Timeline for Did medieval scholars believe the Earth was round?
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| Dec 9, 2021 at 2:52 | answer | added | LazyReader | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jun 18, 2018 at 15:09 | comment | added | Truth | @Dawood ibn Kareem - I'd suppose he was speaking metaphorically. Isaiah is mostly poetry. But seriously, we all say that the sun rises in the morning. We don't literally think it is moving and the earth is sitting still. There's no reason that ancient poets couldn't use symbolic and metaphorical language. My point stands. The Bible does not teach that the Earth is flat, and does not teach a geocentric universe. I have serious doubts that any intelligent people have ever believed in a flat earth. You can see the round shadow on a clearly globular moon for goodness' sake. | |
| May 24, 2018 at 9:38 | comment | added | James | Note enough to be an answer but it's important to note that almost all states included in their regalia a spherical orb which represented the Earth. | |
| May 23, 2018 at 11:59 | comment | added | Ed Wynn | In English, the monk's name is Bede. Mauro Allegranza's answer below has his dates and a link to Wikipedia. A quick look on Google Ngram suggests that "Bede the Venerable" and "Saint Bede" are very uncommon; you might use "the Venerable Bede" on the first mention, to specify which Bede you mean (though there are not many contenders). | |
| May 22, 2018 at 17:19 | comment | added | user31865 | @DawoodibnKareem Or perhaps he was referring to the 4 dimensions of the observable world at the time (the 3 dimensions of space and dimension of time). | |
| May 22, 2018 at 7:06 | comment | added | Dawood ibn Kareem | @Truth Isiah 11:12 mentions the four corners of the earth. Please tell me; was Isiah imagining a big flat rectangle, or a tetrahedron? | |
| May 21, 2018 at 5:39 | comment | added | pojo-guy | @Scott The hebrew term translated as "circle" in the KJV is more properly translated as "vault" (as the same term is translated elsewhere in the kjv). It is unambiguously a 3 dimensional object, although its roundness could be debated. Unfortunately, old Hebrew was strong in metaphor but poor in precision, which was introduced to Jewish culture with Hellenization later in their history. | |
| May 21, 2018 at 1:49 | comment | added | dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten | Relevant: history.stackexchange.com/a/39494/4202, though it's dated are to be found on either side of "medieval". | |
| May 20, 2018 at 22:40 | comment | added | NPSF3000 | @jamesqf you have greater imagine than I if that's what you pull from those verses. | |
| May 19, 2018 at 2:25 | history | protected | sempaiscuba | ||
| May 18, 2018 at 17:49 | answer | added | MAGolding | timeline score: 12 | |
| S May 18, 2018 at 17:15 | history | suggested | Izkata | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 18, 2018 at 14:32 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| May 18, 2018 at 14:16 | history | edited | T.E.D.♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 18, 2018 at 6:56 | comment | added | rcgldr | It should be pointed out that seafarers were aware of of a spherical earth based on observations of taller objects being visible at greater distances than shorter objects, which could date back to 7th or 8th century BC. | |
| May 18, 2018 at 4:28 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Truth: Re "circle of the earth", circles are flat. See e.g. Discworld. Re Judeo-Christian scripture declaring a flat Earth, start with Genesis 1:6-9 which clearly describes a flat, layered creation. | |
| May 18, 2018 at 2:25 | answer | added | Stevernator | timeline score: 0 | |
| May 18, 2018 at 2:02 | comment | added | Walter Mitty | The ancients knew the world was round. See Eratosthenes. How the medievals would have lost that knowledge is perplexing. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes | |
| May 18, 2018 at 0:33 | comment | added | Scott | Please do not use the terms round vs flat. circles and spheres are both round. Spherical vs flat or spherical vs circular are best | |
| May 17, 2018 at 20:49 | comment | added | Truth | @jamesqf - The Bible absolutely does not claim that the earth is flat. To the contrary: "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:" - Isaiah 40:22 (KJV) For the record, they also don't teach a geocentric model of the universe. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 19:34 | comment | added | Semaphore | @jamesqf That is not only blatantly false as all the answers demonstrate, but ironically probably also the same mentality that gave rise to flat earth myth in the first place. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 18:14 | answer | added | andejons | timeline score: 23 | |
