
Why Catholics Built Astronomical Features into Churches - Hooke
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/catholics-built-secret-astronomical-features-into-churches-to-help-save-souls
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mike_ivanov
"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
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](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.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
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.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Except the thing is, Galileo's model was _not supported by science_. They had
neither a proper theoretical model for deriving it (Newton's and Kepler's work
on gravity and celestial movement, which came after Galileo), nor did the
Galileo's model agree with available observational data. From the point of
view of scientists of that age, his model was more like a crackpot theory.
Which turned out ok, but _only much later_.

So if anything, Galileo's story is about the Church being _on the side of
science_ , not against it.

~~~
dotancohen
I came to post this. There is another important detail: Galileo did not
contradict scripture (religion), rather he contradicted Aristotle (science).
The Catholic church was actually rather interested in science at the time, and
were far from the anti-intellectuals that the common narrative makes them
seem.

~~~
toyg
Aristotle is not just "science" \- it's long been at the center of Christian
theology, carrying the main argument that could reconcile Christian faith with
the empirical world. Until very recently (and certainly by Galileo's times),
contradicting Aristotle meant doing away with the entire building of Christian
theology.

~~~
michaelsbradley
Well, in Western Christianity the thought of Aristotle has been important
since about A.D. 1,100. Not so much in Eastern Christianity, which has favored
the thought of Plato for nearly 2,000 years.

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georgecmu
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?

~~~
camelNotation
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
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).

~~~
AlexeyBrin
Even for the Romanian and Greek Orthodox churches, the Easter rarely coincides
with the Catholic Easter. You are right about the Christmas though, it is on
25 for both churches.

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lolc
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...](http://tofspot.blogspot.ch/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-
smackdown.html)

~~~
cutler
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.

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b_emery
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_degli_Angeli_e_dei_Martiri)

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

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peter303
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](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
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 :)

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NicolasBeuzeboc
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.

~~~
qb45
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.

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

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grkvlt
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Line)
Well, the actual meridian line refernced is this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomon_of_Saint-
Sulpice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomon_of_Saint-Sulpice)

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theandrewbailey
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.

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Mz
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.

