Prodigies and Strange Events: Seen in the Sky on the Tuesday After the Assumption of Mary, in the Crown Land of Bohemia, at Alten Knin, Four Miles from Prague, in the Year 1580, by Many Trustworthy Witnesses
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Three flying men in black armor allegedly appeared in the sky and were observed by several witnesses near the village of Alten Knin, not far from Prague — as originally depicted on this 16th-century broadsheet |
An Eyewitness Account of the Event
In 1580, on the Tuesday after the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, from early morning until an hour before midday, the sun hung low, casting a red hue across the sky.
Within it, against the backdrop of the sun’s glare, two men clad entirely in black armor were clearly visible, standing motionless side by side, their arms resting peacefully.
After some time, they were seen rapidly moving westward, away from the sun, now violently quarreling with one another. Eventually, one of them disappeared after the other made a sharp movement, and soon, the other vanished as well.
A short while later, another knight in black armor, similar in appearance to the first two, became visible near the sun. His head and shoulders were outlined in black against the sun, while the rest of his body faded into the brightness below. Like the two before, he soon departed and moved westward, vanishing from sight behind the clouds.
But what it all means, only God knows.
The Historical Context Surrounding the Alleged UFO Sighting
The village Alten Knin (Old Knin) mentioned in the text still exists, but nowadays it is called Novy (New) Knin.
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The village of Alten Knin, mentioned in the report Credit: Autor: Miloš Hlávka – Vlastní dílo, fotoaparát Olympus SP320, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2115754 |
Sometime before the year 1331, Knin was divided into what later became New Knin, which by 1331 at the latest had become a small town and later a city directly under the royal chamber, and Old Knin, which remained a village and came into the hands of ecclesiastical authorities.
In the Middle Ages, important gold deposits were found here, and the mining shaped the development of the town for the following centuries.
Although the city of Prague is now a much larger than it was at the time of the report (when it had only about 60 thousand inhabitants), Knin was not affected by urban sprawl and remains an independent village to this day.
The city of Prague itself was rapidly expanding, helped by the fact that the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II chose Prague as his imperial residence.
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Emperor Rudolph II transformed his court into a haven for astrologers, alchemists, and wandering magicians Credit: By Joseph Heintz the Elder - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=152685 |
Rudolf II is historically known as an emperor with a particular obsession for alchemy, and he transformed his Prague court into a haven for various astrologers, alchemists, magicians, wandering charlatans, and others. The emperor himself sought the Philosopher’s Stone and the secrets of eternal youth.
Figures such as the astronomer Tycho Brahe, the alchemist Edward Kelley, and the magician John Dee visited or worked on his court.
Tycho Brahe laid the groundwork for modern astronomy. Edward Kelley claimed to possess the secret to transmuting base metals into gold, and his colleague John Dee was known for his attempts to communicate with angels (Enochian language) and uncover hidden knowledge through scrying.
The Rudolphine court also became known for fantastical creations such as the homunculus, a supposed artificially created miniature human, and the golem, an animated artificial being, the first quasi-robot, brought to life by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague using an enigmatic stone called the Shem.
Our evaluation the Alleged UFO Sighting
The description of the event in Prodigies and Strange Events: Seen in the Sky on the Tuesday After the Assumption of Mary, in the Crown Land of Bohemia, at Alten Knin, Four Miles from Prague, in the Year 1580, by Many Trustworthy Witnesses is unique.
In my research of celestial anomalies, or alleged UFO sightings in Renaissance Europe, I have found very few similar cases, and none provides such a detailed description as the event said to have taken place in Old Knin near Prague in the year 1580.
The detailed description and uniqueness of the account lend weight to the credibility of the entire report and suggest that something truly unusual transpired there in the year 1580.
On the other hand, it is possible that the description of the event was influenced by the alchemy-saturated atmosphere of Bohemia at the time, and the depiction of three men in black before the sun in the city known for gold mining could be understood as some sort of alchemical allegory rather than an actual UFO sighting.
It is also possible that the event was entirely fabricated by the publisher of the pamphlet for profit, but I take this for unlikely.
Whether it is true or not, I consider this historical testimony an interesting contribution to the question of unexplained atmospheric phenomena.
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