All cats go to hell. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Leib. And this is Ghost Town.

On June 13th, 1233, Pope Gregory IX dropped some pretty crazy information, even for the 13th century.

Gregory officially issued the Vox en Rama, an official papal decree declaring that Satan

was half-cat and sometimes took the form of a cat during satanic masses. Gregory had become

Pope just six years before the anti-cat decree and started his papacy off right by expanding the

already brutal inquisition into all of Germany. He also amped up crusades and regularized the

violent persecution of heretics. He could do this because he was remarkably skillful with the

law. Some say he was a lawyer before he really got into the Catholic game, but I couldn't find

a ton of concrete proof on that. So Pope Gregory was really obsessed with getting rid of cats,

especially black cats. Cats were brought to Europe from Egypt by the Romans and were pretty well

liked at the time. I mean probably because they were useful to people for killing rodents.

But then Pope Gregory comes in, declared cats as instruments of Satan, and set all of Medieval Europe

on a gigantic cat purge, particularly black cats. Which again, we're thought of being as even

worse super super Satanish. Medieval people were also very superstitious though, so they really

went with it, especially if your Pope is saying you got to do it and it is evil. Here's what Gregory

said about cats. 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 power 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 bone. The novice kisses him and feels cold like ice and after the kiss,

the memory of the Catholic faith totally disappears from his heart. Afterwards, they sit down to a meal

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