THE L EGEND OF "FLY I N G SAU CERS" thrown into the rivers. . . . In March, 842, multicolored armies were seen marching in the sky.... These sightings of infernal armies were nocturnal. They several times ac companied the seige of Jerusalem. A similar occurence took place in Thann, Alsace, where a chapel was built in 1160 after three lights had been observed over a fir-tree. A luminous cross was seen in 1188 between Gisors and Neaufles-Saint-Martin; a cross carved in stone still marks the spot. We observe here that the appearances of lights or phe nomena interpreted as objects, seen in the sky, were not in general associated with the idea of "visitors" or with the possible arrival of fantastic creatures, but rather with re ligious beliefs, and were treated as manifestations of super natural forces.After the twelfth century, reports became more documented; religious chronicles give more space to local events and a larger quantity of information is recorded by monasteries.On January 1, 1254, at Saint Alban's Abbey, at midnight, in a serene sky and clear atmosphere, with stars shining and the moon eight days old, there suddenly ap peared in the sky a kind of large ship, elegantly shaped, well equipped and of a marvelous color. (Matthew of Paris, Historia Anglorum, quoted in Wilkins [5], with numerous other good reports.) The observation made in 1290 at By land Abbey, Yorkshire, of a large silvery disk flying slowly is a classical one and can be found in a number of books. On November 1, 1461, a strange object shaped like a ship, from which fire was seen flowing, passed over the town of Arras in France (5). Jacques Duclerc, a chronicler, and conn selor to King Philip the Good, writes a detailed acconnt of this sighting in his Memoirs of a Freeman of Arras: "A fiery thing like an iron rod of good length and as large as one half of the moon was seen in the sky for a little less than a quarter of an hour." An incunabulum made in 1493, which belonged to the Saint Airy Library and is now visible in a museum in Ver dun, may contain the earliest example of the representation of UFOs in Europe. The author of the manuscript, the German Humanist Hartmann Schaeden, describes a strange sphere of fire sailing through the sky, following a straight path from south to east, then turning toward the setting sun. An illumination depicts a cigar-shaped form in a blue sky,
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