On the first day of each season at true noon, inside the Église Saint-Sulpice, the sun hits a small hole in the window high above the south transept, and on the spring and autumn equinox, it hits a brass marker just inside the altar. But why, you ask? It goes back almost three hundred years, to 1727, when the parish priest Jean Baptiste Languet de Gergy wanted to ensure the exactitude of the ecclesiastical calendar, particularly Easter and the moment the bells should ring. Clockmaker Henry Sully was tasked with the project, but passed away before it was finished, and it was picked up years later by Pierre Charles Le Monnier. If you look up at the south transept window on the right-hand edge, you will notice a vertical rectangular plate. Inside is a small hole with a glass aperture and an 80-foot focus lens through which, at the exact moment when the skies are clear, the sun flows and hits a designated spot within the church. On the winter solstice, the bullseye is on the marble gnomon on the wall of the north transept, and on the summer solstice, on the brass plate below the window. For years and one spring, summer, and autumn after another, I have tried to see this magic moment. There have been cloudy, rainy days and funerals in front of the altar, but this past spring and again on September 23, on this first day of autumn, the sky was clear, as was the altar, and with fellow nerdy folks I stood on the steps looking down at the brass marker, and at 1:41 pm the sun began to crawl across the marble to its bullseye. In this week's newest episode, I share all the details on the meridian, history, and the man who brought it all to life. For more, check out ClaudineHemingway.com check out a walk through Saint Sulpice https://youtu.be/GWPrXAceTFM Support the show
