Fig. 55.—Representation of a Comet, 16th Century.
The most frightful of the comets of this period, according to Simon Goulart, was that of 1527. "It put some into so great a fright that they died; others fell sick. It was seen by several thousand people, and appeared very long, and of the colour of blood. At the summit was seen the representation of a curved arm, holding a large sword in its hand, as if it would strike; at the top of the point of the sword were three stars, but that which touched the point was more brilliant than the others. On the two sides of the rays of this comet were seen large hatchets, poignards, bloody swords, among which were seen a great number of men decapitated, having their heads and beards horribly bristling."
A view of this comet is given in the History of Prodigies.
There was another comet remarked in 1556, and another in 1577, like the head of an owl, followed by a mantle of scattered light, with pointed ends. Of this comet we read in the same book that recorded the last described: "The comet is an infallible sign of a very evil event. Whenever eclipses of the sun or moon, or comets, or earthquakes, conversions of water into blood, and such like prodigies happen, it has always been known that very soon after these miserable portents afflictions, effusion of human blood, massacres, deaths of great monarchs, kings, princes, and rulers, seditions, treacheries, raids, overthrowings of empires, kingdoms, or villages; hunger and scarcity of provisions, burning and overthrowing of towns; pestilences, widespread mortality, both of beasts and men; in fact all sorts of evils and misfortunes take place. Nor can it be doubted that all these signs and prodigies give warning that the end of the world is come, and with it the terrible last judgment of God."
But even now comets were being observed astronomically, and began to lose their sepulchral aspect.
A remarkable comet, however, which appeared in 1680, was not without its fears for the vulgar. We are told that it was recognised as the same which appeared the year of Cæsar's death, then in 531, and afterwards in 1106, having a period of about 575 years. The terror it produced in the towns was great; timid spirits saw in it the sign of a new deluge, as they said water was always announced by fire. While the fearful were making their wills, and, in anticipation of the end of the world, were leaving their money to the monks, who in accepting them showed themselves better physicists than the testators, people in high station were asking what great person it heralded the death of, and it is reported of the brother of Louis XIV., who apparently was afraid of becoming too suddenly like Cæsar, that he said sharply to the courtiers who were discussing it, "Ah, gentlemen, you may talk at your ease, if you please; you are not princes."
This same comet gave rise to a curious story of an "extraordinary prodigy, how at Rome a hen laid an egg on which was drawn a picture of the comet.
"The fact was attested by his Holiness, by the Queen of Sweden, and all the persons of first quality in Rome. On the 4th December, 1680, a hen laid an egg on which was seen the figure of the comet, accompanied by other marks such as are here represented. The cleverest naturalists in Rome have seen and examined it, and have never seen such a prodigy before."
Of this same comet Bernouilli wrote, "That if the body of the comet is not a visible sign of the anger of God, the tail may be." It was this too that suggested to Whiston the idea that he put forward, not as a superstitious, but as a physical speculation, that a comet approaching the earth was the cause of the deluge.