Comet of 1618 Alarms Europe

1618

Three bright comets appeared in 1618, the brightest from November into January. Protestants and Catholics alike read them as omens of the Thirty Years' War just beginning. Kepler wrote a treatise explaining them as sublunary phenomena; the pamphlet-buying public paid more attention to the horoscopes. The comets marked a moment when superstition and science competed openly for European minds.