Chapter Seven: The Round God Is Coming (Part II)

As a pet with a long history of taming, the status of cats in human society has also gone through ups and downs - sometimes they are lifted up to the clouds and respected as sacred beasts, and sometimes they fall into hell and become evil demons that everyone shouts and fights.

Cats used to be very noble – in ancient Egypt, where domestic cats were first domesticated, the Egyptians regarded them not only as important family members, but also as rodent exterminators and high-quality caretakers of Nile barns. Because the importance of cats to grain hoarding is self-evident, so over time, the ancient Egyptians gradually deified the cat, creating a cat goddess Bastet with a cat head and a human body, every spring, the ancient Egyptians will hold a grand sacrifice event, gathering hundreds of thousands of people to sing the praises of the cat goddess Baste, which can be called the oldest cat lady Ia.

But the problem is that as the Christian powers gradually took control of Europe, the sacred worship of cats quickly became a thing of the past in the Western world - and some "stupid humans" began to vaguely feel that there was something wrong with cats, and that they were always a little evil. Especially in the late Middle Ages, many Europeans began to believe that according to the Bible, God created all things to serve and be ruled by people, but cats do not obey human commands like dogs or other domestic animals, but some elusive creature hovering between the familiar and the unfamiliar, plus it happens to be a nocturnal animal, so the Christian fanatics of the time associated cats with things like devils and witches.

In Western fantasy cartoons or movies in the modern world, the reason why the evil witch is often lying next to a black cat, or the witch herself will become a black cat. Then engage in all sorts of evil activities in the dark...... It was originally a feudal superstition that originated in medieval Europe.

Regardless of their relationship, both the witch and the cat are images of Satan, the embodiment of demons, and must be judged and killed

As a result, the vigorous national cat slaughter movement was staged in medieval European countries with a strong religious atmosphere.

Originally, this was just a folk act. But about half a century before the Black Death came, a certain pope who seemed to be possessed by "cat madman Schrödinger" actually came out to join in the fun, openly declaring that cats are "non-Christian evil animals" and companions of those terrible witches, and asking all Christians to work together to eradicate cats from European soil with the strength of eliminating the four evils as if the future Chinese were eliminating the four evils

At this point, the cat slaughter campaign was officially encouraged and turned into a de facto legal obligation. According to God's teachings, cats are evil, and anyone - especially a woman - who shows his affection for cats will be suspected of being a heretic or a sorcerer and is in danger of being burned alive

In that cat-mad horror era, if a devout Christian went out at night and met a kitten, he must use all kinds of cruel methods to kill the cat, if the mouth is left alive or the way of killing the cat is not cruel enough, it is considered disrespectful and disrespectful to Christ Jesus, and many devout Christians will pile up the corpses of the cats after killing them on the walls of the building, indicating that they will never be at odds with the demons

During the great festivals, the 14th century European Christians would kill cats to death in various strange ways to show that they had successfully killed the "Satan/Devil", and to increase their sense of mission to God, as well as to add joy to the big festivals, and also to show a high level of respect for the God they believed. What's even more numb is that in order to please the gods, all kinds of hollowing out cat abuse techniques have also been revealed.

For example, some Christians will show their hatred and disgust for "Satan/the devil" by tying them to miniature cremature racks and burning them alive in the same way as heretics. Others prepare a large bowl of water and place the cat in the bowl to drown it alive. Some people will disembowelment a cat alive and gouge out its heart; There are some of the most twisted cat sadists, who like very complicated methods of killing cats, they use all kinds of sharp and hard objects to cut the cat's throat, and then stuff iron tools into the position of the cut throat, block the cat's airway, and then squeeze out the cat's tongue and cut it off, and finally hang the dying cat high, so that the tortured cat will die very hard and slowly.

- Until the 21st century, in some parts of Belgium, there was still a custom of "roasting cats", and some cats were burned to play with every festival......

To be honest, the European Christians of those days were basically cat sadists like never before. When European scholars in the later days accused the Mayans and Aztecs of the Americas of killing and sacrificing the gods with all their tricks of killing and killing gods, they forgot that they seemed to have just practiced all these torture methods on the poor cats I don't know how many times...... Of course, a cat's life is always less valuable than a human life.

