‘It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no ........person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat. A round earth appears at least as early as the sixth century BC with Pythagoras, followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others, in observing that the earth was a sphere. Although there were a few flat-earthers, by the time of Eratosthenes (300BC), followed by Strabo (300BC), Crates (200BC), and Ptolemy (1AD), the sphericity of the earth was accepted among the Greeks and Romans. Nor did this understanding change with the advent of Christianity. A few, at least two, and at most five early Christian fathers denied the spherically of earth by mistaking passages such as Ps.104:2-3 as geographical rather than metaphorical statements. On the other side tens of thousands of Christian theologians, poets, artists, and scientists took the spherical view throughout the early, medieval, and modern church. The point is that no ........ person believed otherwise.’ ---Jeffrey Russell: summary of Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (1997)
Ladislaus was right in his assessment. Russell is laughable. This is just one of many reasons why.
Let's see how far off from reality Jeffrey Russell is. Below, this Protestant historian is known for sourcing docuмents accurately. I've truncated the text to keep it as short as possible but you can read the book here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/505/505-h/505-h.htm#link2H_4_0008
White shows what actually happened with flat earth throughout the centuries. He carefully and correctly references the Fathers of the Church, and even cites scripture, but then he mocks them both. This is a fraction of quotes and teachings he actually properly sources, but his commentary in between is nauseating and should raise the ire of any Catholic who cares about the truth. From the second Chapter of HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM by Andrew Dickson WhiteThe whole of this theologico-scientific structure was built most carefully and, as was then thought, most scripturally. Starting with the expression applied in the ninth chapter of Hebrews to the tabernacle in the desert, Cosmas insists, with other interpreters of his time, that it gives the key to the whole construction of the world. The universe is, therefore, made on the plan of the Jєωιѕн tabernacle—boxlike and oblong. Going into details, he quotes the sublime words of Isaiah: "It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth;... that stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain, and spreadeth them out like a tent to dwell in"; and the passage in Job which speaks of the "pillars of heaven." He works all this into his system, and reveals, as he thinks, treasures of science.This vast box is divided into two compartments, one above the other. In the first of these, men live and stars move; and it extends up to the first solid vault, or firmament, above which live the angels, a main part of whose business it is to push and pull the sun and planets to and fro. Next, he takes the text, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters," and other texts from Genesis; to these he adds the text from the Psalms, "Praise him, ye heaven of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens" then casts all, and these growths of thought into his crucible together, finally brings out the theory that over this first vault is a vast cistern containing "the waters." He then takes the expression in Genesis regarding the "windows of heaven" and establishes a doctrine regarding the regulation of the rain, to the effect that the angels not only push and pull the heavenly bodies to light the earth, but also open and close the heavenly windows to water it.
To understand the surface of the earth, Cosmas, following the methods of interpretation which Origen and other early fathers of the Church had established, studies the table of shew-bread in the Jєωιѕн tabernacle.
...
(28) For a notice of the views of Cosmas in connection with those of
Lactantius, Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and others, see Schoell,
Histoire de la Litterature Grecque, vol. vii, p. 37. The main scriptural
passages referred to are as follows: (1) Isaiah xi, 22; (2) Genesis
i, 6; (3) Genesis vii, 11; (4) Exodus xxiv, 10; (5) Job xxvi, 11, and
xxxvii, 18 (6) Psalm cxlviii, 4, and civ, 9; (7) Ezekiel i, 22-26. For
Cosmas's theory, see Montfaucon, Collectio Nova Patrum, Paris, 1706,
vol. ii, p.188; also pp. 298, 299. The text is illustrated with
engravings showing walls and solid vault (firmament), with the whole
apparatus of "fountains of the great deep," "windows of heaven," angels,
and the mountain behind which the sun is drawn. For reduction of one of
them, see Peschel, Gesschichte der Erdkunds, p. 98; also article
Maps, in Knight's Dictionary of Mechanics, New York, 1875. For curious
drawings showing Cosmas's scheme in a different way from that given by
Montfaucon, see extracts from a Vatican codex of the ninth century in
Garucci, Storia de l'Arte Christiana, vol. iii, pp. 70 et seq. For
a good discussion of Cosmas's ideas, see Santarem, Hist. de la
Cosmographie, vol. ii, pp. 8 et seq., and for a very thorough discussion
of its details, Kretschmer, as above. For still another theory, very
droll, and thought out on similar principles, see Mungo Park, cited
in De Morgan, Paradoxes, p. 309. For Cosmas's joyful summing up, see
Montfaucon, Collectio Nova Patrum, vol. ii, p. 255. For the curious
survival in the thirteenth century of the old idea of the "waters above
the heavens," see the story in Gervase of Tilbury, how in his time some
people coming out of church in England found an anchor let down by a
rope out of the heavens, how there came voices from sailors above trying
to loose the anchor, and, finally, how a sailor came down the rope,
who, on reaching the earth, died as if drowned in water. See Gervase of
Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, edit. Liebrecht, Hanover, 1856, Prima Decisio,
cap. xiii. The work was written about 1211. For John of San Germiniano,
see his Summa de Exemplis, lib. ix, cap. 43. For the Egyptian
Trinitarian views, see Sharpe, History of Egypt, vol. i, pp. 94, 102.
