Luna

 

Luna quam congruenter significet Ecclesiam

by Evan Smith

Duae sunt de luna opiniones probabiles: harum autem quae vera sit, aut non omnino, aut difficillime arbitror posse hominem scire. Cum enim quaeritur unde lumen habeat, alii dicunt suum habere, sed globum eius dimidium lucere, dimidium autem obscurum esse; dum autem movetur in circulo suo, eamdem partem qua lucet, paulatim ad terras converti, ut videri a nobis possit, et ideo prius quasi corniculatam apparere. Nam et si facias pilam ex dimidia parte candidam, et ex dimidia obscuram, si eam partem quae obscura est ante oculos habeas, nihil candoris vides, et cum coeperis illam candidam partem ad oculos convertere, si paulatim facias, primo cornua candoris videbis, deinde paulatim crescit, donec tota pars candens opponatur oculis, et nihil obscurae alterius partis videatur: quod si perseveres adhuc paulatim convertere, incipit obscuritas apparere, et candor minui, donec iterum ad cornua redeat, et postremo totus ab oculis avertatur, ac rursus obscura illa pars sola possit videri: quod fieri dicunt, cum lumen lunae videtur crescere usque ad quintamdecimam lunam, et rursus usque ad tricesimam minui, et redire ad cornua, donec penitus nihil in ea lucis appareat. Augustinus Enarratio in Psalmum X.3

“One can know that the bright side of the Moon always faces the Sun without realizing that the Moon shines by reflected sunlight.” James Evans who details the theory of the third-century BC Babylonian astronomer Berosus, who taught that the Moon has its own light after Anaxagoras had proposed the theory in the mid-fifth century that it came from the Sun. See his The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy. (Oxford, 1998). p. 47.

FOR THE CURIOUS

Where does Augustine find this idea? It comes through Vitruvius (Latin, English) who gives a fuller account of what Berosus, a Babylonian of the 3rd century BC, who settled on the island of Cos, taught. If you keep reading the Vitruvius passage, you will see that he discusses the work of Aristarchus – the one who held (without being imprisoned) to a heliocentric view of the cosmos – who wrote a treatise on measuring the distance of the Moon from the Earth and from the Sun. He gives the other view, the one we now understand, that the Moon reflects the light of the Sun.

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