Pio Ballesteros
Ibérica
1922
translated by Jason Colavito
2025
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NOTE |
Pio Ballesteros was a professor of law at the University of Madrid, and in 1922 he was inspired by a series of articles in the magazine Ibérica exploring medieval accounts of meteors to examine an odd account with which he was familiar, telling the story of a tenth-century fireball that supposedly rose from the sea and burned cities across northern Spain. The story of this fireball eventually made its way into ufologist Richard Dolan's 2025 book USOs, where he entertained the notion that it was an alien spaceship before, bizarrely, concluding that it was a distorted memory of a war. The story had been the subject of several analyses in past centuries, most of which were faulty because they relied on the Memorias Antiguas de Cardeña, a late text (c. 1327 CE) that gave the wrong date (949 instead of 939). Ballesteros used much older sources. Below I present Ballesteros's argument that the accounts describe the breakup and crash of a large meteor, which superseded other writers' earlier claims that the story derived from a July 939 solar eclipse. I provide more discussion of this unusual event here.
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A STRANGE 10TH-CENTURY METEOR
The extremely curious news about meteorites falling in the Iberian Peninsula, contained in the interesting articles by the Rev. Dr. M. Faura y Sans, Priest, published in issues 418, 421, and 428 of IBÉRICA, lead me to think that certain data recorded in ancient Castilian chronicles may perhaps refer to analogous phenomena.
The Chronicon Burgense gives the following notice: “In the Era 987: on the Kalends of June, on a Saturday, at the ninth hour; a flame came out of the sea and burned many towns, and cities, and men and beasts; and in that same sea it set fire to cliffs; and in Zamora [it burned] one neighborhood, and very many houses; and in Carrión, and in Castro Xeriz, and in Burgos, and in Briviesca, and in Calzada, and in Ponticorvo, and in Buradon, and many other towns.”
The so-called Annales Compostellani agree with the previous testimony; they omit the mention of day and time, as well as specifying, with respect to Zamora, that many houses burned in addition to the neighborhood, but instead report that in Burgos a hundred buildings had suffered fire damage. And the Cronicón de Cardeña gives, in Romance [i.e. Spanish], a version of the event in these terms:
“In the Era 987: Kalends of June, Saturday, at the ninth hour, a flame came out of the sea and set fire to many towns and cities, and to men and beasts; and in this same sea it burned cliffs; and in Zamora a neighborhood, and in Carrión, in Castro Xeriz, and in Burgos one hundred houses, and in Briviesca, and in La Calzada, and in Pancorvo, and in Belorado, and many other towns.”
The date of the phenomenon was in the late afternoon of Saturday, June 1st, in the year 987 of the Spanish Era (which for many centuries was the chronological reckoning in our country), that is, during the reign of Ramiro II of León. Mention is made of a similar flame in the phenomena of the years 1433 and 1704, recorded by Doctor Faura in his articles; and the flame, according to those accounts, came out of the sea, similar to what is narrated by the observer of the Barcelona meteor of 1704. However, the allusion to this circumstance cannot be denied, a detail characteristic of someone writing from coastal regions, and surprising in a chronicler not only from inland, but who says nothing of damage except in inland localities. The chronicles say nothing about the physical phenomena that accompany the meteor, nor about falling stones; instead, there is talk of flaming rocks and disasters caused by fire that spread from the sea.
The trajectory of the meteor appears extremely long, given that localities such as Zamora and La Calzada are mentioned among others separated by about 260 kilometers in a straight line. If the cited locations are joined with Zamora by straight lines, a path can be drawn radiating from that capital to Carrión, through Briviesca (and very near the line, Castrojeriz, Burgos, and Pancorvo), and finally to La Calzada, passing close to Belorado. The central axis of this triangular space is the Zamora-Castrojeriz line, but most of the topographical data corresponds to the Burgos region.
