1500–1549 CE — The Renaissance era produced some of history's most precisely documented UAP encounters. Michelangelo observed a triangular three-tailed light over Rome, a Chinese mason was abducted for over a year, Spanish conquistadors logged luminous objects in official expedition reports, and Renaissance painters preserved disc-shaped objects in religious art across Italy.
1500 – 1549: UFO|UAP & ENTITY Sightings Archive
The first half of the 16th century CE was the age of the Renaissance — the age of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Copernicus, and the Protestant Reformation. It was also, by the documentary record, one of the most visually rich and artistically documented periods for anomalous aerial phenomena in European history. Renaissance painters embedded disc-shaped objects in religious art at the Palazzo Vecchio and elsewhere, Michelangelo himself observed and attempted to paint a triangular three-tailed light over Rome, and the physician Antonio Benivieni documented a sky appearance so terrifying between Urbino and Gubbio that it caused mass miscarriages. In Mexico, Spanish conquistadors recorded luminous objects following their ships along the coast leaving three-hour trails of light. In China, a man was apparently abducted by beings from a craft that landed in Cangshan — returning home more than a year later with no memory of the intervening time and physical marks on his body. The 1500–1549 archive spans the dawn of the modern era, the conquest of the Americas, and the beginning of the Reformation — and the phenomenon operated through all of it without pause.
What makes the 1500–1549 archive particularly significant is its geographic breadth and the quality of its named witnesses. This is the first half-century in the archive where multiple entries are attributed to specific, historically documented individuals — a Spanish conquistador writing in an official expedition log, a Florentine physician of international reputation, a German astrologer whose broadsheet illustration survived five centuries, and Michelangelo Buonarroti himself. The Renaissance era’s commitment to observation, documentation, and the recovery of classical knowledge produced a generation of witnesses who recorded what they saw with unusual precision and without the institutional pressure to dismiss it. The result is one of the most detailed and geographically diverse fifty-year windows in the entire ThinkAboutIt Docs chronological archive — from the Pacific coast of Mexico to the Sino-Tibetan border, from the streets of Rome to the siege lines of Utrecht, from the hills of central Italy to the forests of the Ozarks.
Date: 1500
Location: Florence, Italy — Palazzo Vecchio
Time: Not recorded
Summary: Above Mary’s left shoulder is a shining, or glowing, disk shaped object. A man and his dog is seen looking up at the disk. Painted in the 15th century, Palazzo Vecchio lists the artist as unknown; although it is attributed to the Lippi school. Notice that dark, sparkling, disassembled figure beside them. Is that a demon, a dwarf, an ethereal being, or what? The body, legs, head, and tail can be made out. Could this represent a type of alien or demon, known to the artist? Also, Mary’s halo seems a bit shadowy: more like a vaporous disc than a ring of light – darker inside, smoky.
Source: alazzo Vecchio collection, Florence; artist unknown, attributed to Lippi school
Date: 1500
Location: Luzern, Switzerland
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A fireball was observed. One fireball was observed.
Source: Gillieron, UFO-DOC
Date: 1501
Location: between Urbino and Gubbio, central Italy
Summary: Professor Carlo Pedretti, specialist of Leonardo da Vinci Studies at the University of California, has published an article about relations between the “monstrous” and the Renaissance. He stated that the Florentine physician Antonio Benivieni (1443-1502), who was interested in monsters from the pathological point of view, mentions a wonder that took place between Urbino and Gubbio in 1501: “a horrible appearance in the stormy sky that caused many abortions – what we today call the appearance of a UFO.”
Source: Antonio Benivieni, De abditis nonnullis ac mirandis morborum et sanationem causis, G. Weber, ed., in Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere “La Colombaria, ” (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1994), 190; Carlo Pedretti, La Nazione, 28 July 1979.
Date: 1502
Location: Tenochtitlan, Mexico
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A sighting or anomalous event occurred at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: 1503
Location: Germany
Time: Not recorded
Summary: Multiple luminous objects were reported over southern German cities and recorded in German chronicles of the period as extraordinary signs in the heavens, distinct from known astronomical phenomena — part of a documented pattern of increased aerial activity in central Europe during the early 16th century.
