The Flaming Torch over St Albans (1239)

Matthew Paris became a Benedictine monk at St Albans Abbey in 1217. After Roger of Wendover died in 1236, he became the abbey's chief chronicler. He was also an artist who illustrated his own pages. His Chronica Majora set down events as they happened, so the entry for the summer of 1239 is a contemporary record.

The eve of the feast of St James. About dusk, before the stars had appeared. In "a clear blue sky," a very large star like a torch rose from the south. It flew along, "not upwards," making its way towards the north. It moved "not swiftly, but as a hawk usually flies." It was "greater to the eye than Lucifer," which is Venus. It had "the form of a mullet," and was "very bright at the foremost part of it, but at the hind part smoky and sparkling."

When it reached the middle of the firmament, it vanished. Smoke and sparks hung in the air behind it. "All who saw this wonderful sign were struck with wonder, and did not know what it portended." Matthew noted one thing for certain. The crops had been almost all choked by protracted rains. At that very hour the season changed to one of remarkable fertility, and the ripe crops were gathered in.

Matthew drew it too. A red oval filled with gold. A light blue tail. Red dots for the sparks. Jason Colavito links the drawing to British Library Royal MS 14 C VII, folio 129r. Matthew's own verdict was brief. "This star was either a comet or a dragon."

In 2009, Jacques Vallée and Chris Aubeck included the entry in Wonders in the Sky. Their version placed it in France. The object turned north "exactly as it wished to ascend to a place high in the air," and "a very great light" was emitted on both sides of it. Their conclusion: "This sequence of motion is not typical of a natural phenomenon, and it certainly was not a 'star.'"

In March 2015, Colavito checked the Latin. "Paris" was a nickname, earned by studying in Paris. Matthew lived at St Albans. The authors had confused volare, "to fly," with velle, "to wish." The "both sides" and the "great light" were not in the Latin at all. Colavito guessed, and said it was a guess, that a French paraphrase had been taken for a quotation. He also rejected Suzanne Lewis's 1987 reading of draco as the constellation Draco, since no stars were yet visible.

The usual reading today is a slow fireball, or bolide, or a comet. A bright meteor with a smoking, sparking train that ends in mid-sky fits the account well, and a single night's appearance points away from a comet. A 2020 study of comet records from 1239 and 1240 by Murata and colleagues found no comet date matching 24 July. Matthew knew meteors were not true stars. In 1243 he wrote that if shooting stars were "real stars (which no wise man could think), there would not have been one left in the heavens."

Colavito says the revised 2016 edition of Wonders in the Sky corrected "these and other errors." The uncorrected version still circulates online. Fifteen years later Matthew recorded another wonder over St Albans, a ship in the sky in 1254. The torch of 1239 remains the quieter case. A monk's careful entry, a drawing in red and gold, and a lesson in how a misread nickname and a misread verb can turn a medieval wonder into a modern UFO.