Theory A 17th Century Attempt to Christianize The Night Sky!

At the time when German astronomer Johann Bayer, by 1603 A.D., in Augsburg, Germany, was working to a first modern system of stars' designation, the 'Coelum stellatum Christianum,' or 'Christian Starry Heavens' by Julius Schiller, a lawyer in the same city, was a early 17th century endeavour to replace all pagan constellations in the sky with Christian ones. Bayer himself helped into. That endeavour likely was linked to the Counter-Reformation mouvement, a stance which was aiming to fight against Protestantism or the pagan trends of Renaissance. Such a work further illustrated a new engraving technique which had been invented shortly before in Italy, with shading yielded through swelling of the engraved line. Schiller's work on a other hand, was likely among the first to figure stars as if from seen from the Earth, as most sky atlases until know had been figuring those as if placed on a globe and seen from outside of it. Schiller also used Arabic numbers to identify stars rather than Bayer's letters. Schiller's endeavour, about fifty constellations in total, which was published in Augsburg, Germany, by 1627 however did never took hold, as the move of a astronomical description of the night sky kept moving towards modernity and science

The Coelum stellatum Christianum main features may be summarized like the following. Twelve zodiacal constellations, generally, were renamed for the Twelve Apostles as Taurus, the Bull, for example, turned St. Andrew, or St. Peter Aries, the Ram, and St. Matthew Sagittarius, the Archer. Constellations in the northern sky reflected people of the New Testament as in the southern sky people of the Old Testament. Planets, the Sun and Moon even were to be replaced by Biblical characters. In terms of constellations, St. Michael replaced the Little Bear and St. Peter' boat the Great Bear. Eridanus, the River let room to the Red Sea, and the Ark of Noah the Ship of the Argonauts. Hercules, Hercules turned the Maggi, or St. Helen and the Holy Cross replaced Cygnus, the Swan. St. Raphael took possession of the sky's southern pole area. Lupus, the Wolf left room to Jacob; Maria of Magdala took the place of Cassiopeia, the Queen. St. Paul replaced Perseus, Perseus as Orion, the Hunter was St. Joseph, Canis Major, the Great Dog transformed itself into King David as the Easter Lamb Canis Minor, the Little Dog!

Modern Times generally kept a time when celestial reference were not quite ascertained, with varied attempts both lay or Christian in terms of constellations' names