Wonders in the Sky
Page 10
Luminous phenomena attend a double-armed cross apparently brought down by an entity assumed to be an angel. The religious context surrounding the observation has enabled it to survive as a legend, told by multiple authors. Traditionally, the most authoritative of them is considered to be the 13th century Franciscan Juan Gil (Egidio) de Zamora. He relates that the cross was brought inside the church by two angels. The current whereabouts of the artifact are equally uncertain. The cross that can be seen today in the sanctuary in Caravaca is a copy, the original having been stolen in 1934, probably by a cult.
Source: Clara Tahoces, “Caravaca, ¡Qué Cruz!” Más Allá 127 (September 1999).
110.
2 October 1235, Japan: circling lights in the sky
About 8 P.M., by clear sky, a fortune teller named Suketoshi Abe, consultant to Shogun (Warlord) Yoritsune Fujiwara, reported to his palace that mysterious sources of light had been seen swinging and circling in the southwest. These lights moved in loops until the early hours of the morning. Yoritsune ordered an investigation and his astrology consultants, who were skilled in astronomy, conducted the study: “It is only the wind making the stars sway,” they reported after hearing the statements of Suketoshi Abe.
With arrogance worthy of our modern academic experts, they even suggested that he should write a letter of apology. A high government official, Yasutoki Houjo, denied their request.
Source: This case is mentioned in the Japanese magazine Brothers (No. I) and by one of us (Vallee) in Anatomy of a Phenomenon (1965) with an incorrect date. The original source is the book Azumakagami, edited in 1605 (see Shinjinbutuouraisha, vol. 4, 1977). Azumakagami means “Mirror of the East.” It was a chronicle covering the period 1180 to 1266, and was compiled after 1266 under the directive of the Hojo regent. It is usually written in two words: Azuma Agami.
111.
1237, El Puig, Valencia: A fleet of seven lights
According to one record, seven mysterious lights in the night sky were seen on four Saturdays in a row. They appeared to be falling from the sky and entering the earth at a particular spot. Quoting from Tirso de Molina’s Historia de la Orden de la Merced, the chronicle in which the story was originally written:
“The sentries and custodians of the castle [at El Puig] observed that every Saturday, at midnight, a fleet of luminous stars, seven in number, consecutively descended upon the summit nearest the said fortress, in the same place where our monastery now lies.” When the guards informed their masters, Pedro Nolasco (1189-1256) and the mayor, supposing that the phenomenon was trying to announce something important, went up to the site together and carefully excavated the spot.
Whether by some amazing coincidence or divine providence it did not take too long to find a hidden treasure: a bell, and below that a sculpted image of the Virgin Mary. Nolasco thanked the angels for the wondrous gifts and a little time afterwards constructed an altar at the spot.
Source: Tirso De Molina, Historia de la Orden de la Merced (1637). Today the monastery has a website: www.monasteriodelpuig.es.tl.
112.
24 July 1239, France
A great light, ascending
“On July 24, 1239, at dusk, but not when the stars came out, while the air was clear, serene and shining, a great star appeared. It was like a torch, rising from the south, and flying on both sides of it, there was emitted in the height of the sky a very great light. It turned quickly towards the north in the aerie region, not quickly, nor, indeed, with speed, but exactly as if it wished to ascend to a place high in the air.”
This sequence of motion is not typical of a natural phenomenon, and it certainly was not a “star.”
Source: Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora (London: Longman, 1880), vol. 3, 566.
113.
1252, Padua, Italy: Flying light, seen for an hour
This event is described in the Cronaca di Rolandino da Padova, where a witness reports:
“A certain great star, like a comet, but it was not a comet because it did not have a tail and it was a portentous thing because it looked almost as large as the moon, and it moved faster than the moon, but as fast as falling stars, and indeed it was not the moon. It was observable for an hour and then it vanished.”
This object, as described, was not a comet or a meteor.
Source: U. Dall’Olmo, “Meteors, meteor showers and meteorites in the Middle Ages: From European medieval sources,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 9 (1978).
114.