Source: Referenced in Lycosthenes, Prodigiorum ac Ostentorum Chronicon
Date: September 29, 1504
Location: Tirano, Val Poschiavo, Italy
Summary: At dawn a man named Mario Omodei, who had gone into his garden, was suddenly surrounded by a dazzling light and heard a voice that called him by name. At the same time he felt lifted from the ground and found himself carried away to a land owned by a man named Aloisio Quadrio. Here, in an even more dazzling vision, an apparition he took to be Mary instructed him to make public the fact that she wanted a temple dedicated to her. Indeed it was completed in 1513 and consecrated in 1528. A priest named Simone Cabasso wrote in 1601 about the adventure of Omodei: “it seemed that the mountains (…) were illuminated by an unusual light (…) He clearly felt lifted from the earth, and transported to a garden, and was taken down to the ground.” The luminous apparition looked like a 14-year old girl.
Source: Gamba, Marino. Apparizioni mariane nel corso di due millenni. Udine: Ediz. II Segno (1999); and Cabasso, Simone, Miracoli della Madonna di Tirano. Vicenza: Ed. Pietro Gioannini (1601).
Date: 1509
Location: MEXICO — Aztec Empire
Summary: One morning in 1509 the gatekeepers of Tezcatlipoca informed the emperor Moctezuma in the middle of the night before, they observed a smoke thickened and white and was so enlightening, thought we would open day.
Source: Michel BOUGARD: “The chronicle of UFO” – Delarge 1977 p.77-78
Date: March 19, 1509
Location: Villefranche-de-Rouergue, France
Summary: A man named Collonges (or Collonges) who was driving a cart across a fork in a shallow river tried in vain to free it when it became stuck. Having prayed fervently, he saw a being in a blinding light coming from the East, accompanied by twelve other figures. He took them to be the Virgin Mary and the Apostles. They stepped on thirteen stones local people used to cross the river and disappeared in the West. As they vanished, Collonges found that his cart was free from the mud. An investigation by the bishop of Rodez led to the founding of the Chapel of the Thirteen Stones on July 1 , 1510.
Source: Bernard, Gilles and Guy Cavagnac, Villefranche-du-Rouergue, histoire etgenie du lieu, Ed. Privat (1991), 82, and Chiron, Yves. Enquete sur les Apparitions de la Vierge. Paris: Ed. Perrin (1955), 65-66. (Credit: Franck Marie)
Date: 1510
Location: St Ann in Prostynia, Poland
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A sighting or anomalous event occurred at St. Ann in Prostynia, Poland. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: 1513
Location: Rome, Italy
Summary: “The celebrated sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) observed a triangular light with three tails of different colors. He painted a picture of it but this has not survived. According to Benedictine chronicler Benedetto Lushino’s book Vulnera Diligentis (second book, chapter XXII) Michelangelo saw a “triangular sign” one calm night. It resembled a star with three tails, one silvery, the second one red, and the third fiery and bifurcated.
Source: Giovanni Papini, La vita di Michelangelo nella vita delsuo tiempo Milano: Garzanti, 1949, 198-200.
Date: 1515
Location: Belgium, Belgium
Time: Not recorded
Summary: ” A meteor-like object was observed. One object was observed.
Source: SOBEPS
Date: 1516
Location: Ozarks Region, North America
Time: Not recorded
Summary: Mr. Bad Thing — an entity encounter in the Ozarks region predating European settlement of the area. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: 1517
Location: Western Moldavia
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A sighting or anomalous event occurred in Western Moldavia. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: April 1517 or 18
Location: coatzacoalco, mexico
Summary: Spanish conquistador Juan de Grijalva (ca. 1489-1527) wrote: “On this day, in the evening, we witnessed a big miracle, and it was that there appeared a star above the ship after sunset, and it moved away, emitting rays of light continuously until it was above the town or large village, and it left a trace in the air that lasted for three long hours, and we also saw other very clear signs, by which we understood that God wanted us to populate that land…” The village was Coatzacoalco.
