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One should go to the citation to see the graphics.
from
https://www.medievalists.net/2024/04/medieval-solar-eclipses/

How medieval people described solar eclipses

Solar eclipses are one of our most remarkable episodes of natural
phenomena. This was true as well in the Middle Ages, which are told in
ten accounts from around the medieval world.

There are thousands of accounts of solar eclipses from medieval
chronicles, scientific works and other sources. Most are quite short
with few details. However, some offer interesting details, including how
people and animals reacted to them. Whereas, medieval astronomers were
able to predict the coming of an eclipse with a great detail of
accuracy, one imagines that most people would only know that it was
occuring when it happened.

In several of the accounts, the writers saw the eclipse as an omen or
sign foretelling that great events were about to happen. They would try
to connect the celestial event with the downfall of a kingdom or the
death of a ruler. Other accounts are more concerned with providing
scientific details. Here are ten accounts:

England – June 20, 540
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains 20 accounts of eclipses between the
years 538 and 1140. Here is one of them:

This year the sun was eclipsed on the twelfth day before the kalends of
July; and the stars showed themselves full nigh half an hour over nine.

Constantinople, Byzantine Empire – December 22, 968
The History of Leo the Deacon describes an eclipse that occurred just
before Christmas:

While the emperor was thus engaged in Syria, about the time of the
winter solstice an eclipse of the sun took place, such as had never
occurred before, except for the one that took place at the time of the
Passion of the Lord on account of the madness of the Jews, when they
committed the great sin of nailing the Creator of all things to the
Cross. The nature of the eclipse was as follows. On the 22nd of
December, at the fourth hour of the day, in calm, clear weather,
darkness covered the earth, and all the brighter stars were visible. One
could see the disk of the sun dark and unlighted, and a dim and faint
gleam, like a delicate headband, illuminating the edge of the disk all
the way around. Gradually the sun passed by the moon (for the latter
could be seen screening off the former in a direct line), and sent out
its own rays, which again filled the earth with light. People were
terrified at the novel and unaccustomed sight, and propitiated the
divinity with supplications, as was fitting. At that time I myself was
living in Byzantium, pursuing my general education.

Cairo, Egypt – December 13, 977
Cairo was still a new city in the tenth century, and here we have a
report where a group of scholars met to watch an eclipse:

This solar eclipse was in the early morning of Thursday the 28th of the
month of Rabi ‘al-Akhir, in the year 367 of al-Hijrah… (date on Persian calendar)… We, a group of scholars (ten names are given), attended at al-Qarafah (a district of Cairo) in the Mosque of Abu Ja’far Ahmad ibn
Nasr al-Maghribi to watch this eclipse. Everyone waited for the
beginning of this eclipse. It began to be perceived when the altitude of
the Sun was more than 15 degrees but less than 16 degrees. (Those)
present all agreed that about 8 digits of the Sun’s diameter were
eclipsed, that is (a little) less than 7 digits of surface. The Sun
completely cleared when its altitude was more than 33 degrees by about
1/3 of a degree, as estimated by me, and agreed by all those present.


Drawing of a solar ellipsis in Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis., by
Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius -Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, ms.
NKS 218 4°.
Cluny, France – June 29, 1033
The 11th-century chronicler Rudolph Glabber includes an account of a
partial eclipse. Glabber’s writing is heavily skewed to being very
religious with a millenarianism feel. He was also loose with the truth,
with one example being the story at the end of this section – the Pope
would be forced to leave Rome, but this probably did not happen for
another three years.

In that same year, a thousand after the Lord’s Passion, on Friday, 29
June, the twenty-eighth day of the lunar month (of June), there occurred
a terrible event, an eclipse or obscuring of the sun from the sixth to
the eighth hour. Now the sun itself took on the colour of sapphire, and
its upper part it looked like the moon in its last quarter. Each saw his neighbour looking pale as through unto death, everything seemed to be
bathed in a saffron vapour. Then extreme fear and terror gripped the
hearts of men, for they understood that this omen portended some
dreadful affliction which would fall upon mankind. That very day, the
feast of the birth of the Apostles, in the church of St Peter, some of
the Roman princes conspired together and rebelled against the Roman
Pontiff. They sought to kill him, but failed and only expelling him from
his see. But, as we have already said, because of this and other
insolent deeds, the emperor hastened thither and restored him.

