Why Catholics Built Astronomical Features into Churches

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/catholics-built-secret-astronomical-features-into-churches-to-help-save-souls

by Hooke • 10 years ago

142 87 10 years ago

"Update 11/15: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Galileo was executed for his beliefs." -- that should serve as a hint about the overall quality of the article.

jawns• 10 years ago

Up until college, I had always heard the story of the Catholic Church persecuting Galileo as sort of the prototypical example of the church's attitude toward science. As a Catholic, I figured it was an episode where Galileo was clearly in the right and the Church was clearly in the wrong.

In college, though, I discovered that many influential Catholics strongly reject the idea that Galileo was persecuted by the Catholic Church because the Church disagreed with his theory or felt it threatened to undermine its teachings:

http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy

tl;dr - It's more complicated than the typical anti-Catholic narrative suggests. The episode was primarily a clash of personalities (Galileo was a jerk and insulted thin-skinned Vatican officials who misused their power to punish him), rather than a dispute about science, or even a dispute about the intersection of science and religion.

b_emery4• 10 years ago

... which reminds me of another favorite place in Rome, Campo di Fiori, wherein stands the statue of Giordano Bruno, who was indeed burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition.

The statue faces the Vatican, which is apparently not an accident.

manachar• 10 years ago

History is almost always more complicated than people's narratives.

Narratives are a model. Some are more accurate than others, but ultimately all of them are just models which simplify history (sometimes in verifiably false ways).

drzaiusapelord2• 10 years ago

Except the standard narrative is fairly honest, if reductionist. Of course the details are far more interesting, but I find there's this new historic revisionism that's trying to whitewash Catholic history and its fairly repugnant. Look at your comment. Putting in qualifiers like Galileo was a jerk and those selfless Vatican officials were just a little "thin-skinned" is making excuses to promote a pro-Church narrative and to blame Galileo. You are aware we are discussing the Inquisition here which, if we include the entire church all through Europe, led to the deaths of over 125,000 people. This wasn't some protocol slight taken overly-wrongly, but an active system of censorship, oppression, imprisonment, and mass murder Galileo was on the receiving end of.

I hate when the "Oh, there's more to this story" attitude is used to defend the wrong narrative. I see it all the time on the internet. Edison is on par with Hitler for some reason, Lincoln is a war mongering criminal for going against the peace loving Confederate states, etc. The larger narrative is dismissed for smaller details that are presented in a way to distract or contradict the larger narrative. Its purposely viewing the trees and ignoring the forest. Sadly, its a popular way for disingenuous people to promote their views.

arjie4• 10 years ago

I've been hearing this sort of thing a lot lately and it has just reinforced, in my mind, that the Catholic Church at the time was a pretty repugnant institution (though this is not nearly the worst of its actions). All of your clarifications only reinforce the belief that Galileo was in the right and the Catholic Church was in the wrong. Abusing power to persecute someone because you were insulted doesn't exactly move someone closer to being right.

One could make the argument that at the time it was normal to persecute someone because they insulted you and I don't want to get into that whole debate about moral relativism, but that's not the defence you've brought up.

I mean, ultimately they convicted him of heresy for his claims. It's not like they were "We condemn you to house arrest for being a dick!". They were like "We condemn you to house arrest for heresy since you claimed the Earth goes around the Sun!". And on top of that they go and repudiated his ideas. So not only did they say that the claim was false, they also said that it was such a terrible claim that it qualified for one of the highest kinds of crimes (heresy).

There's no need for anti-Catholicism here.

anigbrowl• 10 years ago

You'd be a fool to expect book-level accuracy from blog posts. Even I mix Giordano Bruno up with Galileo sometimes, it's not a deal breaker.

baldfat2• 10 years ago

I also was going to make a similar post. Theology was the mother of all learning and Churches were the center point of science. This is why the Church produced so many philosophers and scientist.

THIS IS WRONG and a Myth that Galileo was persecuted by the church.

After all, the Church rather infamously persecuted Galileo in the 17th century for suggesting that the Earth is not, in fact, at the center of the cosmos, and that, by extension, Church doctrine relating to God’s orderly plans for the world were inherently flawed.

Decent quick read on Galileo myth that the church was fighting science.

It had a lot more to do with competing scientific claims and more specifically the attack of Aristotle.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2016/04/17/galileo-a...

b_emery4• 10 years ago

"the Roman Inquisition tried Galileo in 1633 and found him "vehemently suspect of heresy", sentencing him to indefinite imprisonment. Galileo was kept under house arrest until his death in 1642." Roman inquisition was run by the church, they found him guilty for disagreeing essentially. Seems pretty clear.

Regardless, the church has a long history of: appeals to authority, discouraging debate, irrational attachment to previous ideas, and overly complex hypotheses (e.g. God) - all of which counter the methods of science. While the role of the church in the evolution of 'science' has certainly been complex, it's not much of a stretch to say that the church has a history of fighting the essential components of the scientific method.

pfortuny• 10 years ago

What the HECK! Thanks for thr info. Skipping it entirely.

SilasX• 10 years ago

Yeah I'm kinda bothered by the frequency of the Atlas Obscura submissions.

CamperBob22• 10 years ago

Yes, it should. When they get something wrong, they issue a correction. That's a sign of high quality.

b_emery4• 10 years ago

When living in Rome I often would spend my lunch walking to Santa Maria degli Angeli to watch the solar transit across the meridian line. A precise scientific instrument, in a Catholic church, built inside a Roman bath (by Michelangelo no less) is one of my favorite examples of the layers of history in that city. The wikipedia article is quite good:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_degli_Angeli_e_dei...

irishcoffee• 10 years ago

Wow, I was in Rome this past summer, I didn't know anything about this, I would have loved to see it!