14 October 1253, England: A battle of stars
Nicholas of Findern reported to Burton Abbey that “About the hour of vespers, the sky being clear, suddenly a large bright star appeared out of a black cloud with two smaller stars in the vicinity. A battle royal soon commenced, the small stars charging the great star again and again, so that it began to diminish in size, and sparks of fire fell from the combatants. This continued for a considerable time, and at last, the spectators, stupefied, by fear and wonder, and ignorant of what it might portend, fled.”
Source: Annales de Burton, in H. R. Luard, ed., Annales Monastici vol 1 (London: HMSO, 1864).
115.
12 September 1271, Japan
Saved from execution by a flying sphere!
At midnight one of Japan’s greatest saints, Nichiren Shonin (1222-1282), was being escorted to the beach to be executed. Just before the fatal moment, a brilliant sphere as large as the moon flew over, illuminating the landscape. The authorities were so frightened by the apparition that they changed their minds about putting Shonin to death. Instead, they exiled him to Sado Island, though this did not prevent his teachings from spreading. A branch of his teachings, the Sokka-Gakkei, has millions of adherents throughout the world today.
Source: Rev. Ryuei Michael McCormick, Lotus Seeds: The Essence of Nichiren Shu Buddhis (Nichiren Buddhist Temple of San Jose, 2000).
116.
1273, Naples, Italy
A light enters the bedroom of a sick man
The biography of St. Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225 to 7 March 1274) states that on the year before his death he returned to Naples, staying in that city for a few weeks during an illness. While he was there two monks saw a light described as a big star coming through the window. It rested for a moment on the head of the sick man and disappeared again, just as it came.
The link with ufology here is very much open to debate, yet abduction researchers have been looking into stories of this kind with increasing interest.
Source: Antonio Borrelli, “San Tommaso d’Aquino Sacerdote e dottore della Chiesa,” citing the Life of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/22550.
117.
3 June 1277, China, location unknown
Strange event seen at dawn
An unknown object was immortalized in a poem by Liou Ying, a Chinese poet of the Yuan Dynasty. The title of the poem, which can be found in chapter three of The Yuan Literature Collection, was simply “Event Seen at Dawn.”
“I rise at dawn and, through the window, I see a very bright star that crosses the Milky Way. Now I see three luminous objects appear in the southern sky, of which two fly away and disappear suddenly from my sight. The one which remains possesses five unequalled lights beneath it, and above its upper part I see something in the form of a dome. The unknown object begins to move in a zigzag, like a dead leaf. At the same time, some fiery thing falls from the sky. A short time afterwards, the sun rises but its brightness is dulled by the luminous object that moves quickly in a northerly direction. In the western sky, a green cloud is suddenly disturbed by another unknown object, oval in shape, flat, that descends quickly. This object is more than three metres long, and is surrounded by flames. It rises again shortly after its descent.
“In view of this splendid and amazing spectacle, I rush to the village to alert the inhabitants. When my friends come out of their houses, the flying machine has disappeared. After the event, I reflect on it very much but do not find a reasonable explanati
on. I have the impression I have come out of a long dream. I hasten to write down all that I have seen at the time so that whoever understands these events can give me an explanation.”
Source: Shi Bo, La Chine et les Extraterrestres, op.cit., 37.
118.
Circa 1284, Parma, Saint Ruffino, Italy
A duel of stars
On 6 August 1284 the naval battle of the Meloria, between the forces of Genoa and Pisa, took place. It is said in the Chronicon Parmesan, of the Franciscan monk Salimbene de Adam (1221-1287):
“It should be known that this battle and massacre between the Genovesi and Pisani had already been foretold and announced long before it happened. In the town of Saint Ruffino, in the diocese of Parma, some women peeled [washed?] the linen at night: and they saw two great stars meeting in the sky. They drew away from each other and still collided again, and chased one another, and more than once…”
Source: Giuseppe Scalia, ed., Cronica Fratris Salimbene de Adam ordinis minorum (Laterza, 1966).
119.
