Myths and Marvels of Astronomy
Parthians. He is a hairy man, but I am bald.'
Anna Comnena goes even beyond Josephus. He only rebuked other men for
not believing so strongly as he did himself in the significance of
comets--a rebuke little needed, indeed, if we can judge from what
history tells us of the terrors excited by comets. But the judicious
daughter of Alexius was good enough to approve of the wisdom which
provided these portents. Speaking of a remarkable comet which appeared
before the irruption of the Gauls into the Roman empire, she says: 'This
happened by the usual administration of Providence in such cases; for it
is not fit that so great and strange an alteration of things as was
brought to pass by that irruption of theirs should be without some
previous denunciation and admonishment from heaven.'
Socrates, the historian (b. 6, c. 6), says that when Gainas besieged
Constantinople, 'so great was the danger which hung over the city, that
it was presignified and portended by a huge blazing comet which reached
from heaven to the earth, the like whereof no man had ever seen before.'
And Cedrenus, in his 'Compendium of History,' states that a comet
appeared before the death of Johannes Tzimicas, the emperor of the East,
which foreshadowed not alone his death, but the great calamities which
were to befall the Roman empire by reason of their civil wars. In like
manner, the comet of 451 announced the death of Attila, that of 455 the
death of Valentinian. The death of Merovingius was announced by the
comet of 577, of Chilperic by that of 584, of the Emperor Maurice by
that of 602, of Mahomet by that of 632, of Louis the Debonair by that of
837, and of the Emperor Louis II. by that of 875. Nay, so confidently
did men believe that comets indicated the approaching death of great
men, that they did not believe a very great man _could_ die without a
comet. So they inferred that the death of a very great man indicated the
arrival of a comet; and if the comet chanced not to be visible, so much
the worse--not for the theory, but--for the comet. 'A comet of this
kind,' says Pingre, 'was that of the year 814, presaging the death of
Charlemagne.' So Guillemin quotes Pingre; but he should rather have
said, such was the comet whose arrival was announced by Charlemagne's
death--and in no other way, for it was not seen by mortal man.
The reader who chances to be strong as to his dates may have observed
that some of the dates above mentioned for comets do not accord exactly
with the dates of the events associated with those comets. Thus Louis
the Debonair did not die in 837, but in 840. This, however, is a matter
of very little importance. If some men, after their comet has called for
them, are 'an unconscionable time in dying,' as Charles II. said of
himself, it surely must not be considered the fault of the comet. Louis
himself regarded the comet of 837 as his death-warrant; the astrologers
admitted as much: what more could be desired? The account of the matter
given in a chronicle of the time, by a writer who called himself 'The
Astronomer,' is curious enough: 'During the holy season of Easter, a
phenomenon, ever fatal and of gloomy foreboding, appeared in the
heavens. As soon as the emperor, who paid attention to such phenomena,
received the first announcement of it, he gave himself no rest until he
had called a certain learned man and myself before him. As soon as I
arrived, he anxiously asked me what I thought of such a sign. I asked
time of him, in order to consider the aspect of the stars, and to
discover the truth by their means, promising to acquaint him on the
morrow; but the emperor, persuaded that I wished to gain time, which was
true, in order not to be obliged to announce anything fatal to him, said
to me: "Go on the terrace of the palace, and return at once to tell me
what you have seen, for I did not see this star last evening, and you
did not point it out to me; but I know that it is a comet; tell me what
you think it announces to me." Then, scarcely allowing me time to say a
word, he added: "There is still another thing you keep back: it is that
a change of reign and the death of a prince are announced by this sign."
And as I advanced the testimony of the prophet, who said: "Fear not the
signs of the heavens as the nations fear them," the prince, with his
grand nature and the wisdom which never forsook him, said: "We must only
fear Him who has created both us and this star. But, as this phenomenon
may refer to us, let us acknowledge it as a warning from heaven."'
Accordingly, Louis himself and all his court fasted and prayed, and he
built churches and monasteries. But all was of no avail. In little more
than three years he died; showing, as the historian Raoul Glaber
remarked, that 'these phenomena of the universe are never presented to
man without surely announcing some wonderful and terrible event.' With a
range of three years in advance, and so many kings and princes as there
were about in those days, and are still, it would be rather difficult
for a comet to appear without announcing some such wonderful and
terrible event as a royal death.
The year 1000 A.D. was by all but common consent regarded as the date
assigned for the end of the world. For a thousand years Satan had been
chained, and now he was to be loosened for a while. So that when a comet
made its appearance, and, terrible to relate, continued visible for nine
days, the phenomenon was regarded as something more than a nine days'
wonder. Besides the comet, a very wonderful meteor was seen. 'The
heavens opened, and a kind of flaming torch fell upon the earth, leaving
behind a long track of light like the path of a flash of lightning. Its
brightness was so great that it frightened not only those who were in
the fields, but even those who were in their houses. As this opening in
the sky slowly closed men saw with horror the figure of a dragon, whose
feet were blue, and whose head' [like that of Dickens's dwarf] 'seemed
to grow larger and larger.' A picture of this dreadful meteor
accompanies the account given by the old chronicler. For fear the exact
likeness of the dragon might not be recognised (and, indeed, to see it
one must 'make believe a good deal'), there is placed beside it a
picture of a dragon to correspond, which picture is in turn labelled
'Serpens cum ceruleis pedibus.' It was considered very wicked in the
year 1000 to doubt that the end of all things was at hand. But somehow
the world escaped that time.