| May 17, 2018 at 17:53 | comment | added | jamesqf | I suspect it depends on the sort of "scholar". Most of those working in Europe were under the sway of the Christian church, which had a nasty habit of torturing & killing those who too strongly disagreed with their scriptures. Since those scriptures are fairly explicit about the Earth being flat, anyone who openly disagreed put themselves at risk. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 17:46 | comment | added | leonbloy | Perhaps relevant: arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1211/1211.3004.pdf | |
| May 17, 2018 at 17:26 | comment | added | MicroMachine | I would assume that for a lot of "scientific" minds of the Middle Ages, something isn't "either" 2D or 3D, as these concepts were not defined. Also what is a half-sphere with people living on the flat side? Is it flat or spherical? | |
| May 17, 2018 at 15:25 | answer | added | pokep | timeline score: 47 | |
| May 17, 2018 at 14:38 | answer | added | Mayo | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 17, 2018 at 13:55 | comment | added | Stephan Kolassa | James Hannam in God's Philosophers claims (p. 35) that "Gerbert [of Aurillac, Pope Sylvester II, r. 999-1003, probably the most learned man in Christendom at the time] and all his fellow men and women of any education in AD 1000 were perfectly well aware that the earth was a sphere." It might be worthwhile to follow up on Hannam's references or on Gerbert in general. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 13:39 | answer | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | timeline score: 27 | |
| May 17, 2018 at 13:12 | comment | added | Mason Wheeler | The "scholars believed in a flat earth* idea is trivially wrong, as the earth is obviously round to anyone who does a bit of observation. Ships appear and disappear at the horizon from the bottom up, for example, and if the world were flat, there could be no twilight; day would transition to night, and night to day, instantaneously. Just off the top of my head, these two examples both easily show that the world is round, with essentially no room for controversy. There's little to nothing to suggest scholars have ever taken a flat-earth model seriously. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 12:35 | answer | added | Stephan Kolassa | timeline score: 75 | |
| May 17, 2018 at 10:36 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackHistory/status/997063249597263872 | ||
| May 17, 2018 at 10:16 | vote | accept | A. McMount | ||
| May 17, 2018 at 9:49 | comment | added | Denis Nardin | The Wikipedia page on Flat Earth gives a fairly comprehensive discussion of the matter. It seems to me that what Isidore wrote was more confusing than that, claiming that the Earth was flat in some sections and spherical in others (presumably because he was using several different sources?), and that the general opinion was always in favor of the sphericity of the globe. I'm not an expert though, so let's wait for someone with better sources of a Wikipedia page :) | |
| May 17, 2018 at 9:48 | answer | added | Semaphore | timeline score: 149 | |
| May 17, 2018 at 9:37 | history | edited | A. McMount | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 17, 2018 at 9:33 | answer | added | Lars Bosteen | timeline score: 7 | |
| May 17, 2018 at 9:32 | comment | added | A. McMount | Denis Nardin so it seems that at least during Dante's period the consensus was that Earth was round. But was it so during early medieval period? Isidore's Etymologiae was the encyclopedia of the early middle ages. Bedes work was published little roughly 100 years later, so if there was a period where the consensus was that of flat earth, when did it change? | |
| May 17, 2018 at 9:26 | history | edited | A. McMount | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 17, 2018 at 9:20 | history | edited | MCW♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 17, 2018 at 9:14 | history | edited | Semaphore | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 17, 2018 at 9:05 | comment | added | Denis Nardin | Beda was hugely influential. Pretty much all medieval chronicles use him as a source in one way or another, so claiming that his work "was not as widespread" sounds fishy. Also, even if six centuries later, Dante Alighieri unambiguously stated that the Earth was round in his Comedy, and he certainly was claiming to be reporting a consensus opinion. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 8:56 | review | First posts | |||
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| May 17, 2018 at 8:56 | history | asked | A. McMount | CC BY-SA 4.0 |