3 August 1294, Japan, exact location unknown
Red shining object
During a parade, a red shining object appeared, coming from the direction of a shrine. It resembled the Moon, and flew north.
Source: Morihiro Saito, Nihon-Tenmonshiriyou. Chapter 7, “Meteor, the Messenger from Space.”
120.
May 1295, I Hing, China
Two flying Dragons fall into a Lake
A strange phenomenon was witnessed in the fifth month of the year yih-wei, which corresponds with 1295:
“In a short time a heavy wind came riding on the water, reaching a height of more than a chang (ten ch’ih or feet). Then there fell from the sky more than ten fire balls, having the size of houses of ten divisions. The two dragons immediately ascended (to the sky), for Heaven, afraid that they might cause calamity, sent out sacred fire to drive them away.”
The 14th-century chronicler of this incident, Cheu Mih, adds that he had personally observed the results of another ‘dragonfall.’ Seeing the scorched paddy fields of the Peach garden of The Ts’ing, he interviewed one of the villagers. “Yesterday noon a big dragon fell from the sky,” he was told. “Immediately he was burned by terrestrial fire and flew away. For what the dragons fear is fire.”
Source: M. W. De Visser, The Dragon in China and Japan (Amsterdam: Johannes Müller, 1913), 48-49.
121.
8 September 1296, Loreto, Italy
Globes of light, and an elliptical object
Before dawn, mysterious globes of light appeared repeatedly in the sky of Loreto, falling, stopping and disappearing suddenly. The phenomenon was witnessed by a hermit, Paul Selva, who wrote a famous letter to Charles II dated June 1297. The phenomenon appeared as a body of elliptical shape. A writer named Mantovano who obtained the information from a record dating back to 1300, notes: “He saw a light in the shape of a very bright comet measuring twelve feet in length and six in width, coming down from heaven in the direction of the church and after it approached, vanished at the site.” The object, obviously, was not a comet.
Sources: G. Garrat, Loreto, nuova Nazaret (Recanati, 1894); O. Torsellini, Laurentana istoria, trans. B. Quatrini (Bologna, 1894).
122.
24 December 1299, Tier (Trèves), Germany
Globes of light, and an elliptical object
The Chronicle of the Archbishops of Trier, the Gesta Trevirensium Archiepiscoporum, makes an interesting reference to an object in the sky. The term they employed, cometa, could actually refer to virtually any luminous body in the sky, not necessarily to a comet as we define it today. In fact, this particular “comet” behaved very strangely.
It was just after midnight. The sky was unusually misty and a foggy frost covered the land.
“Inside the darkness itself, a comet the size of the moon appeared as if hanging in the air, tinted by an ardent redness and which disappeared after an hour. And again, in-between a small interval, two comets appeared simultaneously a short distance from one another, exhibiting the same size and color as earlier; but they disappeared immediately. A third time, after a short hour, [another] one appeared, in all respects visible in the size and color of its predecessors, and which also vanished immediately.”
Source: Gesta Trevirensium Archiepiscoporum, in E. Martene and U. Durand, Veterum Scriptorum et Monumentorum…amplissima collection, vol. IV (Paris, 1729, Col. 370).
123.
1320, Durham, Saint Leonard, England
Luminous phenomenon over a the burial site
Upon the death of the Abbott of Saint Gregory monastery, an unknown object (“a great light”) lit up the sky over his burial site in Saint Leonard. Later it came lower, moved away and disappeared. The symbolic meaning of this event leaves its connection with ufology open to debate.
Source: Robert de Graytanes, Historia Dunelmensis. As published in Historiae Dunelmensis Scriptores tres (London-Edinburgh: Publications of the Surtees Society, 1839).
124.
4 November 1322, Uxbridge, England
A pillar with a red flame
“In the first hour of the night there was seen in the sky over Uxbridge a pillar of fire the size of a small boat, pallid, and livid in color. It rose from the south, crossed the sky with a slow and grave motion, and went north. Out of the front of the pillar, a fervent red flame burst forth with great beams of light. Its speed increased, and it flew thro’ the air…Many beholders saw it in collision, and there came blows as of a fearful combat, and sounds of crashes were heard at a distance.” We note that an object moving with a “slow and grave motion” could have been neither a comet nor a meteor.
