ASTRONOMICAL SUPERSTITIONS 477 



other celestial signs combined. Those who did not recognize them as 

 warnings from God were stigmatized as atheists and Epicureans. John 

 Knox believed them to be tokens of the wrath of heaven, others saw in 

 them warnings to the king to extirpate the Papists. Luther declared 

 them to be the work of the devil and called them harlot stars. Milton 

 says that the comet " from its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war/' 

 Whole nations from the king down to the lowest peasant were fre- 

 quently plunged into the direst alarm by the appearance of these mes- 

 sengers of misery. The comet that appeared the year after the assassi- 

 nation of Caesar was supposed to be his metamorphosed soul armed with 

 fire and vengeance. It is said that the comet of 1556 had a powerful 

 influence in causing the Emperor Charles V. to abdicate and retire to 

 the monastery of San Yuste. Queen Elizabeth, in 1580, issued an 

 order of prayers to avert God's wrath, and referred to comets, eclipses 

 and heavy falls of snow as evidences of His great displeasure. The 

 periodic comet known as H alley's probably caused more consternation 

 than any other within historic times. One of its early appearances was 

 the year of the Norman Conquest and it was supposed to presage the 

 defeat of the Saxons and the death of Harold. At the South Kensing- 

 ton Museum is a copy of the Bayeux Tapestry on which may be seen 

 the comet of 1066. Its return in 1456 spread a wider terror than was 

 ever known before. The belief was general that the judgment day was 

 at hand. People gave up all hope and prepared for their doom. Again 

 in 1607 it alarmed the world by its appearance and the churches filled 

 with terror-stricken multitudes. Kepler, who was then imperial as- 

 tronomer at Prague, quietly traced its course and discovered that it 

 was outside of the moon's orbit. Tycho had made the same observation 

 respecting a bright comet that appeared thirty years earlier. The an- 

 nouncement of Kepler's discovery caused a great outcry because it at- 

 tacked the very foundations of the cometary superstitions. It also 

 assailed the dogma of the crystalline spheres, because the motion of a 

 super lunar comet would send it crashing through the spheres. It was 

 hard for superstitious man to give up the " signs of the heavens " 

 that had so long misguided him. As late as the latter part of the 

 seventeenth century a book was published by Father De Angelis, of the 

 Clementine College, Pome, in defense of the old cometary faith. He 

 claimed that comets originate in our atmosphere below the moon. 

 Everything heavenly is eternal. "We see the beginning and ending of 

 comets, hence they are not heavenly bodies. They are emanations of 

 dry, fatty matter from the air and may be ignited by sparks from 

 heaven or by lightning. Every one knows that they cause war, pesti- 

 lence and famine. He had observed a comet at Naples which was so 

 close that its tail almost touched Vesuvius, and it would have destroyed 

 Naples but for the blood of the martyr Januarius. 



People were so wedded to ancient errors that it required one hun- 

 dred years of telescopic work to bring the Copernican system out of 



