Medieval Halloween
Some reminders about medieval cats, demons, and devils for spooky season
Modern Medieval
by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele
It’s the best time of the year - Halloween week! - here at Modern Medieval. Time to dredge up the most scariest, most dire, most eerie bits of the medieval world.
Since we’ve been doing the newsletter over the past few years, we’ve talked a bit about the supernatural and wicked.
In May 2023, we wrote about a weird myth that cats - somehow - caused the Black Death. The story, in brief, goes that cats were thought to be agents of evil so “the Church” ordered a mass extermination, which in turn led to an explosion of the rat population, which then spread the plague. No. We at Modern Medieval have, between us, 3 cats now and they are legitimately bonkers but not evil (rather, quite snuggly) and certainly not responsible for the deaths of 40% of Europe.
In December 2024, coinciding with the launch of our most recent book Oathbreakers, we wrote about a demon named Wiggo. He appears at a critical moment to torment the Franks, to narratively reveal that the agents who’re destroying the empire aren’t actually him and his followers but rather the Franks themselves - the sinful, greedy elites who care more for enriching themselves than caring for the public good. This is a critical role, textually and intellectually for demons to play in the 9th century.
We write:
Medieval stories about the sacred or supernatural—demons, angels, saints, relics and visions—were set in a society where the borders between natural and supernatural were thought to have been thin or nonexistent. They reflected broad beliefs across social classes, and for modern historians, they offer an opportunity to see beyond tightly controlled, elite circles. Accounts of miracles, religious sermons and other such cultural artifacts allowed medieval authors to cloak their critiques of power and reveal what was really going on in the world.
(Also, we should note as an aside, the narrator of the audiobook of Oathbreakers - Paul Bellantoni - does a really great Wiggo voice. Get the audiobook here.)
Finally, this past July we talked with the editors of a new book tracking the image of the Devil through history. In that piece, Prof. Mikki Brock reminds us the long tails (pardon the pun - actually don’t because it’s a good pun) of many of these imaginaries. Taylor Swift, for example, was accused of witchcraft and devilry in setting up her engagement to Travis Kelce in order to give birth to the antichrist. Such stories may seem strange to us, but they play into a long history of such stories about powerful women and the supposedly dark arts they practice in order to gain power.
Ok, that’s about it for now. Happy reading and Happy Halloween!
Maybe next year, we’ll write about medieval candy…
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