Today’s featured entry from the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science pages:
“The Incomparable Monsignor: Francesco Bianchini’s world of science, history, and court intrigue” (CLICK HERE for it)
This book, published in 2022, is a readable, illustrated, informative work that portrays a Catholic man of many talents, supported by and on good terms with his Pope and his Church. Among his accomplishments were writing a universal history from the creation to the fall of Assyria; discovering, excavating, and interpreting ancient buildings; and designing a papal collection of antiquities that was later partially realized in the Vatican museums. He was also responsible for confirming and publicizing Newton’s theories of light and color; discovering several comets; and building the most beautiful and exact heliometer in the world in the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome.
The Faith and Science pages (F&S) are a unique resource on the web. The material in F&S is stuff that you will find nowhere else (or at least not without a lot of digging). Featured areas on F&S include “History of Church and Science”; “Church and Science Today”; “Science and Scripture”; “Science, Religion & Society”; “Life in the Universe”; “Cosmology”; and more. The level of the F&S material ranges from being accessible to all audiences, with even some material oriented toward young readers, up to material for university specialists.
The F&S pages, like this blog, are made possible by the Vatican Observatory Foundation (the Vatican Observatory’s US operation that operates the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, or VATT, in Arizona). CLICK HERE to support the F&S pages, this blog, and the operation of the VATT.
