The Christian sky of Julius Schiller on plates 22 and 23

What the sources say

• Plates 22 and 23 show the ‘Coelum Stellatum Christianum’ of Julius Schiller of Augsburg. Cellarius prints the title of the work: published at Augsburg in the year of salvation 1627, with imperial privilege. ^[1]
• The title names the people behind it: Johann Bayer’s Uranometria (new, more accurate and richer than the earlier one), Mathias Kager for the picture, Lucas Kilian for the figures, Caspar Scheck for the stars, and Andreas Aperger as printer. ^[1]
• Cellarius gives Schiller’s aim: to abolish the pagan figures (bears, dragons, serpents, centaurs and similar pagan trifles) and put others in their place, with names and figures from Scripture. He quotes Daniel 12, ‘they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament’, and quotes Isidore of Seville, Lactantius and Augustine against the pagan star names. ^[1]
• Cellarius admits that it might sound ridiculous to say that Christ is in Peter and looks at this or that saint in quartile or sextile; but the phrases can be changed, he writes: one says that Christ is in the constellation of Peter and is in conjunction or opposition with the star of Moses. ^[1]
• He reports the judgment of Peiresc, as Gassendi gave it in his Life of Peiresc (book 4, p. 135): Peiresc praised the piety, but did not approve of upsetting what had come down from the oldest times. He did not fear that astronomers would change the old names, since they would see no gain in it. He had also seen at Vercelli such old figures in a church, some twelve hundred years old, and said they did no harm to Christian piety. ^[1]
• Cellarius’s own conclusion: Schiller showed his pious zeal by his immense labour, but he did not manage to move the old asterisms from their place and put his own there. So Cellarius gives two hemispheres drawn from Schiller’s work: the first (Prius) shows the front part of the celestial globe between the two poles, the second (Posterius) the rear part. ^{[1], [2], [3]}
• The Christian sky has four parts. The planets receive seven holy persons; the zodiac becomes the Circle or Crown of the Holy Apostles, with the twelve apostles in place of the twelve signs; the northern hemisphere is adorned with persons and things from the New Testament, the southern with those from the Old Testament. ^[1]
• The planets: Adam is Saturn, Moses Jupiter, Joshua Mars, Christ the Sun, John the Baptist Venus (the morning star), Elijah the Tishbite Mercury and the Blessed Virgin Mary the Moon. Cellarius adds the memory verses of Jacob Bartsch for this list. ^[1]

Some of the figures

• The Archangel Michael takes the first constellation, at the pole, in the place of the Little Bear. The Great Bear becomes the ‘Navicula S. Petri’, Saint Peter’s little boat, a type of the Catholic Church under the protection of Michael. ^[1]
• The Sepulchre of Christ is a group of 39 stars in the place of Andromeda. King David takes the place of the Great Dog. Abel the Just, holding the altar of the sacrifice, has 16 stars in the place of the Flying Fish, the Dorado and the Large Magellanic Cloud. ^[1]

Noah’s Ark in place of the ship Argo

• Cellarius writes that the Ark of Noah, or the Patriarch Noah, with 43 stars, is seen in the place where, according to the tales of the poets, the ship Argo of the Argonauts was put. ^[1]
• On plate 22 the ship stands at lower left with the label ‘Arca Noë, Al. Argo Navis’ (Noah’s Ark, otherwise Argo Navis). We read that label on the plate itself. ^[2]
• This is the Ark that our page about the Dutch voyage around Cape Horn describes in its section on Noah’s Ark and the ship Argo. ^{[1], [2]}

• Noah’s Ark in the southern sky, on the Cape Horn page

What we do not know

• Schiller’s own book: we did not read it; everything above is what Cellarius writes about it and what the plates show.
• How closely Cellarius’s plates follow Schiller’s own engravings: we did not compare them.
• How Schiller’s contemporaries and later astronomers judged the Christian sky, apart from Peiresc as Cellarius reports him: we have not read those sources.
• The numbers of stars: we read them in the rough text layer of a scan, and give only those that were clear.