Vox in Rama - or about Mice and Men

[bjorn]

One of the standard canards about the Middle Ages (#17 in my Icons of Modernity Gallery) is how the extermination of cats by the Church made the Black Death worse by too many plague carrying mice/rats.

This story is of course not true. Still, reading Wicca sites, not to mention cat lovers and Halloween geeks, there is constantly refered to a papal bull condemning cats.

Though some refer to Innocent VIII in 1484 and others to Gregory IX in 1233 (Vox in Rama)..

The first is obviously untrue (no mention of cats in any of his bulls), while the earliest one may be true and has been used by a lot of serious historians (e.g. Norman Cohn)..

Still, it is hard to find earlier than 1883...

alt.nntp2http.com/activism/2010/06/bf89ff4bc1366ddad17606721d3c71a1.html

Did Pope Gregory IX issue a Papal Bull, "Vox in Rama", in 1233, which condemned Satanic meetings in Germany? Rumors float that "Vox in Rama" led to a severe depopulation of cats, in consequence increasing the rat population, and from there eventually caused the "Black Death" of 1348 - 1350.

The "Catholic Answers" forum claims "Vox in Rama" is a fabrication, traced to a book published in 1972, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. [1]

A cursory check by Melchizedek Communique is unable to find any actual copy of the purported "Vox in Rama" ("A Voice in Ramah"). It is mentioned in a Wikipedia entry, "List of Papal Bulls." However
Wikipedia gives as its source for the existence of "Vox in Rama" the aforementioned doubted book, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. [2]

Research by Melchizedek Communique, however, traces a source on "Vox in Rama" much earlier than 1972. In Malcolm Lambert's book, The Cathars, he devotes a page to "Vox in Rama" and cites:

Vox in Rama, ed. K. Rodenberg, MGH, Epistolae saeculi XIII, I (Berlin 1883), no. 537, pp. 423-5

Pope Gregory IX allegedly described, in "Vox in Rama", Satanic
practices. The initiate, he claimed, first made acquaintance with a
monstrous toad. Then, an ice-cold pale man would appear, followed by a black cat whose hind end was kissed by all present. At last, the lights were extinguished and a wild orgy occurred. [3]

Some also make an erroneous connection between the Cathars, a "heresy" of those times, and cats in general.

Has "Vox in Rama" been "scrubbed clean" from Vatican history, as an embarrassment? Or is it in fact a huge hoax? Who can you ask? Who can you believe??

The "Black Death" was probably carried by fleas residing on the black rats that were regular passengers on merchant ships. [4] Was there a shortage of cats at the time? Did that allow the rats to multiply exponentially? Did "Vox in Rama" inadvertantly lead to the "Black Death"? Melchizedek Communique considers these questions to be unanswered.

------- Notes -------
[1] "Papal bull caused the black plague?"
forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?pX00572
[2] "List of Papal Bulls", Wikipedia, June 6, 2010
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_papal_bulls
[3] The Cathars, by Malcolm Lambert. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1998
[4] "Black Death", Wikipedia, June 6, 2010
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

So, anyone who can help?

Is Vox in Rama genuine or another 19th century fabrication (if so, it is puzzling that it still is accepted by serious researchers...)?

[James Hannam]

Hi Bjorn,

Vox in Rama is genuine and can be read at page 432 of the relevant volume of MGH here:

bsbdmgh.bsb.lrz-muenchen.de/dmgh_new/app/web?action=loadBook&bookId=00000517

It's in Latin of course so I haven't ploughed through it. Flu.

J

[bjorn]

Oct 20, 2010 11:13:47 GMT James Hannam said:

Hi Bjorn,

Vox in Rama is genuine and can be read at page 432 of the relevant volume of MGH here:

bsbdmgh.bsb.lrz-muenchen.de/dmgh_new/app/web?action=loadBook&bookId=00000517

It's in Latin of course so I haven't ploughed through it. Flu.

J

There is no doubt that the text is available in Latin from this source which seems to be the same as the one I referred to.

The challenge is however still as to why it on the The Catholic Answers forum is claimed to be a fabrication, and if that is in error(as I believe) if the "cat"-part of the text is genuine.

[James Hannam]

Assuming that gattus in the text is a variation of cattus, which seems likely, the cat references are there.

So Catholic Answers has got this wrong and should probably be told.

But there doesn't seem to be an order to kill the cats and the mention is quite cursory. Do we know where the story of the cat massacre originates from?.

J

[himself]

How puissant of the Pope that his bull would slaughter all the cats of Western Europe and so introduce the Black Death to Byzantium, Islam, India, and China.

[giacomostewart]

Dear Regent Master,

The Pope did not do it. It is like the other famous canard (i.e. codswallop) that a pope excommunicated Halley's Comet. He didn't.

Indeed, it remains doubtful that Vox in Rama even existed.

But here is a good and quite neutral analysis of what can only be described as the cat baloney about Vox in Rama and the black cat story, by Tim O'Neill who is convinced that Vox in Rama did exist.

Tim O’Neill, Head Inquisitor against bad history.
4 May 2016

…
It is often claimed that Vox in Rama condemned cats as animals associated with Satan and that this led to a wholesale massacre of cats, especially black cats. It's often also claimed that this cat massacre increased the number of rats in Europe and so brought on the Black Death. Like most popular stories about the weird/crazy/stupid Middle Ages, this is all nonsense.

The Papal bull in question mentions a cat in its very strange description of the supposed rituals of the Satanic sect:

"The following rites of this [sect] 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 [and] 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 [C]atholic 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 [says], “We know, master!” A fourth says: “And we must obey.”

Nowhere does the bull condemn cats generally or declare them Satanic animals, nor does it say they should be killed. There is no evidence that this bull, which was issued locally in the area of Mainz and probably unknown elsewhere, caused some general massacre of cats or any cat killing at all. And therefore the idea that the Black Death, which occurred a whole century later, was somehow caused by this non-existent cat massacre makes no sense. We also know that the Black Death ravaged central Asia and the Middle East as well as Europe, so why people well beyond the reach of the Catholic Church would also be killing cats is unexplained. The plague had nothing to do with any massacres of cats.

Despite there being no evidence to support any of these claims, they are repeated uncritically because they have found their way into a couple of badly researched books and because they appeal to people's prejudices about the Middle Ages.