Eclipses in the medieval sky – let’s step back into the medieval and Tudor period, where solar eclipses were not just celestial phenomena but omens that stirred both awe and dread. This episode explores how these events influenced everything from royal decisions to common superstitions, with a special look at figures like John Dee, who navigated the fine line between science and the mystical.
Today we are talking about solar eclipses and astronomical events during the Tudor period. I’m a bit of an astronomy kind of nerd and I’ve done a lot of episodes on astronomy in the Tudor period, math and scientific discovery during the 16th century. There’s like a lot of episodes on that. Links below.
So throughout history, people have been fascinated by the movement of the stars. I actually did also an episode on The Music of the Spheres which was the belief that the planets and the celestial bodies emit vibrations as they spin, which last year scientists were actually able to prove, like part of string theory or something. it gets like really complicated.
But the whole point is, people in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance before the Enlightenment, believed that these sounds, these vibrations that these bodies would make as they spun could be used to help treat illnesses.
So there was this whole branch of science called The Music of the Spheres before Coldplay made an album called The Music of the Spheres and it was all about how to treat illnesses and how to treat sicknesses based on the movement of the planet.
This is a little bit simplistic but it’s kind of the idea that if you had a migraine, you listen to a chord in a flat major because the planets and the bodies that had control over pain in your head vibrate at a tone that is compatible with a flat major, like that’s kind of the whole science of this thing, fascinating to me.
But the point is, people always have looked up at the sky and wondered about what was out there. They’ve searched for answers, philosophical questions they’ve seen, omens in the celestial bodies, astrologers and astronomers were the same interpreting the stars to understand life itself.
So when major astronomical events happen, it goes to figure that it would often be upsetting to people. It would scare people especially because they didn’t have a warning that it was going to happen. It could mean omens of war, of famine, of disease, or it could mean an important birth or a death or an invasion.
So we’re now going to go through a list of some of the major astronomical events in English History specifically and how they were interpreted.
First off, King Henry’s Eclipse. Henry was the son of William the Conqueror. He died in 1133, at the same time there was a total solar eclipse that lasted over 4 and a half minutes. In the manuscript by historian William of Malmesbury recounts that the hideous darkness agitated the hearts of men. After the death, a struggle for the throne through the kingdom into chaos and civil war.
That’s the period known as the Anarchy when Christ and his angels slept, I think was the term that they used. So this would be the period where Matilda fought for her right to the throne against her cousin Stephen, leaving a really sour taste in the mouths of Englishmen over women rulers that would last for another 400 years. Matilda’s experience would actually affect of course, Henry VIII and his quest for a male heir for centuries later.
In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, there’s also a passage that recounts this eclipse. In this year, King Henry went overseas at Lammas. And on the second day, as he lay and slept on the ship, the day darkened over all lands, and the sun became as if it were a three-night-old moon, and the stars about it at midday. Men were greatly wonder-stricken and were affrighted and said that a great thing should come thereafter.
So it did, for the same year, the king died on the following day after St Andrew’s Mass Day, December 2nd in Normandy. Just a few years later, William of Malmesbury would record another eclipse on March 20, 1140. Malmesbury thought that this foretold King Stephen’s capture in the Battle of Lincoln of 1141.
Then in 1433, let’s go to Scotland, there was the Black Hour. One of the most celebrated eclipses of the Middle Ages. It plunged Scotland even down to some of Yorkshire into total darkness. The darkness supposedly arrived at 3p.m. on June 17, 1433 and was very deep so that people could see the stars.
20 years later, there was a major lunar eclipse right before the Fall of Constantinople. In 324, Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital of his new realm to ancient Byzantium and renamed it Constantinople. This new capital survived the fall of Rome and ruled the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea region for more than a thousand years.
The Roman government remained strong in this region even after it fell in Europe. The ottoman Turks first laid siege to the city on April 5, 1453. On May 22, there was a lunar eclipse viewable from Africa, Asia, and Europe. Supposedly the moon stayed in a crescent shape, the sign of Islam for several hours. Both the Christian inhabitants of the city and the besieging army saw this as an omen.
Several days later, there was a thick fog around the city which was unheard of at that time of year. Chroniclers believed it was the holy spirit leaving the city and Constantinople finally fell on May 29.
Now let’s go back to England 30 years later, on March 16, 1485, there was an eclipse in London right after Richard III’s wife Anne Neville died. Many of Henry Tudor’s supporters saw this as a bad omen for the Yorkist cause and it encouraged them in their Invasion plans.
Let’s talk about our final astronomical event. In 1572, the Danish astronomer Tycoh Brahe identified a bright new star in the constellation of Cassiopeia. This star was even brighter than Venus. It appeared to everybody that it was a newly formed star but then it faded after several months which seriously confused the astronomers of Renaissance Europe.
People like John Dee wrote out descriptions with their calculations and the mathematics behind them. Even Queen Elizabeth summoned the mathematician and astrologer Thomas Allen to have his advice about the new star that appeared in Cassiopeia, to which he gave his judgment very learnedly according to the antiquarian John Aubrey.
Turns out they weren’t looking at a star at all but a supernova. Scientists still study the light remnants of that supernova to see what those early astronomers saw. Copernicus published his work on the movement of the planets in the mid-15th century. This would literally turn the interpretation of our place in the universe on its head, rocking both the religious and the scientific communities.
Many astronomers in the newly broken-with-Rome Europe adopted the Copernicium position that the Earth rotated around the sun. Most notably John Dee. So whatever your plans are to watch the eclipse today, keep in mind as you experience it that you are participating in event that has tied humanity together since the very beginning of life itself.
Do you get goosebumps thinking about it? I get goosebumps thinking about it. People looking up at these events and wondering what it all means and it’s one of those things that like we do it now with our fun glasses, and in the past people did it, and in the future people will do it. Who knows if people living from space will do it and maybe they’ll like see the Earth in front of the sun. It’s just mind-blowing to me I love it. It’s like one of these things that ties us all together.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast,  one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.