Medieval Cats Behaving Badly: Kitties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on Fifteenth Century Manuscripts


Medieval Cats Behaving Badly: Kitties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on Fifteenth Century Manuscripts

“The extra issues change, the extra they keep the identical.”

–Jean-Bap­tiste Alphonse Karr (1808–90)

When Emir O. Fil­ipovic, a medieval­ist on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sara­je­vo, Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina, vis­it­ed the State Archives of Dubrovnik, he stum­bled upon some­factor that may exhausting­ly sur­prise any­one who lives with cats at the moment: a Fifteenth-cen­tu­ry man­u­script with inky paw prints casu­al­ly tracked throughout it.

And right here’s anoth­er purrpetra­tor. The His­torisches Archiv in Cologne, Ger­many hous­es a person­u­script with an inter­est­ing his­to­ry. Accord­ing to the weblog Medieval­Frag­ments, “a Deven­ter scribe, writ­ing round 1420, discovered his man­u­script ruined by a urine stain left there by a cat the night time earlier than. He was compelled to depart the remainder of the web page emp­ty, drew a pic­ture of a cat, and cursed the crea­ture with the fol­low­ing phrases:”

Hic non defec­tus est, sed cat­tus minx­it desu­per nocte quadam. Con­enjoyable­datur pes­simus cat­tus qui minx­it tremendous librum istum in nocte Dav­en­trie, et con­similiter omnes alii propter illum. Et caven­dum valde ne per­mit­tan­tur lib­ri aper­ti per noctem ubi cat­tie venire pos­sunt.

Right here is noth­ing miss­ing, however a cat uri­nat­ed on this dur­ing a cer­tain night time. Cursed be the pesty cat that uri­nat­ed over this ebook dur­ing the night time in Deven­ter and due to it many oth­ers [oth­er cats] too. And beware nicely to not depart open books at night time the place cats can come.

What I might sin­cere­ly like to know is whether or not, virtually 600 years lat­er, the urine scent has left the web page. Cat personal­ers, you’ll know what I imply.

through Medieval­Frag­ments

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

Cats Migrat­ed to Europe 7,000 Years Ear­li­er Than As soon as Thought

Cats in Japan­ese Wooden­block Prints: How Japan’s Favourite Ani­mals Got here to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Artwork



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