to this doctrine. Origen insisted that comets indicate catastrophes and the downfall of empires and worlds.' Bede, so justly revered by the English Church, declared in the seventh century that "comets portend revolutions of kingdoms, pestilence, war, winds, or heat"; and John of Damascus, his eminent contemporary in the Eastern Church, took the same view. Hrabanus Maurus, the great teacher of Europe in the ninth century and an authority throughout the middle ages, adopts Bede's opinion fully. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great light of the universal church in the thirteenth century, whose works the Pope now reigning commends as the centre and source of all university instruction, accepted and handed down the same opinion.' The sainted Albert the Great, the most noted genius of the medieval church in natural science, received and developed this theory. By these men and those who followed them was developed out of scriptural texts and theological principles a system that for seventeen centuries defied every advance of thought.

The main evils thence arising were three: the paralysis of self-help, the arousing of fanaticism, and the strengthening of ecclesiastical and political tyranny. The first two of these evils, the paralysis of self-help and the arousing of fanaticism, are evident throughout all these ages. At the appearance of a comet we constantly see all Christendom, from pope to peasant, instead of striving to avert war by wise statesmanship, instead of striving to avert pestilence by observation and reason, instead of striving to avert famine by skilful economy, whining before fetiches, trying to bribe them to remove these signs of God's wrath, and planning to wreak this supposed wrath of God upon misbelievers.

As to the third of these evils, the strengthening of ecclesiastical and civil despotism, examples appear on every side. It was natural that hierarchs and monarchs, whose births

1 See his "De Princip.," i., 7; Maury, "Lég. Pieuses," 203.

ง

See Bede, "De Nat.," xxiv.; Joh. Dam., "De Fid. Or.," ii., 7.

See Maury, "La Magie et l'Astronomie,” 181.

See Albertus Magnus, "Opera," i., tr. iii., ch. 10, II.

were announced by stars, or whose deaths were announced by comets, should regard themselves as far above the common herd, and should be so regarded by mankind; passive obedience was thus strengthened, and the most monstrous assumptions of authority were considered simply as manifestations of the divine will. Shakespeare makes Calphurnia say to Cæsar : "When beggars die, there are no comets seen;

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes." 1

Galeazzo, the tyrant of Milan, expressing satisfaction on his death-bed that his approaching end was of such importance as to be heralded by a comet,' is but a type of many thus encouraged to prey upon mankind; and Charles V., one of the most powerful monarchs the world has known, abdicating under fear of the comet of 1556, taking refuge in the monastery of San Yuste, and giving up the best of his vast realms to such a scribbling bigot as Philip II., furnishes an example even more striking."

But, for the retention of this belief, there was a moral cause. Myriads of good men in the Christian Church down to a recent period saw in the appearance of comets not merely an exhibition of "signs in the heavens" foretold in Scripture, but also divine warnings of vast value to humanity as incentives to repentance and improvement of life-warnings, indeed, so precious that they could not be spared without danger to the moral government of the world. And this belief in the portentous character of comets as an essential part of the divine government, being, as it was thought, in full accord with Scripture, was made for centuries a source of terror to humanity. To say nothing of examples in the earlier periods, comets in the tenth century strengthened the prevailing belief in the approaching end of the world, and increased the distress of all Europe. In the middle of 1 6 'Julius Cæsar," act ii., sc. 2. * See Guillemin, "World of Comets," 19. See Professor Wolf's essay in the "Monatschrift des wissenschaftlichen Vereins," Zürich, 1857, p. 228.

Of this the legal documents of that age afford abundant testimony. For effects of comets in the eleventh century and those following see the chronicles of Raoul Glaber, William of Nangis, and others passim.

the eleventh century a comet was thought to accompany the death of Edward the Confessor and to presage the Norman Conquest, the traveller in France to-day may see this belief as it was then wrought into the Bayeux tapestry.'

Nearly every decade of years throughout the middle ages saw Europe plunged into alarm by appearances of this sort, but the culmination seems to have been reached in 1456. At that time the Turks, after long effort, had made good their footing in Europe. A large statesmanship or generalship might have kept them out; but, while different religious factions were disputing over petty shades of dogma, the Turks had advanced, had taken Constantinople, and were evidently securing their foothold. Now came the full bloom of this superstition. A comet appeared. The Pope of that period, Calixtus III., was a man of more than ordinary ability, but saturated with the ideas of his time. Alarmed at this monster, if we are to believe the contemporary historian, this infallible head of the Church, by virtue of his position, solemnly "decreed several days of prayer for the averting of the wrath of God, that whatever calamity impended might be turned from the Christians and against the Turks." And, that all might join daily in this petition, was then established that mid-day Angelus which has ever since called good Catholics to prayer against the powers of evil. Then, too, it is said, was incorporated in the litany the plea, "From the Turk and the comet, Good Lord, deliver

