Thursday, June 25, 2026

It is the 25th of June 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

I’m going to take you behind the scenes today- having made this show, daily, for years, I have a lot of resources and reference books that give me “on this day” events in history (I also note, whenever I’m reading specific events and people, that I mark down in my notes app for later use). As I was perusing the various possible topics for this, on the 25th of June, I came across a short line that stopped me in my tracks:

 

“June 25, 1178, 5 Canterbury monks report something exploding on the Moon”

 

As I continued to dig, I found another reference: On 25 June 1178, five eyewitnesses visited a Canterbury monk named Gervase, claiming to have seen the crescent moon "spewing out fire, hot coals, and sparks.”

 

And so I knew, wherever the research took me, this would be the topic for today’s show.

 

The Canterbury Monk in question was one Gervase. The Dictionary Of National Biography tells us that this was the Gervase who “became a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, on the first Saturday in Lent, 16 Feb. 1163… The new archbishop, Thomas Becket, received his profession, and it was he who conferred holy orders upon him. So this puts him in the orbit of the famous murdered Becket. He was also in correspondence with one of the Kings of his era- Richard I… that’s right… the Lionhearted… ooh de lally, he was a contemporary of Robin Hood (if you believe in legends and talking foxes). And Gervase was a chronicler- his two-volume chronicle follows the reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I. And it is in this chronicle- first volume, page 276, that we read of the events of the Sunday before the Feast of John the Baptist (the 25th of June by our Calendar) that 5 witnesses came to Gervase with this story:

 

"the upper horn [of the moon] split in two… From the midpoint of the division, a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out, over a considerable distance, fire, hot coals, and sparks. Meanwhile, the body of the Moon, which was below, writhed, as it were in anxiety, and to put it in the words of those who reported it to me and saw it with their own eyes, the Moon throbbed like a wounded snake. Afterward, it resumed its proper state. This phenomenon was repeated a dozen times or more, the flame assuming various twisting shapes at random and then returning to normal. Then, after these transformations, the Moon from horn to horn, that is, along its whole length, took on a blackish appearance”

The five men, according to Gervase, “prepared to stake their honor on an oath that they have made no addition or falsification”.

What in the Moonfall could this have been?

Last century, a Soviet Lunar probe took pictures of a crater, believed to be created recently (for Lunar craters), that they would name after Giordano Bruno, the heretic executed for, among other things, claiming that other stars had planets in their orbit.

A geologist, Jack Hartung, noted that this crater on the upper horizon matched the “upper horn” of the monk's description, and so perhaps they saw the crater being formed by an asteroid hitting the moon.

However, the scientists, always poking holes in our fanciful theories, concluded that had this been the case, many more than 5 monks would have seen the fantastic show- in fact, observers of space, plentiful around the globe in the 12th century, would have seen it. An article in Science magazine from 2001, titled “Nothing but Moonshine,” notes that it was more likely a much smaller meteor that burst into flames in the Earth's atmosphere, lined up with the moon, on that fateful night that the men saw. Spectacular, maybe even making the moon look to “throb like a wounded snake,” but not the moon crater-creating event once supposed.

The moon has long been associated with heavenly portents and signs- the blood red moon of the first crusade was noted just a generation prior to this event, and a lunar eclipse would be visible just as Constantinople fell in 1453… but the “explosion on the moon” observed by monks on this day in 1178 was likely nothing more than a meteor shower… oh well.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Paul’s words to the Galatians in chapter 5, verses 2 through 6

2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 25th of June 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who is a big fan of Moonfall- the 2022 movie that posits the moon is an ancient interstellar Ark filled with a swarm of alien AI creatures that attack the earth… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who knows that those medievals thought certain mental illnesses were caused by the moon and thus “moonstruck” or “lunatics”- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.