Have a wonderful Fourth of July weekend!!
Category: Arts and Sciences
Numerous cathedrals and bascilicas, specifically those at San Petronio, Bologna, Paris and Rome, were designed during the 17th and 18th centuries, to be used for this "secular" function.
St. Alex says, please place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, and say a few Hail Marys while you wait for the answer to be revealed. Demerits for using Google. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged.
9 comments:
What are concerts?
What are coronations?
What are sundials?
or calendars?
Not concerts or coronations. AA is dancing around it :)
What are observatories?
What are scientific/philosophical discussions meetings?
You guys are good!
AA has it again -- observatories. From the book by Thomas Woods, Jr., How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, p. 111-112: "The Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini, a student of the Jesuits Riccioloi and Grimaldi, used the observatory at the splendid Bascilica of San Petronio in Bologna to lend support to Kepler's model. Here we see an important way in which the Church contributed to astronomy that is all but unknown today: Cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris and Rome were designed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to function as world-class solar observatories. Nowhere in the world were there more precise instruments for the study of the sun. Each such cathedral contained holes through which sunlight could enter and time lines (or meridian lines) on the floor. It was by observing the path traced out by the sunlight on these lines that researchers could obtain accurate measurements of time and predict equinoxes. (They could also make accurate calculations of the proper dates for Easter -- the key initial function of these observatories.)
Check out Vincenzo's blog, Sancte Pater, for some great pics of San Petronio.
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