History of Monsters. 379
wrongly to foretell; for if an infant is born with teeth, they predict a grain shortage. If a young boy is born with many feet, they signify the arrival of enemies. If twins are joined together, they predict civil wars. However, we can testify that such things do not always portend internal discord by the example of a boy brought into the light from his mother’s womb with a blade in his belly, as seen in Illustration XIII.
Marcus Frytschius records in his *Meteorologica* that before the German war—which Emperor Charles V waged against the Duke of Saxony and the Confederates—an infant was born in a certain village in Franconia with the point of a knife visibly protruding from its abdomen, which