istian 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
infallibl