Even as far back as the ninth century, in the midst of the sacred learning so abundant at the court of Charlemagne and his successors, we find a scholar protesting against the accepted doctrine.

In the thirteenth century we have a mild question by Albert the Great as to the supposed influence of comets upon individuals; but the prevailing theological current was too strong, and he finally yielded to it in this as in so many other things.
So, too, in the sixteenth century, we have Copernicus refusing to accept the usual theory, Paracelsus writing to Zwingli against it, and Julius Caesar Scaliger denouncing it as "ridiculous folly."(97) (97) As to encyclopedic summaries, see Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, and the various editions of Reisch's Margarita Philosophica.
For Charlemagne's time, see Champion, La Fin du Monde, p.

156; Leopardi, Errori Popolari, p.165.As to Albert the Great's question, see Heller, Geschichte der Physik, vol.i, p.188.As to scepticism in the sixteenth century, see Champion, La Fin du Monde, pp.

155, 156; and for Scaliger, Dudith's book, cited below.
At first this scepticism only aroused the horror of theologians and increased the vigour of ecclesiastics; both asserted the theological theory of comets all the more strenuously as based on scriptural truth.
During the sixteenth century France felt the influence of one of her greatest men on the side of this superstition.

Jean Bodin, so far before his time in political theories, was only thoroughly abreast of it in religious theories: the same reverence for the mere letter of Scripture which made him so fatally powerful in supporting the witchcraft delusion, led him to support this theological theory of comets--but with a difference: he thought them the souls of men, wandering in space, bringing famine, pestilence, and war.
Not less strong was the same superstition in England.