estilence." (2) "Comets can indirectly, in view of their material,
betoken wars, tumults, and the death of princes; for, being hot and
dry, they bring the moistnesses (Feuchtigkeiten) in the human body to
an extraordinary heat and dryness, increasing the gall; and, since the
emotions depend on the temperament and condition of the body, men are
through this change driven to violent deeds, quarrels, disputes, and
finally to arms: especially is this the result with princes, who
are more delicate and also more arrogant than other men, and whose
moistnesses are more liable to inflammation of this sort, inasmuch as
they live in luxury and seldom restrain themselves from those things
which in such a dry state of the heavens are especially injurious." (3)
"All comets, whatever prophetic significance they may have naturally
in and of themselves, are yet principally, according to the Divine
pleasure, heralds of the death of great princes, of war, and of other
such great calamities; and this is known and proved, first of all, from
the words of Christ himself: 'Nation shall rise against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers
places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs
shall there be from heaven.'"(108)

(108) See Reinzer, Meteorologica Philosophico-Politica (edition of
Augsburg, 1712), pp. 101-103.

While such pains was taken to keep the more highly educated classes
in the "paths of scriptural science and sound learning;" at the
universities, equal efforts were made to preserve the cometary orthodoxy
of the people at large by means of the pulpits. Out of the mass of
sermons for this purpose which were widely circulated I will select just
two as typical, and they are worthy of careful study as showing some
special dangers of applying theological methods to scientific facts.
In the second half of the sixteenth century the recognised capital of
orthodox Lutheranism was Magdeburg, and in the region tributary to this
metropolis no Church official held a more prominent station than the
"Superintendent," or Lutheran bishop, of the neighbouring Altmark. It
was this dignitary, Andreas Celichius by name, who at Magdeburg, in
1578, gave to the press his Theological Reminder of the New Comet.
After deprecating as blasphemous the attempt of Aristotle to explain the
phenomenon otherwise than as a supernatural warning from God to sinful
man, he assures his hearers that