Source: “Itinerario de la armada del rey catolico a la isla de Yucatan, en la India, el ano 1518, en la que fue por Comandante y Capitan General Juan de Grijalva. Escrito para su Alteza por el Capitan mayor de la dicha armada.” In Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, Collection de documentos para la historia de Mexico, Volume 1. Mexico (Libraria de J. M. Andrade, Portal de Agustinos N. 3, 1858), 302.
Date: 1519
Location: China
Time: April
Summary: “Emperor Wuzong Record”: “Emperor Wuzong Masanori 14 (1519) Leisure in April, wonderful moment, the meteor South, like light, Qing Baise, the light on, from the southeast of the north line slowly west-aware, after the three little sing along. “
Source: Emperor Wuzong Record, Ming Dynasty chronicles
Date: 1520
Location: Erfurt, Prussia
Summary: Two burning suns were observed. The report says that a great burning beam then landed, took off again and then became circular in shape
Source: Vallee, Jacques Anatomy of a Phenomenon Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1965
Date: 1520
Location: Hereford, England
Summary: A case with thermal effects was recorded by Lycosthenes in his Prodigiorum ac Ostentorum Chronicon:”In 1520 AD in England, at Hereford, a colossal beam of fire was seen in the sky. Approaching the earth, it burned many things with its heat. After this, it ascended into the sky again and was seen to change its shape into a circle of fire.”
Source: Lycosthenes, op. cit., 527.
Date: 1521
Location: Cuenca, Spain
Summary: Dr. Eugenio Torralba was in contact with “Zekiel,” a being who taught him many secrets, and flew him to Rome. Torralba received such fame by virtue of his new-found knowledge and medicines that even Cervantes mentioned him in Don Quijote: “Remember the true story of Dr. Torralba,” says Quixote, “who was taken by the devils through the air…and in twelve hours arrived in Rome…” In 1525 he became the personal doctor of the widowed queen of Portugal, Leonor. Zekiel (or “Zequiel”), however, proved to be Torrealba’s curse as well as a blessing. The Inquisition didn’t take long to find out about the good doctor’s dealings with the entity, and it was soon revealed that Torralba had been physically transported to faraway places by magical means. Torralba was arrested in 1528 and cruelly tortured, despite his insistence that he had never entered into a pact with the creature nor gone against the Catholic faith at any time. He was sentenced to prison on March 6th 1531, but was soon released and allowed to continue his medical practices on the condition that he never again had any contact with Zekiel.
Source: Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Historic de Jos Heterodoxos Españoles (Madrid:La Editorial Católica, 1978).
Date: 1523
Location: Yugiu, Jiangsu, China
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A sighting or anomalous event occurred at Yugiu, Jiangsu, China. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: August to October 1523
Location: Guiling (Guangxi), CHINA
Time: Each night
Summary: The inhabitants of the city saw in the sky each night a star measuring more than ten arms. She was still hanging in the sky, surrounded by white vapor. It was rectangular, like a sword, and walked slowly from north to south.
Source: SHI BO: “China and the aliens’ ed. Mercure de FRANCE, 1983, p.44
Date: 1526
Location: Rome, Italy
Time: Not recorded
Summary: An abduction event occurred in Rome, Italy. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: October 12, 1527
Location: France
Summary: numerous witnesses throughout the country have seen an unexplainable cigar-egg-shaped flying object.
Source: Vallee, Jacques Anatomy of a Phenomenon Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1965
Date: 1528
Location: Utrecht in Holland
Time: daytime
Summary: “Cruel and strange observation” of a yellow object in the sky, flying over during the siege of the city. The inhabitants of Utrecht panicked, while attackers took it as a sign of impending success. Lycosthenes writes: “At the time the city of Utrecht was heavily besieged, a terrible sign was seen in the sky which threw the town inhabitants into dismay and the enemies into the hope of capturing the town. For a sign in the sky, resembling a cross of a yellowish color (and of terrible aspect) appeared over the town. And because it was the symbol of Burgundy, they believed on both sides that the town would shortly belong to the Burgundians.”
Source: Terribile visione in cielo durante Tassendio di Utrecht (1528), and Lycosthenes, Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon, 536.
