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History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

A >> Andrew Dickson White >> History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom




[92] For terror caused in Rome by comets, see Pingre,
Cometographie, pp. 165, 166. For the Chaldeans, see Wolf,
Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 10 et seq., and p. 181 et seq.;
also Pingre, chap. ii. For the Pythagorean notions, see
citations from Plutarch in Costard, History of Astronomy, p. 283.
For Seneca's prediction, see Guillemin, World of Comets
(translated by Glaisher), pp. 4, 5; also Watson, On Comets, p.
126. For this feeling in antiquity generally, see the
preliminary chapters of the two works last cited.


The belief that every comet is a ball of fire flung from the
right hand of an angry God to warn the grovelling dwellers of
earth was received into the early Church, transmitted through the
Middle Ages to the Reformation period, and in its transmission
was made all the more precious by supposed textual proofs from
Scripture. The great fathers of the Church committed themselves
unreservedly to it. In the third century Origen, perhaps the
most influential of the earlier fathers of the universal Church
in all questions between science and faith, insisted that comets
indicate catastrophes and the downfall of empires and worlds.
Bede, so justly revered by the English Church, declared in the
eighth 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.
Rabanus Maurus, the great teacher of Europe in the ninth century,
an authority throughout the Middle Ages, adopted 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.
These men and those who followed them founded upon scriptural
texts and theological reasonings a system that for seventeen
centuries defied every advance of thought.[93]

[93] For Origen, se his De Princip., vol. i, p. 7; also Maury,
Leg. pieuses, p. 203, note. For Bede and others, see De Nat.,
vol. xxiv; Joh. Dam., De Fid. Or.,vol. ii, p. 7; Maury, La Magie
et l'Astronomie, pp. 181, 182. For Albertus Magnus, see his
Opera, vol. i, tr. iii, chaps. x, xi. Among the texts of
Scripture on which this belief rested was especially Joel ii, 30,
31.


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
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 Caesar:


"When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."


Galeazzo, the tyrant of Milan, expressing satisfaction on his
deathbed 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.[94]


[94] For Caesar, see Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act ii, sc. 2.
For Galeazzo, see Guillemin, World of Comets, p. 19. For Charles
V, see Prof. Wolf's essay in the Monatschrift des
wissenschaftlichen Vereins, Zurich, 1857, p. 228.


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 especially increased
the distress of all Europe. In the middle of 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.[95]

[95] 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,
vol. iii, pp. 640-644, and William Rufus, vol. ii, p. 118. For
the Bayeau tapestry, see Bruce, Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated, plate
vii and p. 86; also Guillemin, World of Comets, p. 24. There is
a large photographic copy, in the South Kensington Museum at
London, of the original, wrought, as is generally believed, by
the wife of William the Conqueror and her ladies, and is still
preserved in the town museum at Bayeux.


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 a 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, they 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, though a man of more than
ordinary ability, was 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 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, there was then established that midday Angelus which
has ever since called good Catholics to prayer against the powers
of evil. Then, too, was incorporated into a litany the plea,
"From the Turk and the comet, good Lord, deliver us." 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 of Halley, has returned
imperturbably at short periods ever since.[96]

[96] 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 is made on a noted occasion by President Lincoln. No
such bull, however, is to be found in the published Bulleria, and
that establishing the Angelus (as given by Raynaldus in the
Annales Eccl.) contains no mention of the comet. But the
authority of Platina (in his Vitae 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 changed the ideas of the world. The recent
attempt of Pastor (in his Geschichte der Papste) 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.


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

Yet scientific observation 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 accepted
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 Caesar Scaliger denouncing it as "ridiculous
folly."[97]

[97] As to encyclopedic summaries, see Vincent of Beauvais,
Speculum Naturale, and the various editions of Reisch's Margarita
Philosophica. For Charlemagne's time, see Champion, La Fin du
Monde, p. 156; Leopardi, Errori Popolari, p. 165. As to Albert
the Great's question, see Heller, Geschichte der Physik, vol. i,
p. 188. As to scepticism in the sixteenth century, see Champion,
La Fin du Monde, pp. 155, 156; and for Scaliger, Dudith's book,
cited below.


