Swissmiss wrote:
"Numerous cathedrals and basilicas, 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..."
"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 Basilica 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.)"
Meridan Line. S. Petronio, Bologna
In this sun calendar, a hole in the ceiling of the cathedral projects a shaft of sunlight onto this bronze strip on the pavement below, which is engraved with the days of the year and signs of the zodiac.
"After last week's toughie, here's more of a softball. Found it in a book I was browsing through at Barnes and Noble.