Date: 1528
Location: Cangshan, China
Summary: “Copying OLD BOOK Dali Lost” in an article entitled “guest star, is” contains “seven years Jiajing (AD 1528), three days of summer in May, a guest star to steal northwest of South is, bright like a wheel, where up, down, stop and see the thousands of people. That night was a three-quarter back-to-point of the village green peach northwest Cangshan, after falling in the village, the village has a mason, and G, playing rock on foot the mountain, seeing the light of such warehouse. it is a material and crushed as big as a house for the colored light, there are two things, as people inhuman. G input capture, the light shines. Courage g of a panoramic, painless and bloodless. did, sound like people rather than through, bringing more. Illusion like a fairyland, environmental non-human moon and stars, fairies to color red and the cold, if frozen, no crops housing. were all as a non-human, has a cycle 3, men and women difficult to distinguish between young and old, to wear non-human, non-words by humans. only see, eyes confused, I do not know why. wake up when the rock is still playing games, going home short and art is more than a year later, his family thinks that wildlife eat. I know this personally. of view, have a red breast G brands online and abdomen, and asked no pain. and see after 50 years, Yu G, appearance, those who had not the former. illusion guest star, how the world says, Dali Chronicle books have set. I do not know how things out stars?
Source: Copying Old Book Dali Lost, citing Jiajing era records, Ming Dynasty
Date: 1528
Location: FRANCE / Western Germany (Westrie)
Time: Not recorded
Summary: An extremely terrifying blood-red aerial object appeared, so frightening that some observers reportedly died of panic and others became ill. The object was described as excessive in length, blood-colored, with the figure of a bent arm holding a large sword, three stars near its tip, and on both sides a great number of axes, knives, swords stained with blood, and hideous human faces with beards and bristling hair. The object appeared over Westrie and was visible for one hour and fifteen minutes.
Source: Ambroise Paré; Pierre Boaistuau, Histoires Prodigieuses; Peter Creutzer broadsheet, 1527; Michel Bougard, The Chronicle of UFO, Delarge 1977, pp. 79–80
Date: October 9, 1528
Location: Westrie, N. Germany
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A bizarre sighting was chronicled by Pierre Boaistuau in his Histoires Prodigieuses. Ambroise Pare describes a blood-red ‘comet’ that appeared over Westrie. It so terrified the populace that some reportedly died of panic and others became ill. The ‘comet’ emerged from the east and was seen for an hour and a quarter, disappearing finally towards midday – which implies, by the way, that it could not have been a comet unless by “midday” was meant “the southern direction.” At the top of the object people described an arm that held a great sword, the blade pointing downwards. There were three stars towards the tip of the sword, the one right on the end being the brightest. On both sides of the ‘comet’ were a great number of axes, blades and bloody swords and repulsive, bearded human faces.
Source: Ambroise Pare and all subsequent authors drew from a booklet by Peter Creutzer: Auslegung Peter Creutzers, etwan des weytberhiimbten Astrologi M. Jo. Lichtenberger’s (sic) discipels iiber den erschrecklichen Cometen.. .erschynen am xi. Tag Weynmonats des MCCCCxxvii. Jars… (1527).
Date: 1529
Location: Erfurt, Prussia
Time: Not recorded
Summary: Two burning suns were seen at Erfurt, Prussia. Then a great ‘burning beam’ landed suddenly. It took off again into the sky, where it became circular in shape.
Source: Not recorded in original entry
Date: 1529 to 1555
Location: Sibiu, Romania 
Time: Not recorded
Summary: In the museum of the town of Sibiu, Romania, extraordinary documents are available to those who want to see. IN 1555 WE HAVE BUILT A ROCKET SPACE THREE FLOORS SOLID FUEL-POWERED. THE AUTHOR OF THIS INVENTION OF A TECHNICAL PRODIGIEUSE RETURNS TO MASTER THE FIRE, Conrad Haas. Found in the manuscript of Sibiu chronology of inventions: 1529 two-stage rocket (in both ignition) 1529 1529 three-stage rocket battery of rockets flying house in 1536. Experiment of the principle of making the feud years multi-stage rocket. 1555 use of delta wings to stabilize the rocket flight
Source: John FERGUSON: “Everything about flying saucers” ed.; Leméac, Ottawa, 1972, p. 26, 27
Date: 153?–154?
