History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Part 18

Few things in the evolution of astronomy are more suggestive than the struggle between the theological and the scientific doctrine regarding comets--the pa.s.sage from the conception of them as fire-b.a.l.l.s flung by an angry G.o.d for the purpose of scaring a wicked world, to a recognition of them as natural in origin and obedient to law in movement. Hardly anything throws a more vivid light upon the danger of wresting texts of Scripture to preserve ideas which observation and thought have superseded, and upon the folly of arraying ecclesiastical power against scientific discovery.(88)

(88) The present study, after its appearance in the Popular Science Monthly as a "new chapter in the Warfare of Science," was revised and enlarged to nearly its present form, and read before the American Historical a.s.sociation, among whose papers it was published, in 1887, under the t.i.tle of A History of the Doctrine of Comets.

Out of the ancient world had come a ma.s.s of beliefs regarding comets, meteors, and eclipses; all these were held to be signs displayed from heaven for the warning of mankind. Stars and meteors were generally thought to presage happy events, especially the births of G.o.ds, heroes, and great men. So firmly rooted was this idea that we constantly find among the ancient nations traditions of lights in the heavens preceding the birth of persons of note. The sacred books of India show that the births of Crishna and of Buddha were announced by such heavenly lights.(89) The sacred books of China tell of similar appearances at the births of Yu, the founder of the first dynasty, and of the inspired sage, Lao-tse. According to the Jewish legends, a star appeared at the birth of Moses, and was seen by the Magi of Egypt, who informed the king; and when Abraham was born an unusual star appeared in the east.

The Greeks and Romans cherished similar traditions. A heavenly light accompanied the birth of Aesculapius, and the births of various Caesars were heralded in like manner.(90)

(89) For Crishna, see c.o.x, Aryan Mythology, vol. ii, p. 133; the Vishnu Purana (Wilson's translation), book v, chap. iv. As to lights at the birth, or rather at the conception, of Buddha, see Bunsen, Angel Messiah, pp. 22,23; Alabaster, Wheel of the Law (ill.u.s.trations of Buddhism), p. 102; Edwin Arnold, Light of Asia; Bp. Bigandet, Life of Gaudama, the Burmese Buddha, p. 30; Oldenberg, Buddha (English translation), part i, chap. ii.

(90) For Chinese legends regarding stars at the birth of Yu and Lao-tse, see Thornton, History of China, vol. i, p. 137; also Pingre, Cometographie, p. 245. Regarding stars at the birth of Moses and Abraham, see Calmet, Fragments, part viii; Baring-Gould, Legends of Old Testament Characters, chap. xxiv; Farrar, Life of Christ, chap. iii. As to the Magi, see Higgins, Anacalypsis; Hooykaas, Ort, and Kuenen, Bible for Learners, vol. iii. For Greek and Roman traditions, see Bell, Pantheon, s. v. Aesculapius and Atreus; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol.

i, pp. 151, 590; Farrar, Life of Christ (American edition), p. 52; c.o.x, Tales of Ancient Greece, pp. 41, 61, 62; Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. i, p. 322; also Suetonius, Caes., Julius, p.88, Claud., p. 463; Seneca, Nat. Quaest, vol. 1, p. 1; Virgil, Ecl., vol. ix, p. 47; as well as Ovid, Pliny, and others.

The same conception entered into our Christian sacred books. Of all the legends which grew in such luxuriance and beauty about the cradle of Jesus of Nazareth, none appeals more directly to the highest poetic feeling than that given by one of the evangelists, in which a star, rising in the east, conducted the wise men to the manger where the Galilean peasant-child--the Hope of Mankind, the Light of the World--was lying in poverty and helplessness.

Among the Mohammedans we have a curious example of the same tendency toward a kindly interpretation of stars and meteors, in the belief of certain Mohammedan teachers that meteoric showers are caused by good angels hurling missiles to drive evil angels out of the sky.

Eclipses were regarded in a very different light, being supposed to express the distress of Nature at earthly calamities. The Greeks believed that darkness overshadowed the earth at the deaths of Prometheus, Atreus, Hercules, Aesculapius, and Alexander the Great. The Roman legends held that at the death of Romulus there was darkness for six hours. In the history of the Caesars occur portents of all three kinds; for at the death of Julius the earth was shrouded in darkness, the birth of Augustus was heralded by a star, and the downfall of Nero by a comet. So, too, in one of the Christian legends cl.u.s.tering about the crucifixion, darkness overspread the earth from the sixth to the ninth hour. Neither the silence regarding it of the only evangelist who claims to have been present, nor the fact that observers like Seneca and Pliny, who, though they carefully described much less striking occurrences of the same sort and in more remote regions, failed to note any such darkness even in Judea, have availed to shake faith in an account so true to the highest poetic instincts of humanity.

