Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/477

 The Ctdtiire of the Middle Ages 44 1 A little Anglo-Saxon manual of the tenth century lus describes the heavenly bodies. On the second day God made the heaven, which is called 183. The the firmament, which is visible and corporeal ; and yet we earth and may never see it, on account of its great elevation and the (promT* thickness of the clouds, and on account of the weakness of little Anglo- our eyes. The heaven incloses in its bosom all the world, ^* and it ever turns about us, swifter than any mill-wheel, all as somewhat deep under this earth as it is above. It is all round and condensed.) entire and studded with stars. 1 Truly the sun goes by God's command between heaven and earth, by day above and by night under the earth. She is ever running about the earth, and so light shines under the earth by night as it does above our heads by day. . . . The sun is very great : as broad she is, from what books say, as the whole compass of the earth ; but she appears to us very small, because she is very far from our sight. Every- thing, the further it is, the less it seems. . . . The moon and all the stars receive light from the great sun. The sun is typical of our Saviour, Christ, who is the sun of right- eousness, as the bright stars are typical of the believers in God's congregation, who shine in good converse. . . . No one of us has any light of goodness except by the grace of Christ, who is called the sun of true righteousness. . . . Truly the moon's orb is always whole and perfect, although it does not always shine quite equally. Every day the moon's light is waxing or waning four points through the sun's light. . . . We speak of new moon according to the custom of men, but the moon is always the same, though its light often 1 Educated persons realized all through the Middle Ages that the earth was a sphere. Bede of whose work, On The Nature of Things, the present treatise is an abridgment says (Chapter XLVI) : " We speak of the globe of the earth, not .that it is perfectly round, owing to the inequalities of mountains and plains, but because, if all its lines be considered, it has the perfect form of a sphere." He adds that stars far to the south are not visible to northern peoples, owing to the convexity of the earth.