Astronomy of the Earth-Moon system and the Eschatological Expectations of the Christian Historians of the 5th century CE

Abstract

This is a historian's view of how modern astronomy data can be used to discuss the shifting historical worldview of Late Antiquity. In this article an attemp is made to construct an approximate model of how the cycles of astronomical bodies' visible rotation aaffected the writing of history and self-representation of the Roman empire's powerful people. It is argued that while rare outstanding events like solar eclipses might have caused a short stir in the minds of the rulers and their environment, long-term cycles based on the synchronization of the Moon's phases with the solar calendar and the cycles of the planets lining up in the same disposition (in relationship to the Moon or without this relationship) were the foundation of astronomy-based Christian chronological system. The emergence of the Christian historical worldview in the 5th century was marked by appearance of a significant eschatological strain in it. Historians paid attention not only to the theology-defined signs of the end of the world, but also, as it has been suggested in modern studies, to the some outstanding celestial phenomena. In this paper I would like to address several criteria which may help understand what in the celestial motions interested the astronomers and historians of the 5th century. This paper uses the first approximation of astronomical data for solving the problem of how relevant the skies were for historians, although all numeric parameters are taken from the up-to-date astronomy reference publications. It is an attempt to understand whether the very basic approximations can be related to what historians know from the array of sources available to them. The analysis suggests that there is a whole array of occasions when the dates of astronomical events, received with the help of these basic approximations, coincide with the data from historical sources.