Omniana/Volume 2/Eclipses
210. Eclipses.
It is well known in Valladolid, says a very learned and able catholic historian, that when any knight of the Castilla family is about to die, strokes are heard within a tomb which is in the choir of St. Clara's, as if to announce the decease of some of that illustrious lineage. "I never wondered at this," says the historian, "remembering what Aristotle says,, de nobilioribus majorem curam habet natura: for we see that to distinguish princes and kings from the vulgar, and from ordinary people, God is accustomed to send signs which prognosticate their death, such as comets, earthquakes, eclipses, and the like."
The book in which God is thus represented as a respecter of persons, is licensed by the inquisition, as containing no false doctrine. A pretty world it would be if this doctrine were true! if such an incarnation of the evil principle as Nadir Shah or Buonaparte could not yield up the ghost without the sun's being darkened, and the earth quaking, and the rocks being rent!
The philosophy of eclipses, as affecting Princes, is more fully explained by Miedes.
"Eclipses and defects of the sun and moon, which are seen from time to time in the heavens, do not announce the death of princes, but really cause it, and that by the great impression which they make upon inferior things; as may be understood of the sun, by perceiving how his strength and vigor influence the elements and their compounds, not only occasioning the production and generation thereof, but also their preservation and support. It may therefore well follow, that when the moon interposes and deprives them of the action and virtue of the sun's influence, and of the sustenance which they derive from it, they may sooner decay and die, that virtue failing them which gave them life; and especially those compounds which from their tenderness and delicacy are most subject to the celestial influencies, such as the bodies of kings and princes. Eclipses, therefore, of the sun, occasioned by the interposition of the moon, and of the moon, occasioned by the interposition of the earth, are not so much the tokens of the deaths which are to follow, as they are the causes." He then proceeds to shew that comets are the tokens which are sent to these tender and delicate compounds, and concludes with a compliment to that tender and delicate compound Philip II. Of this sagacious distinction between eclipses and comets he is not a little proud.
This writer was a good historian, but a very strange philosopher. According to him, a storm at sea is the happiest thing that can happen to an expedition. When King Jayme of Aragon embarked for the conquest of Majorca the weather soon became tempestuous, and his people expecting nothing but death, confessed all their most secret sins, "Here," says the old Canon of Valencia, "here may it be seen what sacred and salutary fruits of true religion Christians may gather from the storms and tempests of the sea! For it doth not only by the vomiting which it provokes purge the body of all choler and ill humours, but by the great terror which its fearful yawnings occasion, it roots out from the soul all the evil affections of sin, and with tears and bitter repentance washes with the current of firm and good resolutions all that had till now been defiled. So that every one recovers from his diseases both of body and soul far better at sea than upon shore. It is against all reason therefore to think that a tempest at sea is a sad and unhappy omen for Christian sailors when they begin their voyages and enterprizes; they ought rather to regard it as a fortunate prognostic, since having weathered it, and purged (as we have said) their ills both of body and soul, they remain more acceptable to God, and in sounder health and better plight to go on with their adventure,"
Miedes might have improved sea-sickness still farther, if the grand discoveries of Swedenborg had been known in his time, or if he had remembered the opinions of his own countryman Huarte, who, though as wild and visionary a theorist as the most visionary of his own days, has had the good luck to be cried up as a philosopher in ours, for some imagined resemblance to the ridiculous fancy of Helvetius. . . The great Swedish Ouranographist, whose discoveries were not always confined to heaven, discovered that all diseases were the works of evil spirits, and in particular that the foul spirits who are ripening for Hell, and take delight in putridity, gee into our insides and manufacture for us all the evils which arise from indigestion. A doctrine very reconcileable with Huarte's philosophy.
It is a thing certain, says that author, that there are to be found some dispositions in a man's body which the Devil coveteth with so great eagerness, as to enjoy them he entereth into the man in whom they are found, wherethrough he becometh possessed; but the same being corrected and changed by contrary medicines, and an alteration being wrought in these black, filthy and stinking humours, he naturally comes to depart. This is plain house great, dark, foul, putrified, melancholick, and void of dwellers, the Devils soon take it up for their lodging. But if the same be cleansed, the windows opened, and the sunbeams admitted to enter, by and by they get them packing, and especially if it be inhabited by much company, and that there be meetings and pastimes and playing on musical instruments. The Devil is so slovenly, so melancholick, and so much an enemy to things neat, chearful, and clear, that when Christ entered into the region of Genezaret, St. Matthew recounteth how certain Devils met him in dead carcases which they had caught out of their graves, crying and saying, Jesus, thou son of David, what hast thou to do with us, that thou art come before hand to torment us? we pray thee, that if thou be to drive us out of this place where we are, thou wilt let us enter into that herd of swine which is yonder. For which reason the holy Scripture termeth them unclean Spirits.