At first this scepticism only aroused the horror of theologians
and increased the vigour 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
mediaeval theology, it outlived the revival of learning. From a
multitude of examples a few may be selected as typical. Early in
the sixteenth century Polydore Virgil, an ecclesiastic of the
unreformed Church, alludes, in his English History, to the
presage of the death of the Emperor Constantine by a comet 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 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.[98]

[98] For Bodin, see Theatr., lib. ii, cited by Pingre, vol. i, p.
45; also a vague citation in Baudrillart, Bodin et son Temps, p.
360. For Polydore Virgil, see English History, p. 97 (in Camden
Society Publications). For Cranmer, see Remains, vol. ii, p. 535
(in Parker Society Publications). For Latimer, see Sermons,
second Sunday in Advent, 1552.


In 1580, under Queen Elizabeth, there was set forth an "order of
prayer to avert God's wrath from us, threatened by the late
terrible earthquake, to be used in all parish churches." In
connection with this there was also commended to the faithful "a
godly admonition for the time present"; and among the things
referred to as evidence of God's wrath are comets, eclipses, and
falls of snow.

This view held sway in the Church of England during Elizabeth's
whole reign and far into the Stuart period: Strype, the
ecclesiastical annalist, gives ample evidence of this, and among
the more curious examples is the surmise that the comet of 1572
was a token of Divine wrath provoked by the St. Bartholomew
massacre.

As to the Stuart period, Archbishop Spottiswoode seems to have
been active in carrying the superstition from the sixteenth
century to the seventeenth, and Archbishop Bramhall cites
Scripture in support of it. Rather curiously, while the diary of
Archbishop Laud shows so much superstition regarding dreams as
portents, it shows little or none regarding comets; but Bishop
Jeremy Taylor, strong as he was, evidently favoured the usual
view. John Howe, the eminent Nonconformist divine in the latter
part of the century, seems to have regarded the comet
superstition as almost a fundamental article of belief; he
laments the total neglect of comets and portents generally,
declaring that this neglect betokens want of reverence for the
Ruler of the world; he expresses contempt for scientific inquiry
regarding comets, insists that they may be natural bodies and yet
supernatural portents, and ends by saying, "I conceive it very
safe to suppose that some very considerable thing, either in the
way of judgment or mercy, may ensue, according as the cry of
persevering wickedness or of penitential prayer is more or less
loud at that time."[99]

[99] For Liturgical Services of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, see
Parker Society Publications, pp. 569, 570. For Strype, see his
Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. iii, part i, p. 472; also see his
Annals of the reformation, vol. ii, part ii, p. 151; and his Life
of Sir Thomas Smith, pp. 161, 162. For Spottiswoode, see History
of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh reprint, 1851), vol. i, pp.
185, 186. For Bramhall, see his Works, Oxford, 1844, vol. iv,
pp. 60, 307, etc. For Jeremy Taylor, see his Sermons on the Life
of Christ. For John Howe, see his Works, London, 1862, vol. iv,
pp. 140, 141.


The Reformed Church of Scotland supported the superstition just
as strongly. John Knox saw in comets tokens of the wrath of
Heaven; other authorities considered them "a warning to the king
to extirpate the Papists"; and as late as 1680, after Halley had
won his victory, comets were announced on high authority in the
Scottish Church to be "prodigies of great judgment on these lands
for our sins, for never was the Lord more provoked by a people."

While such was the view of the clergy during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the laity generally accepted it as a
matter of course, Among the great leaders in literature there was
at least general acquiescence in it. Both Shakespeare and Milton
recognise it, whether they fully accept it or not. Shakespeare
makes the Duke of Bedford, lamenting at the bier of Henry V, say:


"Comets, importing change of time and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky;
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars,
That have consented unto Henry's death."


Milton, speaking of Satan preparing for combat, says:


"On the other side,
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood.
Unterrified, and like a comet burned,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the arctic sky, and from its horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war."


