At that time Paracelsus called attention to the reverberation of
cannon as explaining the rolling of thunder, but he was
confronted by one of his greatest contemporaries. Jean Bodin, as
superstitious in natural as he was rational in political
science, made sport of the scientific theory, and declared
thunder to be "a flaming exhalation set in motion by evil
spirits, and hurled downward with a great crash and a horrible
smell of sulphur." In support of this view, he dwelt upon the
confessions of tortured witches, upon the acknowledged agency of
demons in the Will-o'-the-wisp, and specially upon the passage in
the one hundred and fourth Psalm, "Who maketh his angels
spirits, his ministers a flaming fire."
To resist such powerful arguments by such powerful men was
dangerous indeed. In 1513, Pomponatius, professor at Padua,
published a volume of _Doubts as to the Fourth Book of
Aristotle's Meteorologica_, and also dared to question this power
of devils; but he soon found it advisable to explain that, while
as a _philosopher_ he might doubt, yet as a _Christian_ he of course
believed everything taught by Mother Church--devils and all--and
so escaped the fate of several others who dared to question the
agency of witches in atmospheric and other disturbances.
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