Baghdad – June 20, 1061
Ibn al-Jawzi records this:

On Wednesday, when two nights remained to the completion of Jumada
al-Aula, two hours after sunrise, the Sun was totally eclipsed. There
was darkness and the birds fell while flying. The astrologers claimed
that one-sixth of the Sun should have remained [uneclipsed] but nothing
of it did so. The Sun reappeared after four hours and a fraction [of an
hour]. The eclipse was not in the whole of the Sun [i.e. it was not
total] in places other than Baghdad and its provinces.

Muhammad ibn Muhammad Shakir Ruzmah-‘i Nathani – Solar Eclipse – Walters W65913B
England – March 20, 1140
The chronicler William of Malmesbury reported this eclipse that took
place while England was in the midst of a civil war.

There was an eclipse throughout England, and the darkness was so great
that people at first thought the world was ending. Afterwards they
realised it was an eclipse, went out, and could see the stars in the
sky. It was thought and said by many, not untruly, that the king would
soon lose his power.

Brauweiler, Germany – October 26, 1147
The monk who wrote the Annales Brunwilarenses writes about this eclipse:

1147. On Sunday, the 7th day before the Kalends of November, a solar
eclipse occurred at the 3rd hour and persisted until after the sixth.
The eclipse stood fixed and motionless for a whole hour, as noted on the
clock [horologium]…. During this hour, a circle of different colours and spinning rapidly was said to be in the way.

China – June 25, 1275
Here is the first of two accounts of an eclipse that took place:

Te-yu reign period, 1st year, month VI, day keng-tzu, the first day of
the month. The Sun was eclipsed; it was total. The sky and Earth were in darkness. People could not be distinguished within a foot. The chickens
and ducks returned to roost. (It lasted) from the hour szu (9-11 h) to
the hour wu (11-13 h); then it regained its brightness.

The second account:

The Sun was eclipsed; it was total. Stars were seen. The chickens and
ducks all returned to roost. In the following year the Song dynasty was extinguished.

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Avignon, France – January 31, 1310
From Ptolomaei Lucensis Historia ecclesiasticae:

1310, on the last day of January, at the 8th hour at Avignon, there was
an eclipse of the Sun and it was unusually eclipsed, and was remarkably scintillating. There appeared just as at nightfall a single star,
according to the opinion of the crowd. Then indeed a notable semicircle
was seen, which lasted beyond the ninth hour.

Salamanca, Spain – July 29, 1478
From an account by a priest named Andrés Bernáldez

That year of one thousand four hundred and seventy-eight, twenty-nine
days of the month of July, Saint Martha’s day at noon, the Sun went into
an eclipse, the most frightening that ever those who were born until
then saw, as the Sun was completely covered and it stood black and the
stars appeared as it were at night; which lasted jammed that way for a
very long while, until been uncovered little by little, and people were
in great fear, and they fled into the churches, and never again did the
Sun return to its color, nor the day made clear as the days before it
used to be, and so it became very hazy.

Further Readings:
Stephenson, F. Richard, Historical Eclipses and Earth’s Rotation
(Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Stephenson, F. Richard, “Investigation of Medieval European Records of
Solar Eclipses,” Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol. 41 (2010)

Stephenson, F. Richard, and Said, S.S., “Accuracy of Eclipse
Observations Record in Medieval Arabic Chronicles,” Journal for the
History of Astronomy, Vol. 22 (1991)

Usó, María José Martínez, and Castillo, Francisco J. Marco, “The total eclipse of the sun of July 29, AD 1478, in contemporary Spanish
documents,” Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol. 54:2 (2023)

Top Image: Getty Museum MS. LUDWIG XV 4

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