The 1561 Nuremberg 'Space Battle' Warned That The French Wars Of Religion Were Coming

No extraterrestrials were involved or even implied

Nuremberg was the first city to convert to Protestant religion and along with Geneva, became a wellspring of the Reformation in the 16th century. All of Protestant Europe was therefore in regular communication with Nuremberg. The printing press had also been in use for more than a century when Hans Wolff Glaser created the above illustration, which has variously been described as an atmospheric event or a space battle, according to the level of sensationalism in the interpreter.

The possibility of a weather phenomenon is interesting, but ultimately unconvincing. ‘Sun dogs’ are indeed amazing and people saw them in the 1500s. However, no example ever recorded has even approached this vista of crosses and circles and strange “rod” objects. Ufologists are right to reject that ‘scientific’ explanation, but then they are also wrong to infer this illustration depicts an extraterrestrial war that people witnessed in the sky over Nuremberg. Nothing in the text supports that.

Here is the translated text of the pamphlet. Full analysis is below the paywall. Emphases are added throughout, for example when highlighting the description of what sounds like cannon or musket balls and associated gun tubes (the “rods”) seen in the illustration.

In the morning of April 14, 1561, at daybreak, between 4 and 5 a.m., a dreadful apparition occurred on the sun, and then this was seen in Nuremberg in the city, before the gates and in the country — by many men and women. At first there appeared in the middle of the sun two blood-red semi-circular arcs, just like the moon in its last quarter. And in the sun, above and below and on both sides, the color was blood, there stood a round ball of partly dull, partly black ferrous color. Likewise there stood on both sides and as a torus about the sun such blood-red ones and other balls in large number, about three in a line and four in a square, also some alone. In between these globes there were visible a few blood-red crosses, between which there were blood-red strips, becoming thicker to the rear and in the front malleable like the rods of reed-grass, which were intermingled, among them two big rods, one on the right, the other to the left, and within the small and big rods there were three, also four and more globes.

The next section is the description of the ‘battle’, which reads very much as symbolism. Objects crash to earth in flames and then disappear, leaving no wreckage. While I have heard of UFO cover-ups in which the government supposedly hides evidence of crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft, I have never heard of flying saucers that crash and then hide themselves. That is quite a conspiracy. This section ends with a sign in the sky pointing directly west from Nuremberg, towards France.

These all started to fight among themselves, so that the globes, which were first in the sun, flew out to the ones standing on both sides, thereafter, the globes standing outside the sun, in the small and large rods, flew into the sun. Besides the globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour. And when the conflict in and again out of the sun was most intense, they became fatigued to such an extent that they all, as said above, fell from the sun down upon the earth ‘as if they all burned’ and they then wasted away on the earth with immense smoke. After all this there was something like a black spear, very long and thick, sighted; the shaft pointed to the east, the point pointed west.

The passage seems predictive and symbolic of leaders, either in the city or on the throne or on the battlefield, crashing to earth in a proverbial burst of flames. For his part, Glaser professed total ignorance of the real story. In the final part of the translated text, he is merely a humble and pious man passing on the news of a strange sighting. Who is he to suggest that great and terrible events may be unfolding a few hundred miles away, in the real world? Why, nobody. It is important to note that Glaser was no one important, and in the 16th century, being nobody meant having no protection from consequences. Speech was hardly free, even in Nuremberg.

Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows. Although we have seen, shortly one after another, many kinds of signs on the heaven, which are sent to us by the almighty God, to bring us to repentance, we still are, unfortunately, so ungrateful that we despise such high signs and miracles of God. Or we speak of them with ridicule and discard them to the wind, in order that God may send us a frightening punishment on account of our ungratefulness. After all, the God-fearing will by no means discard these signs, but will take it to heart as a warning of their merciful Father in heaven, will mend their lives and faithfully beg God, that He may avert His wrath, including the well-deserved punishment, on us, so that we may temporarily here and perpetually there, live as his children. For it, may God grant us his help, Amen.

The only supernaturalism present in the text is Christian prayer: God, not aliens, is the master of the mystery, here. Rather than a space battle, the pamphlet is Glaser’s warning about the imminent civil conflict in France, the first of eight episodes collectively known as the Wars of Religion. The outcome, he knew, was up to God. There was nothing to do for it but pray.