too On Stones said to have fallen at EnsishehH 



canton of Gisgane, which was sown with wheat. It did 

 ho htirt, except that it made a hole there. It was afterwards 

 transported thence ; and a great nianv fragments were de- 

 tached from it, which the Tai-rd-vogt forbade. It was then 

 deposited in the church, with intention of suspending it as 

 a miracle; and a great many people came hither to see this 

 stoue^ respecting which there were singular discourses. Bui 

 the learned said they did not know what it was, for it was 

 something supernatural that so large a stone should fall from 

 the atmosphere ; but that it was a miracle of God : because, 

 before that time, nothing of the kind had ever been heard of, 

 seen, or described. When this stone was found, it had en- 

 tered the earth to a depth equal to the height of a man. What 

 every body asserted was, that it had been the will of God 

 that it should be found. And the noise of it was heard at 

 Lucerne, at Villing, and many other places, so loud, that 

 it was thought the houses were all overturned. And when 

 king Maximilian was here, the Monday after St. Catharine's 

 day of the same year, his royal excellency caused the stone 

 which had fallen to be carried to the castle ; and after con- 

 versing a long time with his lords, he said the people of En- 

 sisheim should take it : and he gave orders that it should be 

 suspended in the church, and that no person should be per- 

 mitted to take any part of it. His excellency, however, 

 took two fragments ; one of w-hich he kept, and the other 

 he sent to duke Sigismund of Austria. The people talked 

 a great deal of this stone, which was suspended in the choir, 

 where it still is, and many came to see it." — Anthenicus 

 in Chronico Hirmug'iensi, in Fit a Blai'ii Ahhniis si., ad An' 

 nam 1492. Edit. M.S. Galli, iQgo, Vol. 11. p.bbl. 



*' The same year (1492), on the 7th day of November, a 

 stone, called 'a thunder-stone, of a prodigious size (for wo 

 have it from eye-witnesses that it weighed 253 pounds), fell 

 from the heavens in the village of Suntgaw, near the town 

 of Ensisheim, not far from Bale, a city oT Germany. Its fall 

 was so violent that it broke into two pieces. The largest \i 

 still to be seen at the door of the church of Ensisheim, sus- 

 pended by an iron chain, as a proof of the truth of the fact 

 which we announce, and to preserve the remembrance of it .'' 

 — Pai/lns L(w<r, in Chronico Cirizense, in Vol. HI. Scriplur, 

 Rer. Genn.Histor. p. 1264. 



" On the 7th of the ides of November, in the year of our 

 Lord 1492, there arose a storm, during which the heavens 

 appeared to be on fire. While the thunder roared, a stone 

 of a prodigious size fell from the heavens, with a horrible, 

 crashj near the town of Ensisheim, on the lands belonging 



to 



