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"In this elegant work...Heilbron, upending common views of the Church's relationship to science after it condemned Galileo, shows that Rome handsomely supported astronomical studies, accepting the Copernican hypothesis as a fiction convenient for calculation." - New Yorker "[Readers] will be surprised to discover what Heilbron shows: that the Catholic Church served as perhaps the largest patron of sophisticated astronomical research throughout the controversies over Copernicus and his sun-centered scheme...[Heilbron] turns the tables on tired stories of the war between science and religion." - D. Graham Burnett, New York Times Book Review"
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Review
J. L. Heilbron's remarkable book draws our attention to church users of a very different kind: early modern astronomers measuring the solar path to correct the shift of the ancient Julian calendar..."The Sun in the Church" tells their history in detail, alongside an exceptionally comprehensive and clear account of medieval and early modern astronomy..."The Sun in the Church" is an illuminous book, possibly as durable as the meridianae it celebrates.--Sergio Sanabria "Technology and Culture "
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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, institut Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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, institut Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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9 reviews
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Exacting but exact
13 Dec 1999
Format: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
I wish there were more books like this!
21 July 2000
Format: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.
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
Astronomy and the Church
31 Dec 2001
Format: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.
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