To get back to the point, according to the relevant documents of the European Middle Ages, the number of cats burned at the stake alone exceeded one million on the eve of the Black Death. And the cats that have died from other methods of torture and killing are even more numerous. Especially by the time of the Black Death in 1348, the performance of the cat slaughter campaign had reached its peak, and there were almost no domestic cats in the whole of Europe, and only a few wild cats survived.

On the eve of the devouring plague, the dead Europeans wiped out their natural saviors with their own hands

In this case, even if the poor traveler Levi wanted to get some cats to catch mice, there was nowhere to buy them in Europe.

In addition to the sport of slaughtering cats without limits, the attitude of medieval Europeans was also very disgusting and often culled when dealing with another kind of rat exterminator, the owl, because they were also prone to being associated with evil witches and devils at night. Moreover, owls generally live in the countryside and rarely haunt densely populated medieval cities with little vegetation, and it is impossible to count on them to replace cats.

Although there are other methods of rodent extermination, it will also be very difficult to promote in this year, such as the spring-loaded rat trap that often appears in the cartoon "Cat and Mouse" ("Tom and Jerry"), which was not revealed until 1899 - the blacksmiths of medieval Europe could not mass-produce that kind of spring steel

As for the so-called "mousetrap" used by Europeans in the Middle Ages, it was actually to use a thin branch to hold up a heavy piece of wood and sprinkle a little food underneath - just like the bird catching thing he played in Lu Xun's novels when he was a child - when an unlucky mouse came to steal the bait, if it moved clumsily, it might accidentally push the branch away, and then be crushed to death by the falling big log. Of course, this is only a theoretical application. As for the actual situation...... Well, although such stupid mice are really rare, at least the psychological comfort effect is still a little.

Another common method of rodent extermination in later generations is to sprinkle some poisonous rat poison near the house. But the question is, now that the Black Death has exploded, and there are rotting dead people everywhere, and there are unattended food stores and abandoned kitchens full of flour and salted meat, do you think that when all kinds of delicious meals are at your fingertips, those clever rats will still look at your poisoned bait?

In Li Wei's view, the most realistic way to exterminate rats at the moment is to mobilize everyone to work together and fight rats in person. But this will face a paradox: if you don't tell people the real reason for the rat hunting, then people who are used to being dirty and sloppy will probably think that you have a sick brain. But if you find a way to convince them that rats are the source of the Black Death, and then order them to catch rats with their own hands...... In the case of the Black Death, which is already rampant, isn't this tantamount to making people take the initiative to rush to the edge of the source of infection to die? Who is willing to sacrifice their own life?

In short, in the absence of a special medicine and the inability to carry out a "patriotic health campaign", even the traversers were helpless against the Black Death.

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Watching his uncle's coffin slowly lowered into the grave, then filled with dirt and erected as a cross, Levi couldn't help but feel powerless and dazed.

-- How long will this unprecedented plague last? Will my wife and I survive this catastrophe?

When my uncle died, we came to the funeral. In case when I die, will anyone be able to give me a funeral?

Unfortunately, it seems that only God can know the answers to these questions.

He stood silently in the cemetery for a long time, until the sun was setting, and then turned away, but instead of returning directly to the manor, he walked a long way along a cobblestone path to the door of a tall stone house that also hung the Knights Hospitaller's red and white cross flag.

Then, at the sound of the personal servant's reminder, Knight Levi took a handkerchief from his coat pocket, soaked it in the water tank at the door of the stone house, dipped it, covered his mouth and nose, and then walked in.

Once inside, Levi looked out to see the cold bars being dragged out by the dancing torches in a shaking shadow, and on the stained limestone floor, a dozen ragged patients were sleeping. Fill this room, which was supposed to be spacious. There are many people who still have yellow-green pus on their bodies, and some of the most severe ones have even lost consciousness, incontinent and urine, and stinky feces and urine flow all over the ground. As a result, the floor of the room was covered with pus, blood, phlegm, feces, urine, vomit, and garbage, and a pungent smell of blood and rancid stench could be smelled from afar.

Listening to this painful groan like a miserable resentful spirit, Rao was mentally prepared, and Knight Levi couldn't help but shudder.

- This dark stone house with the smell of death is the charity hospital of the Knights Hospitaller in Marseille.

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