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In the winter of 1618, a great comet appeared in the sky above Europe, a phenomenon many contemporaries saw as a divine portent of war, hunger, and plague. At the same time, the meaning of the comet was actually highly contested. This fundamental uncertainty engendered very specific forms of history-writing. This article shows how chronicles and autobiographies surrounding the Thirty Years’ War assembled proof for the future interpretation of celestial signs: their true purpose was to prepare the grounds for the understanding of the comet’s divine message. Given both the supernatural origin of miraculous phenomena and the difficulties in deciphering their meaning, narrating the violence of war provided certainty in a fundamentally uncertain situation. Thus, for contemporaries, the telling of what happened after 1618 also served as a vehicle for coping with the atrocities and suffering of the Thirty Years’ War.

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Writing Past Futures: Celestial Omens and the Historiography of the Thirty Years’ War

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年

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  • Andreas Bähr

摘要

In the winter of 1618, a great comet appeared in the sky above Europe, a phenomenon many contemporaries saw as a divine portent of war, hunger, and plague. At the same time, the meaning of the comet was actually highly contested. This fundamental uncertainty engendered very specific forms of history-writing. This article shows how chronicles and autobiographies surrounding the Thirty Years’ War assembled proof for the future interpretation of celestial signs: their true purpose was to prepare the grounds for the understanding of the comet’s divine message. Given both the supernatural origin of miraculous phenomena and the difficulties in deciphering their meaning, narrating the violence of war provided certainty in a fundamentally uncertain situation. Thus, for contemporaries, the telling of what happened after 1618 also served as a vehicle for coping with the atrocities and suffering of the Thirty Years’ War.