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Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

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Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#71

Post by robertlagrant »

randomtoast wrote: post #64
robertlagrant wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I suppose even if you have 7 that line up, they may not fall in your band. To remove that constraint, so it's just any band, I think it should be more like: given a cathedral is in a particular place, how likely is it that six other cathedrals fall in a 50km wide band aross Europe.

Okay, GPT4 said there a just 189 non-overlapping 50km bands (horizontal, vertical, and diagnoal) in Europe and then continued to calculate the chance to land those 7 points in any of the 189 bands and gave a result in the order of 10^-12.

But diagonal at what angle? :)

I think if you set the probability of the first one at 1, then the rest works perfectly at any angle of band. I could be wrong, but intuitively that seems correct.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#72

Post by smeej »

regularfry wrote: post #50
searedsteak wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the bigger question is whether or not the projection used at the time of design was one that would show the straight line. The Mercator projection was first invented in 1569 [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection

This has to be the core of it. If the underlying question is "was this alignment intentional" then you could start by asking whether there are extant maps with better cathedral alignment than Mercator. These places are old . Skellig Michael goes back past 823AD, Mont-Saint-Michel is about the same sort of age, and the Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo goes back to 490AD(ish). San Michele Arcangelo is on top of a pre-Chr…

Why do we need to assume widespread maps for this? Or even maps of the entire globe? A regional map showing barely more than a rectangle with this as its diagonal would be sufficient to get the point across to the average layperson.

Virtually everything in church design is meant to communicate truths of the faith to illiterate laypeople. That's part of why pictures feature so prominently. They're telling stories to people who can't read. The sense of space, and the drawing of the attention upward, they're also communicating to people on purpose.

If the argument is that the sites were not intentionally built in a line, that it just happened this way, that there just happen to be seven prominent hills with churches built on them that refer to St. Michael (or 6 and Mt. Carmel, which is associated with him in another way), I guess that's a different conversation, but I thought the idea here was that these were lined up somehow on purpose, at least for the latter built ones, and were intentionally built to be "in a line" by some meaning of the term.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#73

Post by mensetmanusman »

willis936 wrote: post #8

Cathedrals are the highest tier of vanity projects of one of the most powerful institutions in written history. It's little surprise that the makers knew the top three most import factors for real estate value: location, location, location. Are they pointing to anything though?

Harvard has more wealth than the Vatican.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#74

Post by wolframhempel »

arethuza wrote: post #14

When I was a kid (11/12 or so) I was fascinated by finding alignments between ancient things in the landscape (of which there are many here in Scotland!) - eventually I came to the realisation that given the scale of the maps I was looking at (1:25,000) that you can find loads of meaningless alignments if you look hard enough...

I studied art history, and this always bothered me when learning about Christian symbolism. When reading about numbers related to cathedrals, such as the number of statues on a ledge or the number of archivolts (the bands around doors), so much emphasis was put on the meaning of these particular numbers by whoever authored the piece. Three related to the Holy Trinity, four represented the four Gospels, five alluded to the number of wounds Christ received, seven related to the days of creation, sins, or virtues - and don't even get me started on twelve.

In fact, as an architect of a cathedral, you pretty much had to make 22 or more of anything to avoid having a meaning ascribed.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#75

Post by dougdimmadome »

Skellig Michael is not a Cathedral by any stretch of the imagination. It is a cluster of stone beehive huts on an island. It should be recognisable to most people these days as the place Luke Skywalker was hanging out in the new Star Wars sequels, as the movies used it as a filming location in 2015 and 2017.

It's a UNESCO world heritage site and a huge tourist attraction long before Star Wars, but it is definitely not a Cathedral.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#76

Post by nashashmi »

chippy wrote: post #66
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which isn't really all that special. In England alone, there are 816 churches named after St Michael. He's pretty popular. It'd be a lot more spectacular if they were all named after someone much more obscure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedications_in_the_Church_of_E...

That's right. I would actually expect there to be a few more than 7! And if we extend the search to all placenames dedicated to St Michael quite a bit more! It's not pure coincidence but it is a kind of observation error as highlighted in other comment. Increasing and decreasing the variables and measurements effects the odds. Basically you can get a line between many things on earth, but 1) the dimensions of that li…

In that case he should plot which of them match the geodesic line curve

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#77

Post by dougdimmadome »

dougdimmadome wrote: post #75

Skellig Michael is not a Cathedral by any stretch of the imagination. It is a cluster of stone beehive huts on an island. It should be recognisable to most people these days as the place Luke Skywalker was hanging out in the new Star Wars sequels, as the movies used it as a filming location in 2015 and 2017. It's a UNESCO world heritage site and a huge tourist attraction long before Star Wars, but it is definitely no…

...and, fun fact, the "porgs" only exist because the island is also a wildlife refuge and home to thousands of birds who happily walked across the set during takes, so they had to be CGI'ed out.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#78

Post by Maken »

nabla9 wrote: post #67
Maken wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But only 7 of those are Cathedrals, and only those are aligned.

>.. are aligned. Only on Mercator projection that is younger than many of the sites on the line. Oder of things: 1. There were bunch of monasteries (not cathedrals), not aligned on any direct line. 2. Mercator invented a projection. 3. Someone looked at map using Mercator a projection and invented story about ley lines.

You are right, not all the temples in the "line" are cathedrals, which does make the entire story less credible.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#79

Post by weberer »

nabla9 wrote: post #67
Maken wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But only 7 of those are Cathedrals, and only those are aligned.

>.. are aligned. Only on Mercator projection that is younger than many of the sites on the line. Oder of things: 1. There were bunch of monasteries (not cathedrals), not aligned on any direct line. 2. Mercator invented a projection. 3. Someone looked at map using Mercator a projection and invented story about ley lines.

I think too much weight in this discussion is given to the Mercator projection since that's the specific one we use today. People were making 2D maps for much longer than that. Flat maps existed in the medieval era.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#80

Post by jimktrains2 »

randomtoast wrote: post #64
robertlagrant wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I suppose even if you have 7 that line up, they may not fall in your band. To remove that constraint, so it's just any band, I think it should be more like: given a cathedral is in a particular place, how likely is it that six other cathedrals fall in a 50km wide band aross Europe.

Okay, GPT4 said there a just 189 non-overlapping 50km bands (horizontal, vertical, and diagnoal) in Europe and then continued to calculate the chance to land those 7 points in any of the 189 bands and gave a result in the order of 10^-12.

You could have two points in 2 of your non overlapping bands that are less than a band's width apart.

Also, the probability of the first 2 points will always be 100% because they define the line.

Also, it's not 7 random points, it's 7 of thousands of random points.

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