Location: Moscow, Russia
Time: Not recorded
Summary: During the reign of Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), an apparent abduction event occurred in Moscow. A metallic implant was subsequently discovered in the skull of Ivan the Terrible upon examination of his remains — described by researchers as resembling an electronic chip of non-human manufacture. The implant is considered by researchers including Philip Mantle and Paul Stonehill as possible evidence of non-human contact and physical implantation during an abduction event. Ivan’s well-documented personality changes and episodes of extreme behavior have been theoretically connected to the implant’s presence and possible function. [Full report]
Source: Philip Mantle and Paul Stonehill, UFO-USSR; anthropological examination of Ivan IV remains
Date: December 9, 1531
Location: Tepeyac Hill, near Tepeyac, Mexico
Time: Dawn
Summary: Juan Diego, an indigenous convert, encountered a luminous apparition of a young woman at Tepeyac Hill near Mexico City who identified herself and instructed him to request construction of a church on that site. The encounter occurred multiple times over several days. On December 12th, roses bloomed out of season at the apparition’s instruction and when Juan Diego opened his tilma — his cloak — to present them to the Bishop, a detailed full-color image of the luminous woman was found permanently embedded in the fabric. The image has been scientifically examined and no paint, dye, or brush strokes have been found — the image exists at the surface of the fibers at a depth less than a human hair. [Full report]
Source: Nican Mopohua (1545), earliest Nahuatl account; multiple ecclesiastical and scientific investigations
Date: 1532
Location: Lyon, France
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A luminous object described as shaped like a shield or disc was observed moving across the sky over Lyon by multiple witnesses and recorded in French regional chronicles of the period.
Source: Referenced in Michel Bougard, The Chronicle of UFO, supplementary records
Date: August 1533
Location: Peru:
Summary: Garcilaso de la Vega, the Incan, writes in Chapter 23 of his work Historic General del Peru, that Tupac Huallpa’s fear of his own death was exacerbated by the sighting of a great greenish black ‘comet’ in August 1533. It was an unusual comet, “a little narrower than the body of a man and longer than a pike” (spearheaded medieval weapon), and had been seen by many witnesses on several occasions at night. This made Huallpa particularly depressed because a similar object had been observed a few days before the death of his father, Huayna Capac. This comet was evidently not of the ordinary kind, at least in the opinion of Huallpa, who was accustomed to heavenly phenomena. Besides, comets are not “greenish-black!” Tupac Huallpa was executed on 29 August 1533.
Source: Inca Gracilaso de la Vega, Historia General del Peru (1617), Book I, Chapter XXXIV.
Date: 1534
Location: Not recorded — likely Spain or Rome
Summary: When Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuit Order in 1534, first as a tool against the Muslim religion, and eventually against Protestantism, he is said to have been threatened by an assassin, who fled when an angel came down from the sky and confronted him!
Source: Early Jesuit chronicle sources
Date: 1535
Location: Amsterdam, Holland
Time: Not recorded
Summary: Multiple witnesses in Amsterdam observed a fleet of phantom ships in the sky — luminous vessel-shaped objects moving in formation above the city — recorded in Dutch chronicles of the period and referenced in later compilations of 16th century aerial phenomena.
Source: Referenced in multiple 16th century Dutch chronicle compilations
Date: April 20 1535
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Summary: Seven “Suns” circle city. Same phenomenon reported over Weimar, Germany on same date. observed by a male witness for five minutes (Petri Olaus).
Source: UFO Nachrichten
Date: May 31, 1536
Location: Monte Stella, Brescia, Lombardy, Italy
Summary: Antonio de’ Antoni, a poor deaf-mute shepherd of Gardone Val Trompia, was reciting the rosary while his flock was grazing. Suddenly there came before his eyes a light more intense than the Sun, in the middle of which the Virgin appeared with Jesus in her arms. Dressed in a simple way, she wanted the shepherds to build a temple there. Antonio went off and described the event to everyone he knew, and when he returned the site was “illuminated by the beams of an overhanging star.” Pope Paul III gave the place a consecrated status, and construction was completed in 1539.
