ON METEORITES, OR CELESTIAL STONES 73
typical
of what must have happened in past times. A case from the fifteenth
century, narrated by Professor Newton, is very interesting, since the
treatises on precious stones of that period and somewhat later contain
many notices of supposed meteorites. We are told that, on November 16,
1492, a stone weighing 300 pounds fell at Ensisheim, in Alsace. Emperor
Maximilian, who was then in Basel, caused the stone to be brought to
the neighboring castle and summoned a state council to determine the
character of the divine message associated with its fall. The council
decided that the event signified some important occurrence in the
approaching conflict between the French and the Turks, and the stone,
with an appropriate inscription, was suspended in the church, the
strictest injunctions being given that it should not be removed. Conrad
Gesner, in his treatise, "De figuris lapidum," 2 states that a fragment of this stone was given to him by a friend and that it resembled ordinary sandstone.
We
are told that nineteen years later a shower of stones fell near Crema,
east of Milan; these stones fell in French territory and at that time
the Pope was engaged in hostilities with the French. During the
following year, the French, who had long threatened the States of the
Church from their possessions in Lombardy, were forced to withdraw from
Italy. In the celebrated painting by Raphael, known as the Madonna di
Foligno, one of the greatest treasures of the Vatican, this Crema
fire-ball is depicted.
Naturally
the recitals from ancient times are not as easily controlled as the
more modern accounts and it is always possible that stones other than
meteorites were given a celestial origin by superstitious zeal. The
black stone of the Kaabah, which is probably noted by early Greek
writers and was an object of adoration for the Arabian tribes be-
'Tiguri, 1565, f. 66.
