Kepler's Complete Works, Vol. I (Opera Omnia)

and the Strait of Gibraltar original: Freto Gibraltar exactly at sunrise must have struck the Earth. From there, it swept through the Mediterranean Sea and Switzerland over the Alps, toward Hungary and Turkey, and departed from the Earth again in the Orient.

The three highest planets—Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars—stood in the middle of the heavens, for in that same year there occurred a Great Conjunction A rare alignment of the outer planets, often interpreted by contemporary astronomers as a sign of major historical shifts..

What followed the great solar eclipse in the year 1544.

It is to be noted that at that very time, Emperor Charles V r. 1519–1556; Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain.—King in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and the Indies, Lord of the Netherlands and Burgundy, and of the Duchy of Milan in Lombardy—was waging open war with Henry II, King of France. First to side with the Emperor was his brother Ferdinand Ferdinand I, later Holy Roman Emperor., King of the Romans as well as of Hungary and Bohemia, and Archduke of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola. Afterwards came the Electors High-ranking princes who elected the Holy Roman Emperor. of Mainz, Trier, and the Palatinate; likewise the Bishops of the Empire; the Dukes of Braunschweig, Bavaria, Lorraine, and Savoy; the Margrave of Brandenburg; Maurice, Duke of Saxony; the Margrave of Meissen; and the Duke of Jülich, Cleves, and Berg, who was recently subdued and joined to the Emperor’s faction through marriage. Furthermore, the Emperor held an alliance with the King of England, Henry VIII.

Siding with King Henry in France were the Kingdom of Scotland and the Turkish Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent., whose naval armada had shortly before besieged Nice and was still anchored in a French gulf for the King’s benefit. The Turk also protected the young Voivode John Sigismund Zápolya, Prince of Transylvania. from Transylvania as a king in Hungary, in opposition to Ferdinand.

In Germany, the members of the Schmalkaldic League An alliance of Protestant princes organized for collective defense against the Emperor's religious policies. stood in expectation of a war; these were most of the German princes, including Electoral Saxony and the King of Denmark. The Elector of Cologne also requested protection from them.

Directly in January, when the eclipse appeared, Emperor Charles held a Diet An imperial assembly. at Speyer, requesting imperial aid against the French and the Turks.

In the following spring and summer, the Frenchman first won a battle in Piedmont. Conversely, the King of England conquered the capital city of Edinburgh in the Kingdom of Scotland, then sailed over to France and captured Boulogne. At the same time, the Emperor marched through Lorraine, retook Luxembourg, and seized a good portion of France toward Paris. However, through the negotiation of the Pope, a peace was unexpectedly concluded between the two potentates in September, in which they agreed to root out heresies. For this reason, the Pope also announced the Council of Trent once again, intending to force the German Protestants to obey it. Following this, on this side in the Netherlands, the authorities proceeded with fire against the Lutherans; in France, however, the Waldensians A pre-Reformation Christian movement that faced severe persecution for rejecting Catholic doctrines.—because they would not submit to the Roman Church—were attacked with military force in the following year of '45, and along with women and children were pitiably slaughtered, hunted away, and eradicated, and their cities and small villages were destroyed by fire.

This peace, the Pope’s solicitation, and the sharp proceedings of the potentates against the Reformed have [caused] the Schmalkaldic allies...