RELIGION AND GEOGRAPHY
The ancient Greeks, especially the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle,
had evolved theories of the earth's sphericity, which, while vague, were
basic for subsequent accurate ideas that developed later.
When Christianity sprang into existence Eusebius, St. John Chrysostom,
and Cosmos evolved a complete description of the earth. They considered
the earth as a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas, as a
kind of house, with heaven as its upper story and the earth as its
ground floor. To the north of the earth was a great mountain; at night
the sun was pushed into a pit and pulled out again in the morning, with
heaven as a loft and hell as a cellar. In the Atlantic Ocean, at some
unknown distance from Europe, was one of the openings into hell, into
which a ship sailing to this point, would tumble. The terror of this
conception was one of the chief obstacles of the great voyage of
Columbus. Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and Zwingli held to the opinion
that a great firmament, or floor, separated the heavens from the earth;
that above it were the waters and angels, and below it, the earth and
man.
During the time that the sphericity of the earth was still undecided,
another question arose that was considered of far greater importance,
namely, the conception of the antipodes and the problem of deciding
whether human beings existed on the earth's opposite side. It was
Lactantius who asked, "Is there any one so senseless as to believe that
there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? That the
crops and trees grow downward? That the rains and snow and hail fall
upwards toward the earth? I am at a loss as to what to say of those,
who, when they have once erred, steadily persevere in their folly, and
defend one vain thing by another."
St. Augustine insisted that men could not be allowed by the Almighty to
live there, since, if they did, they could not see Christ at His second
coming, descending through the air.
In the eighth century, a Bishop Virgil of Salzburg dared to assert that
there were men living in the antipodes. He was strongly attacked by St.
Boniface of Germany, who appealed to Pope Zachary for a decision. The
Pope, as the infallible teacher of Christendom, made the following
response: He declared it, "Perverse, iniquitous, and against Virgil's
soul." And again another infallible statement by the infallible Pope
Zachary became a doctrine of the Church.
In Italy, in 1316, Peter of Abano, famous as a physician, promulgated
the opposite view to that of the Church, for which he was persecuted by
the Inquisition, and barely escaped with his life. In 1327, Cecco
d'Ascoli, an astronomer, was burned alive at Florence for daring to
assert that men lived in the antipodes.
The difficulties that beset Columbus are well known. How he was hounded
both in Portugal and in Spain by the clergy; and even after his
discovery of America, the Papacy still maintained its theory of the
flatness of the earth and the nonsense of the antipodes. Pope Alexander
VI and Pope Julius II attempted to settle the disputes between Spain and
Portugal by drawing some remarkable maps that may still be found; but no
one dares to disturb the quiet of the ridiculous bulls that the popes
issued on this dispute.
In 1519 Magellan made his famous voyage and proved the earth to be round
and that men actually lived in the antipodes. But the force of
ecclesiastical stultification was so great, as it is today, that men
still believed the opposite view for two hundred years after the voyage
of Magellan.