Here White explains how flat earth was maintained in the Church throughout the centuries. Note again how he mocks the Fathers, and even scripture, just to make the Fathers look bad for their flat earth teachings calling them "myths". Also, White's assessments of who tolerated the pagan notion are provably wrong.
Myths having this geographical idea as their germ developed in luxuriance through thousands of years. Ascensions to heaven and descents from it, "translations," "assumptions," "annunciations," mortals "caught up" into it and returning, angels flying between it and the earth, thunderbolts hurled down from it, mighty winds issuing from its corners, voices speaking from the upper floor to men on the lower, temporary openings of the floor of heaven to reveal the blessedness of the good, "signs and wonders" hung out from it to warn the wicked, interventions of every kind—from the heathen gods coming down on every sort of errand, and Jehovah coming down to walk in Eden in the cool of the day, to St. Mark swooping down into the market-place of Venice to break the shackles of a slave—all these are but features in a vast evolution of myths arising largely from this geographical germ.Nor did this evolution end here. Naturally, in this view of things, if heaven was a loft, hell was a cellar; and if there were ascensions into one, there were descents into the other. Hell being so near, interferences by its occupants with the dwellers of the earth just above were constant, and form a vast chapter in medieval literature. Dante made this conception of the location of hell still more vivid, and we find some forms of it serious barriers to geographical investigation. Many a bold navigator, who was quite ready to brave pirates and tempests, trembled at the thought of tumbling with his ship into one of the openings into hell which a widespread belief placed in the Atlantic at some unknown distance from Europe. This terror among sailors was one of the main obstacles in the great voyage of Columbus. In a medieval text-book, giving science the form of a dialogue, occur the following question and answer: "Why is the sun so red in the evening?" "Because he looketh down upon hell."
But the ancient germ of scientific truth in geography—the idea of the earth's sphericity—still lived. Although the great majority of the early fathers of the Church, and especially Lactantius, had sought to crush it beneath the utterances attributed to Isaiah, David, and St. Paul, the better opinion of Eudoxus and Aristotle could not be forgotten. Clement of Alexandria and Origen had even supported it. Ambrose and Augustine had tolerated it, and, after Cosmas had held sway a hundred years, it received new life from a great churchman of southern Europe, Isidore of Seville, who, however fettered by the dominant theology in many other things, braved it in this. In the eighth century a similar declaration was made in the north of Europe by another great Church authority, Bede. Against the new life thus given to the old truth, the sacred theory struggled long and vigorously but in vain. Eminent authorities in later ages, like Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, and Vincent of Beauvais, felt obliged to accept the doctrine of the earth's sphericity, and as we approach the modern period we find its truth acknowledged by the vast majority of thinking men. The Reformation did not at first yield fully to this better theory. Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin were very strict in their adherence to the exact letter of Scripture. Even Zwingli, broad as his views generally were, was closely bound down in this matter, and held to the opinion of the fathers 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.
Topic: Creation, according to Fr Scott, another priest of the SSPX (Read 3520 times)