Consideratio & observatio cometae aetherei astronomica qui anno MDLXXX mensibus octobri, novembri et decembri in alto aethere apparvit

IX.
the north, leaving the lower part near the horizon serene. After an hour had elapsed, they coalesced into a single ignited globe, or one drenched in spilled blood. Around the 11th hour, a ray like a completely bloody sword passed through the north through the conglomeration, horrendous to behold. Those who saw the entire apparition of this Chasma gaping chasm/cleft in the sky, the concert of the clouds, the rolling motion, and the hostile fight, recount wondrous and ineffable things; but because I only witnessed its end, I do not wish to recount more. For since I was weary, partly from travel and partly from the occupations of that day, which was the feast of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, and these things did not begin immediately at the onset of the night, I suspected nothing of them; and especially because my dwelling, which looked toward the south, I saw nothing, until finally, at the 11th hour of the night, the town watchmen roused me.

What this dire, frequent appearance of portents signifies (for no pious and sane person would assert that the connections and forms of future events—would that they were not of the saddest calamities—are not shown and depicted to us as if in a mirror by divine agency, since God has never toyed with prodigies of this kind without causing huge and memorable events to follow) it is not the duty of a Christian man to define in detail; let us, therefore, leave it to the providence of God. Let us, however, ask with pious prayers that He might turn against the enemies of His Church what He has decided to do—the weapons He has sharpened, the deadly arrows He has placed upon the bow, the sword He has unsheathed, which first shone with a gleaming luster but was later sprinkled with much blood and burned with fire—and that He might spare His miserable little flock and small fold, and not subject them to the same punishment as the company of the wicked. That His intolerable, kindled wrath is being inflamed more and more is clear from these sad, white, and ignited prodigies.

They were carrying former chasms, spears, and swords reaching toward the poles, as if toward a target.