Tuesday, September 10, 2013

The Comet Book: Predicting Disaster in the Sixteenth Century

The Kometenbuch is a 16th-century manuscript with stylized watercolor illustrations of comets and meteors, now at the University of Kassel in Germany. Produced in Flanders or northeastern France in 1587, it is one of a whole class of such manuscripts. After all, everybody knew that comets portended dramatic changes in the world. But which changes? Perhaps, the thinking went, an encyclopedia detailing the appearance, duration, and other key characteristics of all the known comets could be cross-referenced with the historical record, telling us what each kind means. Red, sword-shaped comet in the west around sundown? The king will fall! That sort of thing. The one above bears the legend Pertica orientalis und occidentalis, and looks dire to me.

The text of this particular Comet Book has been traced to an anonymous Spanish manuscript that first appeared in 1238, titled Liber de Significatione Cometarum. This Spanish book spawned a library shelf of copies and imitations, including a French manuscript of the 15th century that may have been the direct source for our Flemish painter. The flaming city probably clues us in to what the Aurora comet portends.

 The Miles comet, said to be "the harbinger of upheaval to laws, social norms and hard times for royalty." I suppose the man under the tree expresses the artist's idea of how this comet treats the earth.

Gebea ou Tenaculum, a comet from the reign of Emperor Nero (54 to 68 CE). The comet of 66, if that's what this means, had long been associated in Christian lore with the first great persecutions of Christians. It was actually the one we call Halley's.

 Vertu, dated to the year 69 CE; this marked the fall of Nero and the Year of the Four Emperors.  More at BibliOdyssey.

The vast lore associated with comets and their worldwide association with disaster explains the significance of Edmund Halley's discovery that many of the most famous were repeat visits, every 76 years, by the comet that now bears his name.

No comments: