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E-book
Author Heilbron, J. L., author.

Title The sun in the Church : cathedrals as solar observatories / J.L. Heilbron
Published Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1999

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Description 1 online resource (ix, 366 pages) : illustrations (some color)
Contents Renaissance and Astronomy -- Counter-Reformation and Cosmology -- Wider Uses of Meridiane -- The Science of Easter -- The Luminaries and the Calendar -- A Scandal in the Church -- A Sosigenes and His Caesars -- Florence -- Bologna -- Rome -- Bononia Docet -- A New Oracle of Apollo -- Astronomia Reformata -- Normal Science -- Perfecting the Parameters -- Repairs and Improvements -- The Pope's Gnomon -- Calendrical and Other Politics -- The Meridian in Michelangelo's Church -- Meridiane and Meridians -- The Accommodation of Copernicus -- Heliometers and Heliocentrism -- Protective Measures -- Book Banning -- The Last Cathedral Observatories -- The Things Themselves -- Their Results -- Their Competitors -- Time Telling -- Some Means of Conversion -- The Equation of Time -- More Light Play
Summary 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
Analysis Iglesia Católica Italia Historia Siglo XVII
Observatorios astronómicos Italia
Astronomía Renacimiento
Religión y ciencia Italia Historia Siglo XVII
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-328) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
English
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Print version record
Subject Catholic Church -- Italy -- History -- 17th century
Catholic Church -- History -- 17th century.
SUBJECT Catholic Church fast
Subject Astronomical observatories -- Italy
Astronomy, Renaissance.
Religion and science -- Italy -- History -- 17th century
Religion and science -- Italy -- History
Astronomy -- history
Astronomical observatories
Astronomy, Renaissance
Religion and science
Sterrenkunde.
Observatoria.
Kathedralen.
Rooms-Katholieke Kerk.
Astronomy - General.
Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Physical Sciences & Mathematics.
Astronomie, renaissance.
Religion et science.
Observatoires astronomiques -- Italie.
Église catholique -- Italie -- Histoire -- 17ème siècle.
Astronomie de la Renaissance -- Italie.
Religion et sciences -- Italie -- 1500-1800.
Italy
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 0674854330
9780674854338