e head of the Church solemnly "decreed several days of prayer
for the averting of the wrath of God, that whatever calamity impended
might be turned from the Christians and against the Turks." And, that
all might join daily in this petition, 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 establishing the Angelus (as given by
Raynaldus in the Annales Eccl.) contains no mention of the comet. But
the authority of Platina (in his Vitae Pontificum, 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
attitude. 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 censorship at
Rome.

But the superstition 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 pr