Oh, stop this emetic Modernist crap about what you decide the Pope is REALLY condemning other than precisely what he says he's condemning. Pope were not morons and would make the necessary distinctions.
Nevertheless, the description does sound like something entirely other than antipodal humans, but some strange notion of another sun and moon beneath the earth. We'd probably have to dig into what theory was around which fits this description.
Fifth-century Christian philosopher Augustine of Hippo was skeptical of the notion. Augustine asserted that "it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man."[13]
Also from wiki
In the Early Middle Ages, Isidore of Seville's widely read encyclopedia presented the term "antipodes" or, as he said "antipodas" as referring to antichthones (people who lived on the opposite side of the Earth), as well as to a geographical place:
Apart from these three parts of the world, there exists a fourth part beyond the interior Ocean; it is in the south and is unknown to us because of the burning heat of the Sun; within its borders the fabled Antipodeans are reputed to dwell.[14]
In using the form antipodas rather than the more usual Latin antipodes Isidore simply transcribed the original Greek αντίποδας, the singular case of the name: the plural case is αντίποδες (antipodes), used in converting the name into Latin.
In 748, in reply to a letter from Boniface, Pope Zachary declared the belief "that beneath the earth there was another world and other men, another sun and moon" to be heretical.
In his letter, Boniface had apparently maintained that Vergilius of Salzburg held such a beliefBold is the context for the quote by the Pope.
Topic: Pope Zacharias condemned antipodes? (Read 8572 times)