Science and the Supernatural - Medieval monastic and later observers of the Heavens

The Conversation recently had an article which points to a description by the chroncler Gervase of Canterbury, who was writing in the last two decades of the twelfth century, which is the earliest known account of the phenomenon of Ball Lightning. This occurred in London on June 7th 1195.

The article can be accessed at First English sighting of 'ball lightning': a 12th century monk's chronicle reveals all

There is a longer article about the same incident from Ars Technica at Great balls of fire: A monk named Gervase saw ball lightning way back in 1195 and also a piece from the Evening Standard at Earliest known English report of rare weather phenomenon found in medieval text

The next certain reference to the phenomenon 

of ball lightening in England is at Widecombe in the Moor on October 21st 1638 when parish records report the impact on the church service that afternoon. There are accounts of this spectacular and, for some, fatal, interruption of Evensong from Wikipedia at The Great Thunderstorm, from Devon Heritage at Wideombe - The Great Storm of 1638 and from The Times in 2018 at Ball of fire that terrified a village in 1638

 

The story about the Devil coming to claim the card player sleeping during the church service gives an insight into seventeenth century perceptions of the Evil One but it also strikes me as having similarities to older, medieval stories.  In those, such as in writers like Caesarius of Heisterbach and his contemporaries such events occur but the intercession of Our Lady and other saints may yet deliver the sinner. No such luck in the world of post-reformation England. I wonder if Widecombe, or indeed the diocese of Exeter at the time, was noted for that type of austere Protestantism. The story of the squire of nearby Buckfsstleigh, Richard Cabell, who died in 1677 and with whom are associated stories of the Devil claiming his soul, may suggest a sense, or fear, of the diabolical in the neighbourhood. There is more about Cabell from Wikipedia at Richard Cabell

As you will see it has had a significant literary legacy as a story. There is more about him and his legend at Richard Cabell, Devon's Most Notorious Squire and at Buckfastleigh Church

Both the Widecombe and Buckfastleigh stories do suggest that life in rural Devon in the seventeenth century had a frisson to it, an acceptance of the unnatural, that is intriguing.

All something to reflect upon next time you are in Widecombe or Buckfastleigh having a Devon cream tea and waiting for an escaped pet panther to slink by ….

Leaving that digression aside - interesting as it undoubtedly is - Gervase’s noting of the 1195 incident is, as the Conversation article points out, somewhat laconic. In that he is more relaxed than were the people of Dartmoor almost five centuries later. 

However I am tempted to see his record as part of an English monastic, or indeed wider ecclesiastical, tradition of interest in celestial and related phenomena. This is well introduced by Sir Richard Southern in his elegant biography of Robert Grosseteste.

Gervase himself records a lunar event for the year 1178 about which I posted in 2020 in Monastic moon gazing

Much earlier there was the experiment with human flight made by the intrepid and resourceful monastic Eilmer, known to history as the Flying Monk of Malmesbury, about whom I wrote in 2010 in The Flying Monk

It was the chronicler John of Worcester, a member of the community of the cathedral priory in that city who made the first known drawing of sunspots in 1128:

John of Worcester’s drawing from 1128 of sunspots.

Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 157

Image: Wikipedia 

Mind you scholarly discipline must always be observed in dealing with such reports - not a few books on UFOs cite the detailed account of how the monks of Byland Abbey in Yorkshire saw a ‘Flying Saucer’ pass over the monastery on October 28th 1290. However this story has been shown to have originated as a splendid schoolboy hoax by two Ampleforth College boys in a letter to The Times in 1953, as is set out in The Byland Abbey UFO Sighting: Anatomy of a Hoax and UFOs in History - The "Byland Abbey Sighting" - Think Aboutit - UFOs