Observing and Marvelling: Sun Dogs in the Margam Annals

Darlithoedd y Gymdeithas Mortimer

Yr Athro Giles Gasper â'r Athro Brian K. Tanner, Prifysgol Durham 

'In both the Cambridge and Dublin manuscripts of the Annals from the Cistercian house of Margam two distinctive diagrams are to be found. In the first case the representation seems to be of Sun Dogs, a meteorological phenomenon associated with refraction of sunlight in hexagonal ice crystals high in the atmosphere. Usually, two mock suns are observed distant 22° horizontally on either side of the sun. Dated to 1104 there are sufficient additional witnesses, though none with illustrations. The second illustration comes from 1233 at the very end of the annals, literally so in the case of the Cambridge manuscripts. There are differences between the Cambridge and Dublin diagrams and the Dublin manuscript adds more textual detail. The diagrams, as well as the descriptions, are unusual, the Cambridge image closely resembling a diagram of Sun Dogs seen by Edmond Halley and published in 1702. Diagrams of the 1233 phenomenon also appear in the Chronica majora and Liber additamentorum of Matthew Paris. In what follows we will explore, contextually and by examining the phenomena, how, and perhaps, why the authors, compilers, and copyists, were so struck by what had been seen and/or reported. Comparison within the Margam annals puts the diagrams into a broader context of interest, or not, in celestial and meteorological phenomena; comparison with other sources shows links across the marches and beyond. Taken as a whole, consideration of Sun Dogs opens a series of questions as to the purposes of monastic record. 

Professor Giles E. M. Gasper was educated at the University of Oxford and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto. He has been in post at Durham University since 2004, in the History Department and with close links to Theology & Religion, and is currently Deputy Executive Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. His areas of interest are the religious, intellectual, and cultural histories of the European Middle Ages, and its inheritances from Late Antiquity and the Early Church. Creation and the Natural World, the Economy of Salvation, and concepts of Order form his main themes of interest. These are explored through monastic and scholastic theology and science, historical writing, literary texts and craft and culinary manuals. Recent publications include a 5-volume series with Oxford University Press, The Scientific Works of Robert Grosseteste, featuring new editions, English translations, and interdisciplinary commentary. 

Brian K. Tanner is Emeritus Professor of Physics at Durham University. A Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Arts, he received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2012, and the Gabor Medal of the Institute of Physics in 2014. For over a decade, he has been a core research team member of the interdisciplinary Ordered Universe Project to study the scientific works of Robert Grosseteste.'

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