The black cat in European belief: from Bastet to the witch trials
From the Egyptian cult of Bastet to the bull Vox in Rama of 1233 and the English trials: how the black cat became an omen of bad luck in Europe.
Few domestic animals have had a reputation as contradictory as the black cat. In the same Europe that linked it to witches, some regions considered it a bringer of luck, and according to a widespread tradition British sailors wanted one on board. To understand how a small feline became a symbol of ill omen we must follow a long thread that starts with ancient deities, passes through the religious polemics of the thirteenth century and ends in the witch trials of the early modern age.
From Egypt to the goddesses of the North
In Egypt the cat was linked to Bastet, a goddess worshipped at Bubastis in the Nile Delta, where great numbers of mummified cats have been found. Herodotus, in the second book of his Histories, relates that Egyptians mourning the death of the household cat shaved their eyebrows. Here the cat had no sinister meaning at all: it was a protected animal, associated with the home, with fertility and with defence against snakes.
In the Norse world, too, the feline appears beside a female deity. In the Prose Edda, composed by Snorri Sturluson in the thirteenth century, the goddess Freyja travels in a chariot drawn by two cats. It is an isolated image and hard to interpret, but it shows that the cat could stand on the side of benevolent powers long before it was counted among the creatures of the devil.
The medieval turning point
The decisive shift came in the Christian Middle Ages, when the cat entered the polemic against heretics. The bull Vox in Rama, issued by Pope Gregory IX in 1233 and addressed to Germany, describes secret rites in which followers supposedly paid homage to a large black cat. The document reflects accusations gathered by the inquisitor Conrad of Marburg and should be read as a piece of propaganda, not as a record of real ceremonies.
From then on the image of the black cat as the embodiment or servant of the devil spread through preaching and learned treatises. Colour mattered a great deal: black was associated with night, mourning and spiritual darkness, and a nocturnal, silent animal whose eyes shine in the dark lent itself well to becoming the symbol of whatever escapes human control.
Witches, familiars and everyday superstitions
In the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the cat often appears among the animals attributed to the accused. In England, at the Chelmsford trial of 1566, Elizabeth Francis stated that she had received from her grandmother a white spotted cat called Sathan. The case shows that the colour was not always black: what mattered most was the supposed bond between the woman and a creature believed to serve her.
Many superstitions still alive today derive from judicial accusations and preaching, such as the fear of a black cat crossing one's path. In Britain and Ireland, however, meeting a black cat is often considered a good sign. The same figure could therefore bring luck or misfortune depending on the place, the social class and the family tradition of whoever met it.
The history of the black cat shows how much a symbol depends on its context. The same animal was the companion of goddesses, the alleged idol of heretics, the helper of witches and the talisman of sailors. What changed was not the cat but the gaze of those who watched it, laden with religious fears, with suspicion of women living alone and with that ancient distrust of everything that moves by night.