Sadly, I don't know if I'll ever have the chance to go back. =((

b_emery4• 10 years ago

If you do, it happens daily at local solar noon, so around 12-1 each day.

lolc• 10 years ago

The whole Galileo thing is funny in retrospect because it was Galileo who was accused of being unscientific! He was so unscientific about meteorology (even proposing wild theories like inertia) that the church forbade him to keep postulating physical reality of the absurd Copernican model.

Galileo got off easy even after having violated the ban and insulting the pope.

If you have a few hours to spare, read "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown" for an entertaining trip into that period.

http://tofspot.blogspot.ch/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smack...

cutler2• 10 years ago

Just to muddy the water further, Claudius Ptolemy is often revered as the founding father of astrology based on his "Tetrabiblos". The article glosses over the significance of the zodiac signs adorning these meridian lines but the presence of supposedly pagan symbols inside these great cathedrals leaves much unanswered.

georgecmu3• 10 years ago

Too many misconceptions.

at the height of the Church’s calendar problem, in the second half of the 16th century, the eastern Church and the western Church were an incredible ten days out of sync with one another. This was only reconciled in 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII implemented what has become known as the Gregorian calendar reform.

This doesn't sound right at all. Why would the church calendars be out of sync at the time? In fact, it was the Gregorian reform that put them out of sync. They are still out of sync and the gap is growing.

Bonus history trivia question: What month did the Russian October Revolution happen?

chrisabrams• 10 years ago

The calendar differences went on for a long long time. You should read "The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings" to really grasp the types of issues that lead up to different calendars.

georgecmu3• 10 years ago

We are speaking of the church calendar. All Christian churches (there was no single "Eastern" church) as far as I know used the Julian calendar (named after and instituted during the reign of Julius Caesar) until Catholic church adopted Gregorian calendar.

samstave• 10 years ago

August

zshprompt• 10 years ago

November

camelNotation4• 10 years ago

Seriously, what planet is this guy from? My family is Eastern Orthodox and this year we have Easter on the same day as the Westerners (Catholics and Protestants). It's a big deal because this very rarely happens. Sometimes we're as much as month or more apart from one another. Nothing has been resolved on the calendar issue between east and west.

ivanhoe• 10 years ago

This depends on the particular church. I know that Serbian Orthodox and Russian still officially use the Julian calendar. AFAIK the most of other Orthodox churches like Greek, Romanian, etc. have switched to the Gregorian calendar, e.g. they celebrate Christmas on Dec the 25th, not January the 7th, like Serbs and Russians do (Julian calendar is 13 days behind the Gregorian at the moment).

MK999• 10 years ago

Russian Revolution October 26th 1917 (the Julian calendar in use in the Russian Empire: November 8th according to the Gregorian calendar)

Mz• 10 years ago

Newsflash: Astronomy grew out of astrology; calendars are related to astronomical relationships; and science and religion went hand in hand for a very long time.

Film at 11.

peter303• 10 years ago

The Vatican still retains a small astronomy group run by one of my MIT classmates Guy Cosomologio. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Observatory They mainly operate out of Arizona these days. Guy gives public lectures about astronomy, faith and science etc.

mangamadaiyan• 10 years ago

You mean Guy Consolmagno? He co-authored "Turn Left at Orion", which is one of my favourite reading recommendations to beginning amateur astronomers of any age :)

NicolasBeuzeboc2• 10 years ago

I've only glanced at the pictures in the article and seeing the zodiacal signs and months of the year reminded me of ideas I've read on solarmythology.com. That the story of Jesus can be linked to the path that the sun takes during a year, and that 2000 years ago, due to the precession of the equinox the sun slowly went from Aries to Pisces at spring equinox in the northern hemisphere and that it must have been a pretty big change for people who were keeping track of that for agricultural purpose. Miracles like walking on water could be the sun crossing the milky way. Being dead and resurrected could be the sun lowering in winter solstice and coming back up 3 days after. I thought that was interresting.

qb453• 10 years ago

Looks cranky. Some Christian motifs may have been ripoffs from other religions, but it's the first time I'm hearing this about Jesus and crucifixion.

There are non-Christian sources mentioning the crucifixion of Jesus within few decades afterwards.

If they think that crucifixion was a common motif in religions of the time they would better provide some examples. Their /cr.htm just repeatedly states it as fact.

No, this "Orpheus crucifixion" stone doesn't count because it was probably created by Roman Christians who were known to combine Jesus with Orpheus in their art due to the obvious parallels. And the original Greek myth of Orpheus says nothing about crucifixion.

NicolasBeuzeboc2• 10 years ago

I just ignored that part and skipped to the astronomical allegory where he makes connections between some verses and each constellations.

grkvlt• 10 years ago

I believe the meridian line in a church was a plot point in 'The Da Vinci Code' so I'm surprised they are not more common knowledge. Yep, described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Line Well, the actual meridian line refernced is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomon_of_Saint-Sulpice

theandrewbailey• 10 years ago

I run Firefox + Noscript, and Atlas Obscura is the only website I've encountered where pages are scrolled down on initial load, and I don't know why. Often it's all the way down to the footer, but this article scrolls about halfway down. This is sorta annoying since there's been several popular items on HN recently.

Why Catholics Built Astronomical Features into Churches

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