Note 47 — PRIMO VIAGGIO INTORNO AL MONDO

MS. 5,650 adds: “It is to be noted that whenever that fire that represents the said Saint Anselme ascends and descends the mast of a ship while in a storm at sea, that the said ship is never wrecked.” Herrera (cited by Mosto, p. 54, note 5) says that St. Elmo appeared on the masthead with a lighted candle and sometimes two during the storms encountered along the coasts of Guinea, and that the sailors were greatly comforted thereby, and saluted the saint as is the custom of seamen. When he appeared, he remained a quarter of an hour; and at his departure a great flash of light occurred which blinded all the men. Eden (p. 250) calls it the fire of St. Helen. Continuing, Eden injects into his abridgment of the first circumnavigation a description of St. Elmo’s fire by Hieronimus Cardanus in the second book of De Subtilitate. He says: “Of the kynde of trewe fyer, is the fyer baule or ſtarre commonly cauled ſaynt Helen which is ſumtyme ſeene abowt the maſtes of ſhyppes, beinge of ſuche fyery nature that it ſumetyme melteth braſen veſſels, and is a token of drownyng, foraſmuch as this chaunceth only in great tempeſtes. For the vapoure or exhalation whereof this fyre is engendered, can not bee dryven togyther or compacte in forme of fyre, but of a groſe vapoure and by a great poure of wynde, and is therfore a token of imminent perell.” The fires called after St. Peter and St. Nicholas are on the contrary, he says, good omens, and are generally to be seen on the cables, after a storm. Being little and swift moving they can do no damage as they could do if massed and of slow movement. St. Elmo’s fire is the popular name for the atmospheric electricity that gathers in the form of a star or brush about the masthead of ships and on the rigging. It was sometimes accompanied by a hissing noise and was considered as a good omen by sailors. The Greeks who observed this phenomenon wove it into the Castor and Pollux myth; and the French edition of Pigafetta’s relation published by Simon de Colines has the passage (see Mosto, p. 54): “They saw the fires called Sainct Eline and Sainct Nicolas like blazing torches (whom the ancients called Castor and Pollux).” “Elmo” is said by some to be a corruption of “Helena,” the sister of Castor and Pollux, and the name “Hellene” or “Helen” was often given to the fire when only one light was visible. It is, however, more probably derived from St. Elmo, bishop of Formine who died about 304, and who is invoked by sailors on the Mediterranean. The phenomenon is also called fire of “St. Elias,” “St. Clara,” “St. Nicolas,” and “composite,” “composant,” and “corposant (i.e., corpus sanctum).”