PIERRE BOAISTUAU - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

zealously repent and amend ‘least a more fearful punishment, and a longer whip of
correction draw blood of us’; put on sackcloth and ashes and implore the Lord to
withdraw His hovering sword’. 988
Apart from floods, a providential framework was evident in other kinds of natural
disasters contained in Histoires prodigieuses, such as lightning, thunder, and
tempests: ‘Histoires prodiges merveilleux des fouldres, Tonnoires et tempestes, avec
les exemples de ce qui est advenu de nostre temps’. 989 Amongst the examples were
the storm in Milan in 1521 in the camp of the French troops, and the thunder over the
city of Mechelen (‘Malynes’) in the duchy of Brabant in 1527. A fleeting reference
was also made to meteorites as ‘pierres dures de couleur de fer… lesquelles estoient
tombées du ciel’, and the meteorite which fell on Sugolie, Hungary, during a storm in
1514. 990 As well as these examples, Boaistuau devoted attention to the disastrous
effects of such phenomena and their impact on local communities. For example, he
described at length the Mechelen thunder which resulted to the death of three hundred
people:
car le tonnerre esbranla tellement ceste miserable cité, que les citoiens
pensoient en un instant estre engloutis aux entrailles de la terre: Car apres ce
grand esclat, et bruyt horrible de nuées, commença à se manifester un esclair
comme une lampe ardente, duquel sortoit une puanteur intollerable, comme de
souffre: sans qu’on peust sçavoir dont cela procedoit, sinon ceux sur lesquelz
ceste fouldre estoit tombée, iusques à ce que finablement le bruyt courut par la
ville que le feu du ciel estoit tombé sur la porte d’Arene, en laquelle on avoit
mis plus de huict cens caques de pouldre à canon […] Le lendemain on trouva
988 Walsham, A., Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), p. 124. On floods and natural
disasters see particularly Chapter 3: ‘Visible sermons’: Divine Providence and Public Calamities. Also
see Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic, especially Chapter 4.
989 Boaistuau, P., Histoires prodigieuses, p. 21v.
990 Ibid, p. 26v.
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