[logtempo]

Are they aligned because they are famous, or are they famous because they are aligned? Or are they aligned because if I pick 7 famous monuments aligned I can draw a line, look over my shoulder and say "ho look, if we draw a line it match!"

From wikipedia, the list of St Michael churches:

    St. Michael's Church (disambiguation)
    Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel (es), San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato Mexico World Heritage Site
    Sacra di San Michele (Saint Michael's Abbey), near Turin, Italy
    Pfarrei Brixen St. Michael with the White Tower, Brixen, Italy
    Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, in Brussels, Belgium
    Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy, France – a World Heritage Site
    St. Michael's Cathedral Basilica (Toronto), Canada
    St. Michael's Cathedral (Izhevsk), Russia
    St. Michael's Cathedral, Qingdao, China
    Chudov Monastery in the Moscow Kremlin
    Cathedral of the Archangel in the Moscow Kremlin – a World Heritage Site
    Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo, Gargano, Italy – a World Heritage Site
    St Michael's Mount, Cornwall, UK
    St. Michael, Minnesota
    St. Michael's Basilica, Miramichi, Canada
    Skellig Michael, off the Irish west coast – a World Heritage Site
    St Michael's Cathedral, Coventry, UK
    St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, Kyiv, Ukraine
    St. Michael's Church, Vienna in Vienna, Austria
    Tayabas Basilica, Tayabas, Quezon, Philippines
    St. Michael's Church, Berlin, Germany
    San Miguel Church (Manila), Philippines
    St. Michael's Jesuit church, Munich, Germany
    St. Michael's Cathedral, Belgrade in Belgrade, Serbia
    Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel in Gamu, Isabela, Philippines
    Mission San Miguel Arcángel, San Miguel, California, United States, one of the California Missions
    St Michael at the North Gate, Oxford, UK
    St. Michael's Roman Catholic church, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
    St. Michael's Church, Mumbai, India
    Church of St. Michael, Štip, Republic of North Macedonia
    St Michael and All Angels Church, Polwatte
    St Michael's Church, Churchill, UK
    San Miguel Arcangel Church, Marilao, Bulacan, Philippines
    San Miguel Arcangel Church, San Miguel, Bulacan, Philippines
    St Michael the Archangel, Llanyblodwel, England

[Archelaos]

This Wikipedia list has a lot more St. Michael's churches:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Michael%27s_Church

Around 150 in Europe alone.

For the next hackaton: Write a programme to find all possible approximately straight lines between any 7 of these churches.

[mikhailfranco]

There really are many more. I know of 3 in a small area of Somerset not on the list, but 2 of them are ruined, and hence not currently dedicated:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_St_Michael_and_All_A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrow_Mump

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Tor

Churches were often dedicated to St. Michael when they were built over pagan sanctuaries, because St. Michael could fight the old heathen devil. Another example would be in Brent Knoll, next to the iron age hill fort:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Michael%27s_Church,_Brent_K...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Knoll_Camp

That is undoubtedly the case for both St. Michael's Mount (Cornwall) and Mont Saint Michel (Normandy) in the list of 7. They are both perfect defensive sites, on islands close to the shore, but accessible by causeways at low tide, and hence certainly occupied from prehistoric times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Michael%27s_Mount

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont-Saint-Michel

[mikhailfranco]

P.S. I added these to Wikipedia, but note there is a whole separate page for Michael with All his Angels:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Michael_and_All_Angels_Chur...

[acjohnson55]

Also, allow the map projection to vary, to produce lines of different curvatures.

[AdmiralAsshat]

See: ley lines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_line?wprov=sfla1

[mikehotel]

Also: Alignments of random points https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignments_of_random_points

[aworks]

I don't particularly care if if these line up, but I find the list interesting:

Multiple churches in the Philippines presumably due to Spanish Catholicism.

I didn't grow up in California so I don't know the Spanish missions very well (standard elementary school fare). I had never heard of San Miguel.

