But when Halley's comet came, in 1456, so tremendous was its apparition that it was necessary for the pope himself to interfere.

He exorcised and expelled it from the skies.

It slunk away into the abysses of space, terror-stricken by the maledictions of Calixtus III., and did not venture back for seventy-five years! The physical value of shrine-cures and ghostly remedies is measured by the death-rate.

In those days it was, probably, about one in twenty-three, under the present more material practice it is about one in forty.
The moral condition of Europe was signally illustrated when syphilis was introduced from the West Indies by the companions of Columbus.

It spread with wonderful rapidity; all ranks of persons, from the Holy Father Leo X.to the beggar by the wayside, contracting the shameful disease.