Source: Marino Gamba, Apparizioni mariane nel corso di due millenni (Udine: Ediz. II Segno, 1999).
Date: 1537
Location: Florence, Italy
Summary: “On horseback, we were coming back from Rome. Suddenly people cried ‘Oh God what is that great thing we see over Florence.’ It was a great object of fire, twinkling and emitting enormous splendor…”
Source: Benvenuto Cellini, Vita, 1558-1566, Book I, 89.
Date: January 16, 1538
Location: Franconia, Thüringen, Germany
Summary: A large “star” was seen in the sky and came down, emitting balls of fire that melted metal objects. Scholar Simon Goulart lists the case in his chronicles as follows: “It was seen in Franconia, between Bamberg and Thuringia Forest, a star of marvelous magnitude, which came lower gradually, and became a great white circle from which whirlwinds and clumps of fire emerged. When they fell onto the earth they melted
the tips of spears, irons and horses bits without hurting either men or buildings.”
Source: Simon Goulart, Tresors d’Histoires Admirables et Memorables de notre Temps (1600). Geneve: P. Marceau (1610), 53-54. Jobus Fincelius, Wunderzeiche, Warhafftige Beschreybung und grundlich verzeichnuss schrocklicher Wunderzeichen und Geschichten (Jhena: Rodinger, 1556); Lycosthenes, op. cit., 563.
Date: 1538
Location: Bruges Belgium
Time:
Summary: Dans la tapisserie dite “Triomphe du soleil” créée à Bruges Belgique en 1538 et actuellement exposée au musée national de Bavière on peut observer plusieurs objets dans le haut de la tapisserie dans le ciel qui ressemblent à des ovnis.
Source:
Date: 1540
Location: Chile
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A sighting or anomalous event occurred in Chile during the Spanish conquest of South America. [Full report]
Source: ThinkAboutIt Docs linked report
Date: 1540
Location: Florence Italy
Time: Night
Summary: memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini: when we came to a certain point of the ascent it was already night we watched and we Florence exclaimed with one voice: god of the sky! what is that thing which is above the city? It was like a big bar fire that sparkled and diffused a splendor
Source: chronicles the UFO michel Bougard page 82
Date: Nov 26, 1540
Location: Region of Calippus
Time: Not recorded
Summary: Starlike appearance on dark side Observers at Worms Hess 1911
Source: Hess, 1911
Date: 1543
Location: Solar corona
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A large comet approached the Sun closer than any other, and the same thing will repeat itself in 1882 these two comets entered the Sun Belt that is given an absolute temperature of 1 million degrees, says George Hunt Williamson These comets traveled a million miles in the crown incandescent and emerged intact, with no change in velocity or direction. If the Sun radiates a heat so intense, how is it that they do not have disintegrated at the very moment they plunged into the inferno 1 million ° C [Other Languages, Other natures].
Source: George Hunt Williamson, Other Languages, Other Natures
Date: May 14, 1544
Location: Nay (Béarn), FRANCE
Summary: A spear of fire appeared in the sky on the day of Pentecost. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon the lance fell into a place and a building with a frightful uproar. There was nothing left of the building.
Source: Pierre Boaistuau, Histoires Prodigieuses (1560), vol. II, 148.
Date: 1546
Location: Carranza near La Spezia, Italy
Summary: A manuscript by the chronicler, Father Antonio Cesena, found in the public library at La Spezia, tells of farmers reporting “a strange disk, changing from yellow to red, with red fireballs shining beneath it”. It was seen in two separate areas including the small village of Carranza, near Passo del Bocco “from time to time.” Cesena interpreted the sighting as a portent of the death later that year of Count Luigi P Fieschi, the governor of Varese Ligure.
Source: Antonio Cesena, Relatione dell’origine e successi della terra di Varese (1558). The original manuscript is lost but a copy made in 1683 is still held by the Biblioteca della Societa Economica di Chiavari (ms. Z VI 29).
Date: April 24, 1547
Location: Halberstadt, Saxony, Germany
Summary: A black ball-shaped object was seen, apparently “emerging from the middle of the moon” and flying fast towards the North.