This view of the relations between Nature and man continued among both Jews and Christians. According to Jewish tradition, darkness overspread the earth for three days when the books of the Law were profaned by translation into Greek. Tertullian thought an eclipse an evidence of G.o.d's wrath against unbelievers. Nor has this mode of thinking ceased in modern times. A similar claim was made at the execution of Charles I; and Increase Mather thought an eclipse in Ma.s.sachusetts an evidence of the grief of Nature at the death of President Chauncey, of Harvard College. Archbishop Sandys expected eclipses to be the final tokens of woe at the destruction of the world, and traces of this feeling have come down to our own time.

The quaint story of the Connecticut statesman who, when his a.s.sociates in the General a.s.sembly were alarmed by an eclipse of the sun, and thought it the beginning of the Day of Judgment, quietly ordered in candles, that he might in any case be found doing his duty, marks probably the last noteworthy appearance of the old belief in any civilized nation.(91)

(91) For Hindu theories, see Alabaster, Wheel of the Law, 11. For Greek and Roman legends, See Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. i, pp. 616, 617.; also Suetonius, Caes., Julius, p. 88, Claud., p. 46; Seneca, Quaest. Nat., vol. i, p. 1, vol. vii, p. 17; Pliny, Hist. Nat., vol. ii, p. 25; Tacitus, Ann., vol. xiv, p. 22; Josephus, Antiq., vol. xiv, p. 12; and the authorities above cited. For the tradition of the Jews regarding the darkness of three days, see citation in Renan, Histoire du Peuple Israel, vol. iv, chap. iv. For Tertullian's belief regarding the significance of an eclipse, see the Ad Scapulum, chap. iii, in Migne, Patrolog. Lat., vol. i, p. 701. For the claim regarding Charles I, see a sermon preached before Charles II, cited by Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i, p. 65. Mather thought, too, that it might have something to do with the death of sundry civil functionaries of the colonies; see his Discourse concerning comets, 1682. For Archbishop Sandy's belief, see his eighteenth sermon (in Parker Soc. Publications).

The story of Abraham Davenport has been made familiar by the poem of Whittier.

In these beliefs regarding meteors and eclipses there was little calculated to do harm by arousing that superst.i.tious terror which is the worst breeding-bed of cruelty. Far otherwise was it with the belief regarding comets. During many centuries it gave rise to the direst superst.i.tion and fanaticism. The Chaldeans alone among the ancient peoples generally regarded comets without fear, and thought them bodies wandering as harmless as fishes in the sea; the Pythagoreans alone among philosophers seem to have had a vague idea of them as bodies returning at fixed periods of time; and in all antiquity, so far as is known, one man alone, Seneca, had the scientific instinct and prophetic inspiration to give this idea definite shape, and to declare that the time would come when comets would be found to move in accordance with natural law.

Here and there a few strong men rose above the prevailing superst.i.tion.

The Emperor Vespasian tried to laugh it down, and insisted that a certain comet in his time could not betoken his death, because it was hairy, and he bald; but such scoffing produced little permanent effect, and the prophecy of Seneca was soon forgotten. These and similar isolated utterances could not stand against the ma.s.s of opinion which upheld the doctrine that comets are "signs and wonders."(92)

(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 G.o.d 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. Raba.n.u.s 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 statesmans.h.i.+p, 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 G.o.d's wrath, and planning to wreak this supposed wrath of G.o.d 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; pa.s.sive obedience was thus strengthened, and the most monstrous a.s.sumptions 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., pa.s.sim, 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 statesmans.h.i.+p or generals.h.i.+p 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 superst.i.tion. 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 G.o.d, that whatever calamity impended might be turned from the Christians and against the Turks." And, that all might join daily in this pet.i.tion, 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 establis.h.i.+ng the Angelus (as given by Raynaldus in the Annales Eccl.) contains no mention of the comet. But the authority of Platina (in his Vitae Pontific.u.m, 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 att.i.tude. 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 censors.h.i.+p at Rome.

But the superst.i.tion 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 h.e.l.ler, 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 a.s.serted 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 superst.i.tion. 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 s.p.a.ce, bringing famine, pestilence, and war.

Not less strong was the same superst.i.tion in England. Based upon mediaeval theology, it outlived the revival of learning. From a mult.i.tude 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 superst.i.tion 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, G.o.d 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)