quite another?

"It took the authorities some time to figure out the cause of the problem. At one point they tested the theory that the disease was being spread by dogs and cats; thus the mayor of London ordered the execution of all such pets. Despite the extermination of millions of companion animals, however, the plague did not abate but actually accelerated, for, of course, the elimination of all cats was soon followed by an explosion of the rat population.

Eventually it became evident that people who had kept cats, in violation of the law, fared better; for the cats, according to their nature, killed the rats that carried the fleas that really carried the plague. People slowly began to deduce the rat-flea-disease connection. When the truth finally came to light, cats were quickly elevated to hero status, and soon became protected by law.”

So in reality it was all due to science. The authorities made a testable hypothesis, which then was falsfied.

From this we learn again how dangerous science is. It poisons everything. So be sure to visit you nearest hospital if you ever get hit by a scientist.

Buridan is da man!

Hear all ye people, hearken to the advice from Bedes Journal about Medieval Science Fiction. Or more precise, Medieval Science.

SF author Michael Flynn has written a novella about Paris in the late 1340s. The rector of the university, John Buridan (1300-58) and two famous students - Nicole Oresme (1323-82, later also rector in Paris) and Albert of Saxony (1316-90) - decide to carry out Galileo's experiments on falling weights (from nearly two hundred years later).

This was an important step. One of the biggest hinders to overcome for modern science to develop at all, was Aristotelian theory of motion, which e.g. insisted that heavier bodies would fall faster than lighter.

Naturally, Flynn is aware of an even earlier forerunner who today is overlooked in many circles. The Alexandrian John Philoponus (490-570) had done "falling weights" as a thought experiment, arriving at the same conclusion as Galilei (in opposition to Aristotle) would do more than thousand years later.

Unfortunately events placed Philoponus on the sideline. Not only for muslim natural philosophers, also christian Europe forgot him until the 1200's. And even then he was perceived too much a lone and heretic figure. Until Buridan and his students start reconsidering in Flynn's novella.

The story is fun, interesting and eyeopening. It imagines an alternative scientific revolution in the fourteenth century, within Thomistic and Aristotelian concepts. And Flynn makes it plausible, based on a solid and sensible understanding of medieval natural philosophy.

The story is followed by a thesis, based on Standard Medieval Dialectic with 1) the question to be determined, 2) objections, 3) arguments, 4) the determination of the answer and 5) replies. In short, just like discussion foras on the web. Or how they should have been.

You can get the magazine as an e-book here. Or just approach your nearest Medieval Science Fiction Sales Guild.

Buying Byzantium

Walking Through Byzantium mentioned here may now be ordered here.

Virtual walk

As somewhat of a time travel buff, though wary of the real thing (too many nasty smells and bacteria, not to mention daggers in the dark), I have followed virtual reality with a rather keen interest.

Sooner or later, we will be able to make virtual walks through ancient Rome and Jerusalem, not to mention Tenochtitlan or Cordoba. While waiting for that (I predict it will take less than five years for the most famous cities), it is a pleasure to announce that a great "virtual guidebook" to my fav metropolis, Walking Through Byzantium, now has been printed.

By some whim of fate (or conspiracy, more likely) there has been a peculiar lack of movies and TV-series placed in Medieval Constantinople. Though novels abound.

For those of you into Norwegian, I would also recommend my blog post here (with illustrations), for the rest of you I would recommend this site.

Soon it will even be possible to order the book.