In the year 1066 Halley's comet appeared to announce to the Saxons the
approaching conquest of England by William the Norman. A contemporary
poet made a singular remark, which may have some profound poetical
meaning, but certainly seems a little indistinct on the surface. He said
that 'the comet had been more favourable to William than nature had been
to Caesar; the latter had no hair, but William had received some from the
comet.' This is the only instance, so far as I know, in which a comet
has been regarded as a perruquier. A monk of Malmesbury spoke more to
the purpose, according to then received ideas, in thus apostrophising
the comet: 'Here art thou again, cause of tears to many mothers! It is
long since I saw thee last, but I see thee now more terrible than ever;
thou threatenest my country with complete ruin.'
Halley's comet, with its inconveniently short period of about
seventy-seven years, has repeatedly troubled the nations and been
regarded as a sign sent from Heaven:
Ten million cubic miles of head,
Ten billion leagues of tail,
all provided for the sole purpose of warning one petty race of
earth-folks against the evils likely to be brought against them by
another. This comet has appeared twenty-four times since the date of its
first recorded appearance, which some consider to have been 12 B.C., and
others refer to a few years later. It may be interesting to quote here
Babinet's description of the effects ascribed in 1455 to this comet,
often the terror of nations, but the triumph of mathematicians, as the
first whose motions were brought into recognisable obedience to the laws
of gravity.[42]
'The Mussulmans, with Mahomet II. at their head, were besieging
Belgrade, which was defended by Huniade, surnamed the Exterminator of
the Turks. Halley's comet appeared and the two armies were seized with
equal fear. Pope Calixtus III., himself seized by the general terror,
ordered public prayers and timidly anathematised the comet and the
enemies of Christianity. He established the prayer called the noon
_Angelus_, the use of which is continued in all Catholic churches. The
Franciscans (_Freres Mineurs_) brought 40,000 defenders to Belgrade,
besieged by the conqueror of Constantinople, the destroyer of the
Eastern Empire. At last the battle began; it continued two days without
ceasing. A contest of two days caused 40,000 combatants to bite the
dust. The Franciscans, unarmed, crucifix in hand, were in the front
rank, invoking the papal exorcism against the comet, and turning upon
the enemy that heavenly wrath of which none in those times dared doubt.'
The great comet of 1556 has been regarded as the occasion of the Emperor
Charles V.'s abdication of the imperial throne; a circumstance which
seems rendered a little doubtful by the fact that he had already
abdicated when the comet appeared--a mere detail, perhaps, but
suggesting the possibility that cause and effect may have been
interchanged by mistake, and that it was Charles's abdication which
occasioned the appearance of the comet. According to Gemma's account the
comet was conspicuous rather from its great light than from the length
of its tail or the strangeness of its appearance. 'Its head equalled
Jupiter in brightness, and was equal in diameter to nearly half the
apparent diameter of the moon.' It appeared about the end of February,
and in March presented a terrible appearance, according to Ripamonte.
'Terrific indeed,' says Sir J. Herschel, 'it might well have been to the
mind of a prince prepared by the most abject superstition to receive
its appearance as a warning of approaching death, and as specially sent,
whether in anger or in mercy, to detach his thoughts from earthly
things, and fix them on his eternal interests. Such was its effect on
the Emperor Charles V., whose abdication is distinctly ascribed by many
historians to this cause, and whose words on the occasion of his first
beholding it have even been recorded--
"His ergo indiciis me mea fata vocant"--
the language and the metrical form of which exclamation afford no ground
for disputing its authenticity, when the habits and education of those
times are fairly considered.' It is quite likely that, having already
abdicated the throne, Charles regarded the comet as signalling his
retirement from power--an event which he doubtless considered a great
deal too important to be left without some celestial record. But the
words attributed to him are in all probability apocryphal.
The comet of 1577 was remarkable for the strangeness of its aspect,
which in some respects resembled that of the comet of 1858, called
Donati's. It required only the terror with which such portentous objects
were witnessed in the Middle Ages to transform the various streamers,
curved and straight, extending from such an object, into swords and
spears, and other signs of war and trouble. Doubtless, we owe to the
fears of the Middle Ages the strange pictures claiming to present the
actual aspect of some of the larger comets. Halley's comet did not
escape. It was compared to a straight sword at one visit, to a curved
scimitar in 1456, and even at its last return in 1835 there were some
who recognised in the comet a resemblance to a misty head. Other comets
have been compared to swords of fire, bloody crosses, flaming daggers,