Lunar syzygies and quadratures A letter to the Denizens of the Moon

Abstract

The circulation and fortune of texts is subject to the vicissitudes of fate and power: while there are eras in which all kinds of ideas are freely spread, there are others in which a conflict of interests hinders their transmission by means of oppressive instruments. A typical example of these was the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition that, being in charge of securing orthodoxy, promulgated edicts for the prohibition of texts and processed authors of sermons, collections of poems or any other work that could contain propositions it considered heretical. Such is the case of a manuscript forgotten in the archives of censure, that circulated as anonymous in the province of Yucatán towards the end of the XVIII century and which was submitted to scrutiny by the Holy Office, but whose content remained inaccessible to most of the readers of its time: Lunar syzygies and quadratures adjusted to the Mérida of Yucatán meridian by an anctitona or denizen of the Moon, and sent to the Bachelor Don Ambrosio de Echeverría, tuner of funeral Kyrie in the Parish of Jesus of said city, and to the current professor of Logarithmic in the Town of Mama of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the year of the Lord 1775.