Source: Flores Historiarum attributed to Robert of Reading, Rerum Brittannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 95, v. 3: 210-211.
125.
About 1347, Florence, Italy: Low-flying cigar-shaped
objects at the time of the Black Plague
Writer Gianfranco degli Esposti mentions that “reports relating to the period of the famous Black Plague, between 1347 and the 1350, speak of strange cigar-shaped objects slowly crossing the sky, sometimes at low altitude, dispersing in their passage a disturbing mist.”
He attributes the Black Plague to these objects because “immediately after the appearance of these shocking events, the epidemic exploded in that area.”
In Florence a huge mass of vapors appeared in the sky, coming from the north. It spread throughout the land. In the East in the same year, many animals fell from the sky. Their decomposing animal carcasses were said to make the air fetid and to cause the spread of the infamous illness that was fatal in India, Asia, and Britain. In Florence alone it killed 60,000 people.
Source: Gianfranco Degli Esposti, “Travi di fuoco e segni divini: paura nei cieli del Medioevo” (www.edicolaweb.net/ufost16r.htm); Lycosthenes, Prodigiorum ac ostentorum Chronicon (Basel, 1557).
126.
20 July 1349, Japan, exact location unknown
Two shining objects clash
Two shining objects appeared from the southeast and northwest. They had a terrible clash as they appeared to maneuver acrobatically, emitting flashes.
Source: Morihiro Saito, Nihon-Tenmonshiriyou. Chapter 8, “The Messenger from Space.”
127.
5 Feb. 1355, Suzhou (Pingjiang) Jiangsu prov., China
Enigma
Big noise in the sky, vision of a large black cloud with flames and lights, loaded with troops. Physical destruction.
Source: Shi Bo, La Chine et les Extraterrestres, op.cit., 30, citing writer Tao Zhongyi.
128.
Summer 1360, England and France
Armies and towers in the sky
“And in the summertime of this year in flat and deserted places in England and France, and often visible to many, there suddenly appeared two towers, from which two armies went out, one of which was crowned with a warlike sign, and the other was clothed in black. And a second time the warriors overcame the blacks, and ret
urned to their tower, and the whole vanished.”
Source: The Chronicon Angliae, covering 1328 to 1388, is attributed to Thomas Walsingham (d. 1422). C. E. Britton, Meteorological Chronology to A.D. 1450 (London: H.M.S.O., 1937), 144.
129.
1361, Yamaguti prefecture, Western Japan
Drum-like object emerges from the sea
A drum-shaped object, six meters in diameter, is said to have emerged from the sea. It flew overhead, going west. We have not traced an exact reference to this case but its abundant use in databases and on websites has influenced our decision to include it here.
130.
Circa February 1382, Paris, France
Roaming, flashing globe
Before the Maillets uprising, a fiery flashing globe was seen for a period of eight days, “roaming from door to door above the city of Paris, without there being any wind agitation nor lightning or noise of thunder, and on the contrary, the weather never ceased to be serene.”
Source: Chronique du Religieux Saint Denys contenant le règne de Charles VI de 1380 à 1422. Tome II (Paris, 1840).
131.
1384, Caravaca, Spain
Two lights watch over holy relics
Strange aerial lights were frequently associated with miracles in Medieval Spain. In 1384, while the Caravaca cross (see case 109 above) was being transported from the village of Caravaca in Murcia to the village of Lorca y Totan, two lights in the sky accompanied the cross-bearers throughout the journey. They did not disappear until the object was in place. There are several stories about the Caravaca cross, which had more than its fair share of magical adventures. There are legends about how it ‘teleported’ from one place to another and how it attracted luminous phenomena on more than one occasion.
Source: Clara Tahoces, “Caravaca, ¡Qué Cruz!” Más Allá 127 (September 1999).
132.
15 July 1385, London and Dover, England