We do indeed find that in some minds the discoveries of Tycho
Brahe and Kepler begin to take effect, for, in 1621, Burton in
his Anatomy of Melancholy alludes to them as changing public
opinion somewhat regarding comets; and, just before the middle
of the century, Sir Thomas Browne expresses a doubt whether
comets produce such terrible effects, "since it is found that
many of them are above the moon."[100] Yet even as late as the
last years of the seventeenth century we have English authors of
much power battling for this supposed scriptural view and among
the natural and typical results we find, in 1682, Ralph Thoresby,
a Fellow of the Royal Society, terrified at the comet of that
year, and writing in his diary the following passage: "Lord, fit
us for whatever changes it may portend; for, though I am not
ignorant that such meteors proceed from natural causes, yet are
they frequently also the presages of imminent calamities."
Interesting is it to note here that this was Halley's comet, and
that Halley was at this very moment making those scientific
studies upon it which were to free the civilized world
forever from such terrors as distressed Thoresby.

[100] For John Knox, see his Histoire of the Reformation of
Religion within the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1732), lib. iv;
also Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. ii, pp 410-412.
For Burton, see his Anatomy of Melancholy, part ii, sect 2. For
Browne, see the Vulgar and Common Errors, book vi, chap. xiv.


The belief in comets as warnings against sin was especially one
of those held "always, everywhere, and by all," and by Eastern
Christians as well as by Western. One of the most striking
scenes in the history of the Eastern Church is that which took
place at the condemnation of Nikon, the great Patriarch of
Moscow. Turning toward his judges, he pointed to a comet then
blazing in the sky, and said, "God's besom shall sweep you all
away!"

Of all countries in western Europe, it was in Germany and German
Switzerland that this superstition took strongest hold. That
same depth of religious feeling which produced in those countries
the most terrible growth of witchcraft persecution, brought
superstition to its highest development regarding comets. No
country suffered more from it in the Middle Ages. At the
Reformation Luther declared strongly in favour of it. In one of
his Advent sermons he said, "The heathen write that the comet may
arise from natural causes, but God creates not one that does not
foretoken a sure calamity." Again he said, "Whatever moves in
the heaven in an unusual way is certainly a sign of God's wrath."

And sometimes, yielding to another phase of his belief, he
declared them works of the devil, and declaimed against them as
"harlot stars."[101]

[101] For Thoresby, see his Diary, (London, 1830). Halley's
great service is described further on in this chapter. For
Nikon's speech, see Dean Stanley's History of the Eastern Church,
p. 485. For very striking examples of this mediaeval terror in
Germany, see Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, vol. vi, p.
538. For the Reformation period, see Wolf, Gesch. d. Astronomie;
also Praetorius, Ueber d. Cometstern (Erfurt, 1589), in which the
above sentences of Luther are printed on the title page as
epigraphs. For "Huren-Sternen," see the sermon of Celichius,
described later.


Melanchthon, too, in various letters refers to comets as heralds
of Heaven's wrath, classing them, with evil conjunctions of the
planets and abortive births, among the "signs" referred to in
Scripture. Zwingli, boldest of the greater Reformers in shaking
off traditional beliefs, could not shake off this, and insisted
that the comet of 1531 betokened calamity. Arietus, a leading
Protestant theologian, declared, "The heavens are given us not
merely for our pleasure, but also as a warning of the wrath of
God for the correction of our lives." Lavater insisted that
comets are signs of death or calamity, and cited proofs from
Scripture.

Catholic and Protestant strove together for the glory of this
doctrine. It was maintained with especial vigour by Fromundus,
the eminent professor and Doctor of Theology at the Catholic
University of Louvain, who so strongly opposed the Copernican
system; at the beginning of the seventeenth century, even so
gifted an astronomer as Kepler yielded somewhat to the belief;
and near the end of that century Voigt declared that the comet of
1618 clearly presaged the downfall of the Turkish Empire, and he
stigmatized as "atheists and Epicureans" all who did not believe
comets to be God's warnings.[102]

[102] For Melanchthon, see Wolf, ubi supra. For Zwingli, see
Wolf, p. 235. For Arietus, see Madler, Geschichte der
Himmelskunde, vol. ii. For Kepler's superstition, see Wolf, p.
281. For Voight, see Himmels-Manaten Reichstage, Hamburg, 1676.
For both Fromundus and Voigt, see also Madler, vol. ii, p. 399,
and Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, p.28.


II. THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS TO CRUSH THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.


Out of this belief was developed a great series of efforts to
maintain the theological view of comets, and to put down forever
the scientific view. These efforts may be divided into two
classes: those directed toward learned men and scholars, through
the universities, and those directed toward the people at large,
through the pulpits. As to the first of these, that learned men
and scholars might be kept in the paths of "sacred science" and
"sound learning," especial pains was taken to keep all knowledge
of the scientific view of comets as far as possible from students
in the universities. Even to the end of the seventeenth century
the oath generally required of professors of astronomy over a
large part of Europe prevented their teaching that comets are
heavenly bodies obedient to law. Efforts just as earnest were
made to fasten into students' minds the theological theory. Two
or three examples out of many may serve as types. First of these
may be named the teaching of Jacob Heerbrand, professor at the
University of Tubingen, who in 1577 illustrated the moral value
of comets by comparing the Almighty sending a comet, to the judge
laying the executioner's sword on the table between himself and
the criminal in a court of justice; and, again, to the father or
schoolmaster displaying the rod before naughty children. A
little later we have another churchman of great importance in
that region, Schickhart, head pastor and superintendent at
Goppingen, preaching and publishing a comet sermon, in which he
denounces those who stare at such warnings of God without heeding
them, and compares them to "calves gaping at a new barn door."
Still later, at the end of the seventeenth century, we find
Conrad Dieterich, director of studies at the University of
Marburg, denouncing all scientific investigation of comets as
impious, and insisting that they are only to be regarded as
"signs and wonders."[103]

[103] For the effect of the anti-Pythagorean oath, see Prowe,
Copernicus; also Madler and Wolf. For Heerbrand, see his Von dem
erschrockenlichen Wunderzeichen, Tubingen, 1577. For Schickart,
see his Predigt vom Wunderzeichen, Stuttgart, 1621. For
Deiterich, see his sermon, described more fully below.


The results of this ecclesiastical pressure upon science in the
universities were painfully shown during generation after
generation, as regards both professors and students; and
examples may be given typical of its effects upon each of these
two classes.

The first of these is the case of Michael Maestlin. He was by
birth a Swabian Protestant, was educated at Tubingen as a pupil
of Apian, and, after a period of travel, was settled as deacon in
the little parish of Backnang, when the comet of 1577 gave him an
occasion to apply his astronomical studies. His minute and
accurate observation of it is to this day one of the wonders of
science. It seems almost impossible that so much could be
accomplished by the naked eye. His observations agreed with
those of Tycho Brahe, and won for Maestlin the professorship of
astronomy in the University of Heidelberg. No man had so clearly
proved the supralunar position of a comet, or shown so
conclusively that its motion was not erratic, but regular. The
young astronomer, though Apian's pupil, was an avowed Copernican
and the destined master and friend of Kepler. Yet, in the
treatise embodying his observations, he felt it necessary to save
his reputation for orthodoxy by calling the comet a "new and
horrible prodigy," and by giving a chapter of "conjectures on the
signification of the present comet," in which he proves from
history that this variety of comet betokens peace, but peace
purchased by a bloody victory. That he really believed in this
theological theory seems impossible; the very fact that his
observations had settled the supralunar character and regular
motion of comets proves this. It was a humiliation only to be
compared to that of Osiander when he wrote his grovelling preface
to the great book of Copernicus. Maestlin had his reward: when,
a few years, later his old teacher, Apian, was driven from his
chair at Tubingen for refusing to sign the Lutheran
Concord-Book, Maestlin was elected to his place.

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