Part 20 (1/2)
(107) See De Angelis, Lectiones Meteorologicae, Rome, 1669.
Equally striking is an example seen a little later in another part of Europe; and it is the more noteworthy because Halley and Newton had already fully established the modern scientific theory. Just at the close of the seventeenth century the Jesuit Reinzer, professor at Linz, put forth his Meteorologia Philosophico-Politica, in which all natural phenomena received both a physical and a moral interpretation. It was profusely and elaborately ill.u.s.trated, and on account of its instructive contents was in 1712 translated into German for the unlearned reader.
The comet receives, of course, great attention. ”It appears,” says Reinzer, ”only then in the heavens when the latter punish the earth, and through it (the comet) not only predict but bring to pa.s.s all sorts of calamity.... And, to that end, its tail serves for a rod, its hair for weapons and arrows, its light for a threat, and its heat for a sign of anger and vengeance.” Its warnings are threefold: (1) ”Comets, generated in the air, betoken NATURALLY drought, wind, earthquake, famine, and pestilence.” (2) ”Comets can indirectly, in view of their material, betoken wars, tumults, and the death of princes; for, being hot and dry, they bring the moistnesses (Feuchtigkeiten) in the human body to an extraordinary heat and dryness, increasing the gall; and, since the emotions depend on the temperament and condition of the body, men are through this change driven to violent deeds, quarrels, disputes, and finally to arms: especially is this the result with princes, who are more delicate and also more arrogant than other men, and whose moistnesses are more liable to inflammation of this sort, inasmuch as they live in luxury and seldom restrain themselves from those things which in such a dry state of the heavens are especially injurious.” (3) ”All comets, whatever prophetic significance they may have naturally in and of themselves, are yet princ.i.p.ally, according to the Divine pleasure, heralds of the death of great princes, of war, and of other such great calamities; and this is known and proved, first of all, from the words of Christ himself: 'Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.'”(108)
(108) See Reinzer, Meteorologica Philosophico-Politica (edition of Augsburg, 1712), pp. 101-103.
While such pains was taken to keep the more highly educated cla.s.ses in the ”paths of scriptural science and sound learning;” at the universities, equal efforts were made to preserve the cometary orthodoxy of the people at large by means of the pulpits. Out of the ma.s.s of sermons for this purpose which were widely circulated I will select just two as typical, and they are worthy of careful study as showing some special dangers of applying theological methods to scientific facts.
In the second half of the sixteenth century the recognised capital of orthodox Lutheranism was Magdeburg, and in the region tributary to this metropolis no Church official held a more prominent station than the ”Superintendent,” or Lutheran bishop, of the neighbouring Altmark. It was this dignitary, Andreas Celichius by name, who at Magdeburg, in 1578, gave to the press his Theological Reminder of the New Comet.
After deprecating as blasphemous the attempt of Aristotle to explain the phenomenon otherwise than as a supernatural warning from G.o.d to sinful man, he a.s.sures his hearers that ”whoever would know the comet's real source and nature must not merely gape and stare at the scientific theory that it is an earthy, greasy, tough, and sticky vapour and mist, rising into the upper air and set ablaze by the celestial heat.” Far more important for them is it to know what this vapour is. It is really, in the opinion of Celichius, nothing more or less than ”the thick smoke of human sins, rising every day, every hour, every moment, full of stench and horror, before the face of G.o.d, and becoming gradually so thick as to form a comet, with curled and plaited tresses, which at last is kindled by the hot and fiery anger of the Supreme Heavenly Judge.”
He adds that it is probably only through the prayers and tears of Christ that this blazing monument of human depravity becomes visible to mortals. In support of this theory, he urges the ”coming up before G.o.d”
of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah and of Nineveh, and especially the words of the prophet regarding Babylon, ”Her stench and rottenness is come up before me.” That the anger of G.o.d can produce the conflagration without any intervention of Nature is proved from the Psalms, ”He sendeth out his word and melteth them.” From the position of the comet, its course, and the direction of its tail he augurs especially the near approach of the judgment day, though it may also betoken, as usual, famine, pestilence, and war. ”Yet even in these days,” he mourns, ”there are people reckless and giddy enough to pay no heed to such celestial warnings, and these even cite in their own defence the injunction of Jeremiah not to fear signs in the heavens.”
This idea he explodes, and shows that good and orthodox Christians, while not superst.i.tious like the heathen, know well ”that G.o.d is not bound to his creation and the ordinary course of Nature, but must often, especially in these last dregs of the world, resort to irregular means to display his anger at human guilt.”(109)
(109) For Celichius, or Celich, see his own treatise, as above.
The other typical case occurred in the following century and in another part of Germany. Conrad Dieterich was, during the first half of the seventeenth century, a Lutheran ecclesiastic of the highest authority.
