The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories [Hardcover]

J. L. Heilbron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1999

Between 1650 and 1750, four Catholic churches were the best solar observatories in the world. Built to fix an unquestionable date for Easter, they also housed instruments that threw light on the disputed geometry of the solar system, and so, within sight of the altar, subverted Church doctrine about the order of the universe.

A tale of politically canny astronomers and cardinals with a taste for mathematics, The Sun in the Church tells how these observatories came to be, how they worked, and what they accomplished. It describes Galileo's political overreaching, his subsequent trial for heresy, and his slow and steady rehabilitation in the eyes of the Catholic Church. And it offers an enlightening perspective on astronomy, Church history, and religious architecture, as well as an analysis of measurements testing the limits of attainable accuracy, undertaken with rudimentary means and extraordinary zeal. Above all, the book illuminates the niches protected and financed by the Catholic Church in which science and mathematics thrived.

Superbly written, The Sun in the Church provides a magnificent corrective to long-standing oversimplified accounts of the hostility between science and religion.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Sun in the Church by J.L. Heilbron is a provocative work of scholarship that challenges long-held views of the relationship between science and Christianity. Heilbron's main point is simple enough: "The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions." Despite the persecution of Galileo, Heilbron notes, the Church actively supported mathematical and astronomical research--often designing cathedrals that could also function as observatories--in order to set the precise date of Easter (a crucial endeavor for maintaining the unity of the Church). Heilbron's fluid, engaging style brings his detailed reconstructions of 16th- and 17th-century Church politics to life. And his argument that scientific knowledge was deemed both morally neutral and politically useful during the Reformation and beyond yields an unusually interesting, complex, and human understanding of Catholicism in the early Modern period. --Michael Joseph Gross

From Library Journal

It is difficult for contemporary readers who live in an increasingly global world to comprehend the difficulty of establishing the correct date of EasterAthe first Sunday, after the first full moon, after the vernal equinox. Heilbron (formerly history and vice chancellor, Berkeley; currently Senior Research Fellow, Oxford) chronicles the ironic relationship between astronomy and the Catholic Church as it seeks the means to determine this date. This is the story of politically astute astronomers and cardinals who have to reconcile church doctrine with Galileo's universe. Heilbron deals specifically with four cathedrals, which, as a result of the "Easter date problem," function as both houses of worship and excellent solar observatories. The text is filled with fine detail and is richly illustrated. An erudite and scholarly work with extensive notes and bibliography, this may be a bit narrow in scope for the average reader; recommended for large public and academic libraries.AJames Olson, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 366 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; First Edition edition (October 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674854330
• ISBN-13: 978-0674854338
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,237,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exacting but exact, December 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories (Hardcover)

The great advantage of Professor Heilbron's book is that he assumes his reader is not an idiot, and neither is he, which is refreshingly original these days. It's true, as the previous reviewer noted, that he throws around a lot of geometry and technical astronomy, but he also writes so clearly that it's straightforward, if demanding of attention, to follow. His style is, moreover, both witty and often droll, as when he notes that by the late seventeenth century the Jesuits were teaching Galilean astronomy, "using the convenient fiction that it was a convenient fiction. Those willing to call a theory a hypothesis could publish any astronomy they wanted."

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I wish there were more books like this!, July 20, 2000

By 

Helmer Aslaksen (Singapore) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories (Hardcover)

I'm a professor of mathematics, but I'm also a "closet historian". This book is a great work of scholarship both in terms of history and mathematics. It's true that if you don't know much about spherical astronomy, you may get a bit of shell-shock, but why don't you pick up Kaler: "The Ever-changing Sky" or Evans: "The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy" to learn the basic. The you can go back to Heilbron's book to appreciate it fully. Believe me, it's worth the effort!
PS. One of my students has written a mathematical supplement to this book. It's available on my home page. (Amazon won't let me give you the URL in the review, but just do a quick searh on the web or look at the "äbout me section".) So far it only covers the first few chapters, but we hope to be able to expand on it later. I hope some of you may find it useful.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Astronomy and the Church, December 31, 2001

By 

Rick Hunter (Malone, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories (Paperback)

J.L. Heilbron's The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories is a beautifully illustrated, finely written exposition of how the Roman Church used sacred space to perform astronomy. The most sacred day in the Church calendar is Easter, established as the Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. As it turns out, this was an astoundingly difficult day to calculate, especially years in advance. As a result, in the Middle Ages the celebration of Easter "drifted" from the true date; the Church found itself commemorating Christ's resurrection on the "wrong" Sunday, a matter of grave concern. To solve this problem, astronomers determined that large buildings - most ideally churches themselves - could be made into solar observatories with a light opening at the apex and a meridian line placed on the floor. By this device, Church-supported scientists could observe the sun's precise position and movement with reference to the meridian line, and thereby make needed Easter (and other) calculations.

I confess that I am mathematically challenged, and much of this book is devoted to fairly detailed geometric and trigonometric proofs. I had no choice but to "bleep" over these sections. Heilbron's prose and argument are clear, entertaining, and persuasive, and I felt I lost none of his key points by needing to skip the proofs. Everything about Church history and astronomy in the Church - except a chapter about the unfortunate treatment of Galileo - was entirely new to me, and I was absolutely enthralled. For those who have read Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, this is a useful second perspective on the Church and astronomy.