Superstitious Christians Brought The Black Death Upon Themselves

By James Donahue

An interesting article by Brian Kannard on the Unexplained Mysteries website notes that actions by Christian witch hunters in Europe in the mid-14th Century helped cause the curse of the Black Death.

It is commonly known today that a lot of people died of the Bubonic Plague, mostly carried by fleas on the rats that existed in the unsanitary conditions that prevailed in the towns at that period.

Kannard draws a link between the decision by Pope Clement and King Philip of France to arrest the Knights Templars and dismantle the business, farming and banking infrastructure they had established throughout Europe. This happened on what is remembered as Black Friday, Oct. 13, 1307. The area was hit by the Great Famine from 1315-1322, largely believed because the Templars were no longer in control of their vast farm holdings.

During the subsequent trials of the Templars, and because of the propaganda fed to the commoners by the Catholic leadership, heretical charges of witchcraft and the black arts were spread.

As Kannard explained what happened next: "Fueled by feeling of betrayal and the nation cats were linked to the Devil, people turned to killing cats as way to insure evil forces would not overtake them."

Thus after some 40 years of killing cats, the people lost what Kannard said was "the one barrier that could have given some protection from the Plague. Europe became heavily populated by rats and all of them were carrying fleas.

The Plague was said to have originated in Mongolia. It first spread into China and was carried from there on merchant ships to Sicily and eventually to Europe. The disease was carried by some of the sailors, but mostly on rats that rode the ships into European ports, then got into the cities where the infected rats mixed with the locals.

Without house cats to attack the rats, there was no natural barrier to stop the plague from sweeping Europe. Before it was over, the plague left an estimated 75 million people dead, with an estimated 20 million dead in Europe alone. It was estimated to have wiped out at least a third, if not a half of Europe's population.

It has gone down in history as the most devastating pandemic in human history.

And it all began because of a Pope's jealousy over the growing wealth and power of the Knights Templars, and his allegiance with a Catholic King of France to do something about it.