His ability as a theologian had made him Archdeacon of Marburg, Professor of Philosophy and Director of Studies at the University of Giessen, and ”Superintendent,” or Lutheran bishop, in southwestern Germany. In the year 1620, on the second Sunday in Advent, in the great Cathedral of Ulm, he developed the orthodox doctrine of comets in a sermon, taking up the questions: 1. What are comets? 2. What do they indicate? 3. What have we to do with their significance? This sermon marks an epoch. Delivered in that stronghold of German Protestantism and by a prelate of the highest standing, it was immediately printed, prefaced by three laudatory poems from different men of note, and sent forth to drive back the scientific, or, as it was called, the ”G.o.dless,”
view of comets. The preface shows that Dieterich was sincerely alarmed by the tendency to regard comets as natural appearances. His text was taken from the twenty-fifth verse of the twenty-first chapter of St.
Luke: ”And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring.” As to what comets are, he cites a mult.i.tude of philosophers, and, finding that they differ among themselves, he uses a form of argument not uncommon from that day to this, declaring that this difference of opinion proves that there is no solution of the problem save in revelation, and insisting that comets are ”signs especially sent by the Almighty to warn the earth.” An additional proof of this he finds in the forms of comets. One, he says, took the form of a trumpet; another, of a spear; another of a goat; another, of a torch; another, of a sword; another, of an arrow; another, of a sabre; still another, of a bare arm. From these forms of comets he infers that we may divine their purpose. As to their creation, he quotes John of Damascus and other early Church authorities in behalf of the idea that each comet is a star newly created at the Divine command, out of nothing, and that it indicates the wrath of G.o.d. As to their purpose, having quoted largely from the Bible and from Luther, he winds up by insisting that, as G.o.d can make nothing in vain, comets must have some distinct object; then, from Isaiah and Joel among the prophets, from Matthew, Mark, and Luke among the evangelists, from Origen and John Chrysostom among the fathers, from Luther and Melanchthon among the Reformers, he draws various texts more or less conclusive to prove that comets indicate evil and only evil; and he cites Luther's Advent sermon to the effect that, though comets may arise in the course of Nature, they are still signs of evil to mankind. In answer to the theory of sundry naturalists that comets are made up of ”a certain fiery, warm, sulphurous, saltpetery, sticky fog,” he declaims: ”Our sins, our sins: they are the fiery heated vapours, the thick, sticky, sulphurous clouds which rise from the earth toward heaven before G.o.d.” Throughout the sermon Dieterich pours contempt over all men who simply investigate comets as natural objects, calls special attention to a comet then in the heavens resembling a long broom or bundle of rods, and declares that he and his hearers can only consider it rightly ”when we see standing before us our Lord G.o.d in heaven as an angry father with a rod for his children.” In answer to the question what comets signify, he commits himself entirely to the idea that they indicate the wrath of G.o.d, and therefore calamities of every sort. Page after page is filled with the records of evils following comets. Beginning with the creation of the world, he insists that the first comet brought on the deluge of Noah, and cites a ma.s.s of authorities, ranging from Moses and Isaiah to Albert the Great and Melanchthon, in support of the view that comets precede earthquakes, famines, wars, pestilences, and every form of evil. He makes some parade of astronomical knowledge as to the greatness of the sun and moon, but relapses soon into his old line of argument. Imploring his audience not to be led away from the well-established belief of Christendom and the principles of their fathers, he comes back to his old a.s.sertion, insists that ”our sins are the inflammable material of which comets are made,”
and winds up with a most earnest appeal to the Almighty to spare his people.(110)
(110) For Deiterich, see Ulmische Cometen-Predigt, von dem Cometen, so nechst abgewischen 1618 Jahrs im Wintermonat erstenmahls in Schwaben sehen la.s.sen,... gehalten zu Ulm... durch Conrad Dieterich, Ulm, 1620.
For a life of the author, see article Dieterich in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. See also Wolf.
Similar efforts from the pulpit were provoked by the great comet of 1680. Typical among these was the effort in Switzerland of Pastor Heinrich Erni, who, from the Cathedral of Zurich, sent a circular letter to the clergy of that region showing the connection of the eleventh and twelfth verses of the first chapter of Jeremiah with the comet, giving notice that at his suggestion the authorities had proclaimed a solemn fast, and exhorting the clergy to preach earnestly on the subject of this warning.
Nor were the interpreters of the comet's message content with simple prose. At the appearance of the comet of 1618, Gra.s.ser and Gross, pastors and doctors of theology at Basle, put forth a collection of doggerel rhymes to fasten the orthodox theory into the minds of school-children and peasants. One of these may be translated:
”I am a Rod in G.o.d's right hand threatening the German and foreign land.”
Others for a similar purpose taught:
”Eight things there be a Comet brings, When it on high doth horrid range: Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings, War, Earthquakes, Floods, and Direful Change.”
Great ingenuity was shown in meeting the advance of science, in the universities and schools, with new texts of Scripture; and Stephen Spleiss, Rector of the Gymnasium at Schaffhausen, got great credit by teaching that in the vision of Jeremiah the ”almond rod” was a tailed comet, and the ”seething pot” a bearded one.(111)