Historical Comets Over Bavaria: The Nuremberg Chronicle and Broadsides

Abstract

Abstract.The first widely distributed printed comet images appear in the Nuremberg Chronicle, whose Latin edition appeared in 1493, followed closely by a German edition. In the first section, we begin our consideration with the comet image that has frequently been cited as a representation of the A.D. 684 apparition of Comet P/Halley. To better understand this image, we present a thorough survey of the 13 comet images that appear in the Chronicle, all reproduced from four woodblocks, representing 14 apparitions between A.D. 471 and A.D. 1472. In the second part, we present an analysis of the unpublished preparatory drawings for the comet images in the handwritten Exemplars (manuscript layout dummies) for both the Latin and German editions in the Stadtbibliothek, Nuremberg. Finally, in the third part, we demonstrate how the Chronicle presaged the proliferation of broadsides--woodcut prints that functioned like tabloids of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We examine broadsides recording historical comets over such Bavarian cities as Nuremberg and Augsburg. In spite of their superstitious, hysterical journalism, fed by turbulent political and religious upheavals, these broadsides reveal a nascent scientific attitude.