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Cat burning was a form of zoosadistic entertainment in France prior to the 1800s. In this form of entertainment, people would gather dozens of cats in a net and hoist them high into the air from a special bundle onto a bonfire. In the medieval and early modern periods, cats, which were associated with vanity and witchcraft, were sometimes burned as symbols of the Devil.[1]




Cat-burning was also described in The Great Cat Massacre, a scholarly work by American historian Robert Darnton:

Cats also figured in the cycle of Saint John the Baptist, which took place on June 24, at the time of summer solstice. Crowds made bonfires, jumped over them, danced around them, and threw into them objects with magical power, hoping to avoid disaster and obtain good fortune during the rest of the year. A favorite object was cats — cats tied up in bags, cats suspended from ropes, or cats burned at stake. Parisians liked to incinerate cats by the sackful, while the Courimauds (or "cour à miaud" or cat chasers) of Saint Chamond preferred to chase a flaming cat through the streets. In parts of Burgundy and Lorraine they danced around a kind of burning May pole with a cat tied to it. In the Metz region they burned a dozen cats at a time in a basket on top of a bonfire. The ceremony took place with great pomp in Metz itself, until it was abolished in 1765. ... Although the practice varied from place to place, the ingredients were everywhere the same: a "feu de joie" (bonfire), cats, and an aura of hilarious witch-hunting. Wherever the scent of burning felines could be found, a smile was sure to follow.[4]

Cat-burning was the subject of a 1758 text from the Benedictine Dom Jean François, Dissertation sur l’ancien usage des feux de la Saint-Jean, et d’y brûler les chats à Metz, recently published.[5]

Jean Meslier, a French Catholic priest who privately held atheist views, briefly mentioned the practice of cat burning in his Testament as follows:

Among other things, these mischievous, brutal madmen make [the cats] cruelly suffer harsh and violent tortures in their entertainments and even in public celebrations; they tie up nipping cats to the end of some pole they set up and at the bottom of which they light the fires of joy where they burn them alive to have the pleasure of seeing the violent movements and hearing the frightening cries that these poor unfortunate beasts are forced to make because of the harshness and violence of the tortures.[6]

Meslier largely attributed these customs to Cartesian philosophy, wherein non-human animals were viewed as possessing no soul, and thus, no sentience.[7] He posited that this "tends to stifle in the heart of man all feelings of gentleness, kindness, and compassion that they may have for beasts ..."[6]

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  1. ^ Benton, Janetta Rebold (1 April 1997). Holy Terrors: Gargoyles on Medieval Buildings. Abbeville Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-7892-0182-9. 
  4. ^ Darnton, Robert (2009). The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History. Basic Books. pp. 83–84. ISBN 0-465-01274-4. 
  5. ^ Mangin, Marie-Claire (1995). Dissertation sur l’ancien usage des feux de la Saint-Jean, et d’y brûler les chats à Metz, un inédit de dom Jean François. Cahiers Élie Fleur. pp. 49–72. 
  6. ^ a b Meslier, Jean (2009). Testament: Memoir of the thoughts and sentiments of Jean Meslier. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. pp. 562–563. ISBN 978-1-59102-749-2. 
  7. ^ Kemerling, Garth. "Descartes: A New Approach". Philosophy Pages. Retrieved 16 September 2012. 

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