The scarcity of data forces great caution in interpretation, lest one get lost in a jungle of conjectures. The fires occurring suddenly suggest the fall of flaming meteoric stones; the vast area affected by the phenomenon inclines one to suppose that it was not one, but several bolides with simultaneous appearances, some of which perhaps arose in coastal zones—hence the account of a flame coming out of the sea and of rocks burning in it. Only those who collected the news, such as the chroniclers of Zamora and the Cradle of Castile, made the coastal and Burgos accounts into a single event, supposing that the same flamma was the cause of all the experienced calamities. But as my interests and my modest historical-legal studies are not accompanied by training in physical-natural disciplines, I must limit my work to merely having pointed out a case whose perfect integration is typical of events adorned with surprising elements.
The Chronicon Burgense gives the following notice: “In the Era 987: on the Kalends of June, on a Saturday, at the ninth hour; a flame came out of the sea and burned many towns, and cities, and men and beasts; and in that same sea it set fire to cliffs; and in Zamora [it burned] one neighborhood, and very many houses; and in Carrión, and in Castro Xeriz, and in Burgos, and in Briviesca, and in Calzada, and in Ponticorvo, and in Buradon, and many other towns.”
The so-called Annales Compostellani agree with the previous testimony; they omit the mention of day and time, as well as specifying, with respect to Zamora, that many houses burned in addition to the neighborhood, but instead report that in Burgos a hundred buildings had suffered fire damage. And the Cronicón de Cardeña gives, in Romance [i.e. Spanish], a version of the event in these terms:
“In the Era 987: Kalends of June, Saturday, at the ninth hour, a flame came out of the sea and set fire to many towns and cities, and to men and beasts; and in this same sea it burned cliffs; and in Zamora a neighborhood, and in Carrión, in Castro Xeriz, and in Burgos one hundred houses, and in Briviesca, and in La Calzada, and in Pancorvo, and in Belorado, and many other towns.”
The date of the phenomenon was in the late afternoon of Saturday, June 1st, in the year 987 of the Spanish Era (which for many centuries was the chronological reckoning in our country), that is, during the reign of Ramiro II of León. Mention is made of a similar flame in the phenomena of the years 1433 and 1704, recorded by Doctor Faura in his articles; and the flame, according to those accounts, came out of the sea, similar to what is narrated by the observer of the Barcelona meteor of 1704. However, the allusion to this circumstance cannot be denied, a detail characteristic of someone writing from coastal regions, and surprising in a chronicler not only from inland, but who says nothing of damage except in inland localities. The chronicles say nothing about the physical phenomena that accompany the meteor, nor about falling stones; instead, there is talk of flaming rocks and disasters caused by fire that spread from the sea.
The trajectory of the meteor appears extremely long, given that localities such as Zamora and La Calzada are mentioned among others separated by about 260 kilometers in a straight line. If the cited locations are joined with Zamora by straight lines, a path can be drawn radiating from that capital to Carrión, through Briviesca (and very near the line, Castrojeriz, Burgos, and Pancorvo), and finally to La Calzada, passing close to Belorado. The central axis of this triangular space is the Zamora-Castrojeriz line, but most of the topographical data corresponds to the Burgos region.
The scarcity of data forces great caution in interpretation, lest one get lost in a jungle of conjectures. The fires occurring suddenly suggest the fall of flaming meteoric stones; the vast area affected by the phenomenon inclines one to suppose that it was not one, but several bolides with simultaneous appearances, some of which perhaps arose in coastal zones—hence the account of a flame coming out of the sea and of rocks burning in it. Only those who collected the news, such as the chroniclers of Zamora and the Cradle of Castile, made the coastal and Burgos accounts into a single event, supposing that the same flamma was the cause of all the experienced calamities. But as my interests and my modest historical-legal studies are not accompanied by training in physical-natural disciplines, I must limit my work to merely having pointed out a case whose perfect integration is typical of events adorned with surprising elements.
Source: Pio Ballesteros, “Una extraño meteoro del signo X,” Ibérica, July 1, 1922, 14-15.