I've also never heard of Polwatte or Miramichi.

Two churches in the "Moscow Kremlin?" What's that about? And what's the story about Qingdao?

And why just the name of a state, Minnesota, instead of a more precise location?

Then I go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Michael%27s_Church and it disambiguates from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Michael_and_All_Angels_Chur.... Finally, yet another long list in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Saint_Michael

[abrenuntio]

Definitely not ordinary places. Perhaps Stella Maris, the end point, is the most fascinating of all because of its association with the prophet Elijah.

[simonh]

There are apparently 816 churches dedicated to the saint in England alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedications_in_the_Church_of_E...

[Maken]

But only 7 of those are Cathedrals, and only those are aligned.

[tecleandor]

I think none of them are cathedrals. There's a couple islands, a mount, a shrine, a monastery, a temple...

[throw46365]

The fact that St Michael's Mount is on this line is enough to show that it is nonsense. It's an unbelievably lovely place and it was a site for pilgrims, but its ecclesiastical connection to St Michael is relatively weedy; a brief period of time.

It's far more interesting to me that Perkin Warbeck occupied it!

[rob74]

Yup... actually the linked Wikipedia page doesn't use the word "cathedrals", but they are remarkable in other ways (long history, pilgrimage sites etc.). Ok, Skellig Michael is now remembered mainly for being Luke Skywalker's island in Star Wars VII/VIII, but still...

[jfengel]

It annoyed me as soon as it appeared at the tail end of TLJ. I've wanted to visit it for a long time, but it's a bit of a hassle to get to. I can only imagine that it's even harder now that it's a pilgrimage site for Star Wars fans, and not just rock-botherers like myself.

[nabla9]

>.. are aligned.

Only on Mercator projection that is younger than many of the sites on the line.

Oder of things:

1. There were bunch of monasteries (not cathedrals), not aligned on any direct line.

2. Mercator invented a projection.

3. Someone looked at map using Mercator a projection and invented story about ley lines.

[jameshart]

The Mercator projection has the property that lines on it are of constant bearing. You don’t need a map projection to follow a line of constant bearing - you just need to head towards the point where the same star rises every night (mostly. Over a short enough number of nights, it works, anyway).

[nabla9]

Nobody could have discovered that these points are in the line of constant bearing without maps.

(hiking in straight line and jumping into boat at the point where land ends is not how people travel)

[unholiness]

> Only on Mercator projection that is younger than many of the sites on the line.

People have been specifying locations in terms of NS/EW coordinates since the greeks. Celestial navigation ensures we always have a clear idea where north is, and when two locations are at the same latitude. It's the most natural way we've understood and discussed far-away places.

I don't think it's fair to say mercator invented this projection so much as he famously published maps which used it.

(btw, I agree this line is a complete retrospective coincidence, just not with this particular argument)

[nabla9]

Just like weberer you seem to think that there is only one projection of earth into 2d map.

Mercator is special projection that was not used before him. Different projections give different distortions.

[weberer]

I think too much weight in this discussion is given to the Mercator projection since that's the specific one we use today. People were making 2D maps for much longer than that. Flat maps existed in the medieval era.

[nabla9]

All maps on paper are flat. There are multiple projections into 2d map.

There is no reason to assume that the lines align in other projections.

[Maken]

You are right, not all the temples in the "line" are cathedrals, which does make the entire story less credible.

[jfengel]

"Cathedral" is a very specific kind of church, but not necessarily all that significant. It's where they happened to have centered a local bishopric. (A cathedra is a chair, specifically one that a bishop sits in.)

So there are a lot of magnificent churches that aren't cathedrals (Sagrada Familia, Westminster Abbey, St. Peter's in the Vatican), and a lot of cathedrals that are actually rather dull architecturally.

[Maken]

Precisely cathedrals are rare enough that seven of them in a line dedicated to the same archangel could no be a coincidence. I bet you can make similar lines if you look for churchess and sanctuaries dedicated to another important saint or saintess.