Source: Simon Goulart, Tresors des Histoires Admirables et Memorables de notre Temps (1600); Jobus Fincelius, Wunderzeiche, Warhafftige Beschreybung undgrundlich verzeichnuss schrocklicher Wunderzeichen und Geschichten. (Jhena: Rodinger, 1556); Lycosthenes, op. cit., 595.
Date: November 13, 1547
Location: Rome, Italy
Time: 3 P.M.
Summary: A rod and a cross appeared in the sky at 3 P.M., with a bird-like object above them. The weather was clear and the sky was calm. The objects were seen for three days.The event is depicted in a German broadsheet in the Johann Jacob Wick’s collection, held by the Zurich Zentralbibliothek.
Source: Jobus Fincelius, Wunderzeiche, Warhafftige Beschreybung und grundlich verzeichnis schrecklicher Wunder Zeichen und Geschichten (Jhena: Rodinger, 1556); Erschreckliche unerhorte warhafftige Gesichten so gesehen ist zu Rhom… (Strassburg: Jakob Frolich, 1547), ZB PAS II 12/29.
Date: December 15, 1547
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Summary: “The sailors of Hamburg saw in the air, at midnight, a glistening globe fiery like the Sun, rolling towards the northern part. Its rays were so hot that passengers could not remain inside the ships, but were forced to hide and take cover, thinking that their vessels were about to burn.”
Source: Simon Goulart, Tresors d’Histoires Admirables et Memorables de notre Temps (1600); Fincelius, Jobus, op. cit.; Lycosthenes, op. cit., 595.
Date: June 28, 1548
Location: Oettingen (Bavaria), Germany
Summary: A Oettingen you would have seen the solar disk to darken the air passage of several objects that were here and there in the sky, close enough to the ground to fly over the houses of red flames while parked in the air. The sky became darker and about twenty flying “vehicles” were seen coming and going above the houses, along with red flames. The witness says he saw the phenomenon on 2 occasions: on 28 June and on 26 July 1548.
Source: Bruno Weber, Wunder Zeichen und winkel maker, 1543-1586, Urs Graf Verlag (Zurich: Dietikon, 1972), 93.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
The Renaissance Witnesses — Art, Abduction, and Aerial Combat in the First Half of the 16th Century
The 1500–1549 CE archive is the first period in the ThinkAboutIt Docs chronological record where the phenomenon appears consistently in fine art, official expedition logs, Inquisition records, and the documented personal observations of named cultural figures of enduring historical significance. Michelangelo observed and attempted to paint a three-tailed triangular light over Rome. A Spanish conquistador recorded a three-hour luminous trail in his official expedition report. A Chinese mason was apparently abducted for over a year and returned with physical marks and no aging. A Florentine physician of international reputation documented a sky appearance so disturbing it caused mass miscarriages in central Italy. The Inquisition tried, tortured, and imprisoned a physician for his relationship with an entity called Zekiel who had taught him advanced medical knowledge and physically transported him across Europe. The 1500–1549 archive is the Renaissance in its full complexity — curiosity, documentation, terror, and institutional suppression all operating simultaneously around a phenomenon that did not care which century it was operating in.
The geographic range of the 1500–1549 archive is also unprecedented in the chronological record to this point. This fifty-year window spans central Italy, Switzerland, France, England, Holland, Prussia, Romania, Poland, Moldavia, Mexico, China, Japan, and the Ozarks of North America — every major region of the known world at the moment of first contact between the Old World and the New. The phenomenon appeared to the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan before the conquest, to the Spanish who were conquering them, and to the Chinese Ming Dynasty simultaneously. Whatever was operating over the 16th century world did not recognize the political boundaries the Renaissance was busily redrawing. It operated everywhere, and it was documented by artists, physicians, conquistadors, monks, astronomers, and farmers with equal consistency. The pattern is the same. The witnesses are different. The archive holds them all.
“Remember the true story of Dr. Torralba, who was taken by the devils through the air…and in twelve hours arrived in Rome.”
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, referencing the 1521 CE entity contact and physical transportation of Dr. Eugenio Torralba
