Depiction of a celestial apparition with rain of blood and a heraldic eagle missing part of its lower body. The report of a celestial apparition near Nuremberg on August 11, 1550 gives rise to a political prognosis as to how the Protestants could defend themselves against the political and military pressure exerted by the Emperor Charles V.

Featured on PDR in the collection Signs and Wonders: Celestial Phenomena in 16th-Century Germany

The villagers of Strasbourg may have heard about a war in heaven while reading the Book of Revelation; in 1554, they witnessed one with their own eyes. As a broadsheet published in June of that year records, a bloody, fiery ray bisected the sun, followed by a clash between cavalry — each side bearing guidons. War raged for hours, and then, as suddenly as they appeared, the combatants trotted off into the clouds. Seven years later, this time in Nuremberg, the Bavarian horizon was blotted out by an extraterrestrial skirmish between unidentified orbs. “The globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour”, wrote the broadsheet’s author. Some of these vehicles crashed down beyond the city limits,…