Never was papal intercession less effective; for the Turk has held Constantinople from that day to this, while the obstinate comet, being that now known under the name

1 For evidences of this widespread terror see chronicles of Raoul Glaber, Guillaume de Nangis, William of Malmesbury, Florence of Worcester, Ordericus Vitalis, et al., passim, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (in the "Rolls series "). For very thrilling pictures of this horror in England see Freeman, "Norman Conquest," iii., 640-644, and “ William Rufus," ii., 118. For the Bayeux tapestry see Bruce, "Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated," pl. vii. and p. 86; also Guillemin, "World of Comets," 24. There is a large photographic copy, in the South Kensington Museum at London, of the original, wrought by the wife of William the Conqueror and her ladies, and preserved in the town museum at Bayeux.

of Halley, has returned imperturbably at short periods ever since.'

But the superstition went still further. It became more and more incorporated into what was considered “scriptural science" and "sound learning." The encyclopædic summaries, in which the science of the middle ages and the Reformation period took form, furnish abundant proofs of this.'

Yet scientific proof was slowly undermining this structure. The inspired prophecy of Seneca had not been forgotten. Even as far back as the ninth century, in the midst of the sacred learning so abundant at the court of Charlemagne and his successors, we find a scholar protesting against the doctrine. In the thirteenth century we have a mild question by Albert the Great as to the supposed influence of comets upon individuals; but the prevailing theological current was too strong, and he finally yielded to it in this as in so many other things."

So, too, in the sixteenth century, we have Copernicus refusing to accept the usual theory, Paracelsus writing to Zwingli against it, and Julius Cæsar Scaliger denouncing it as "ridiculous folly."

'The usual statement is, that Calixtus excommunicated the comet by a bull, and this is accepted by Arago, Grant, Hoefer, Guillemin, Watson, and many historians of astronomy. Hence the parallel made on a noted occasion by President Lincoln. No such bull, however, is to be found in the published “Bullaria," and that establishing the "Angelus" (as given by Raynaldus in the " Annales Eccl.") is said to contain no mention of the comet. But the authority of Platina (in his "Vitæ Pontificum," Venice, 1479, sub Calistus III.), who was not only in Rome at the time, but, when he wrote his history, archivist of the Vatican, is final as to the Pope's attitude. Platina's authority was never questioned until modern science had changed the ideas of the world. The recent attempt of Pastor (in his “Geschichte der Päpste ") to pooh-pooh down the whole matter is too evident an evasion to carry weight with those who know how even the most careful histories have to be modified to suit the views of the censorship at Rome.

See, for example, Vincent of Beauvais, "Speculum Naturale," and the various editions of Reisch's "Margarita Philosophica."

165.

See Champion, "La Fin du Monde," 156; Leopardi, "Errori Popolari,"

See Heller, "Geschichte der Physik," i., 188.

For these exhibitions see Champion, "La Fin du Monde," 155, 156; and

for Scaliger, Dudith's book, cited below.

At first this scepticism only aroused the horror of theologians and increased the vigor of ecclesiastics; both asserted the theological theory of comets all the more strenuously as based on scriptural truth. During the sixteenth century France felt the influence of one of her greatest men on the side of this superstition. Jean Bodin, so far before his time in political theories, was only thoroughly abreast of it in religious theories: the same reverence for the mere letter of Scripture, which made him so fatally powerful in supporting the witchcraft delusion led him to support this theological theory of comets-but with a difference: he thought them the souls of men, wandering in space, bringing famine, pestilence, and war.'

Not less strong was the same superstition in England. Based upon mediæval theology, it outlived the revival of learning. From a multitude of examples I take a few that may be considered typical. Early in the sixteenth century Polydore Virgil, an ecclesiastic of the unreformed church, alludes, in his "English History," to the comet presaging the death of the Emperor Constantine as to a simple matter of fact; and in his work on prodigies he pushes this superstition to its most extreme point, exhibiting comets as preceding almost every form of calamity."

In 1532, just at the transition period from the old church to the new, Cranmer, paving the way to his archbishopric, writes from Germany to Henry VIII., and says of the comet then visible: "What strange things these tokens do signify to come hereafter God knoweth ; for they do not lightly appear but against some great matter."

Twenty years later still, Bishop Latimer, in an Advent sermon, speaks of eclipses, rings about the sun, and the like as signs of the approaching end of the world.‘

In 1580, under Queen Elizabeth, there was set forth an

'See Bodin, "Theatr.," lib. ii., cited by Pingré, i., 45; also a vague citation in Baudrillart, "Bodin et son Temps," 360.

See Polydore Virgil, “Eng. Hist.," 97 (in Camden Soc. publications). 'See Cranmer's "Remains," ii., 535 (in Parker Soc. publications).

• See Latimer's "Sermons," second Sunday in Advent, 1552.