While I still need a longer break from these discussions, I recently came across some information that I have not noticed appearing on this forum before. I thought I would post it now, but probably won't be available to discuss it for a while.
The Catholic Church never taught a specific shape for the earth (at the level of magisterial teaching) because it is not important to the faith. She clearly, however, had no problem with her members believing that the earth is a globe. Throughout the medieval period, from at least as early as St. Bede (circa 700 AD), globe earth was taught and/or accepted by multiple Saints. It was also the cosmological model taught in the Church-run universities of that time. The overwhelming evidence from primary sources is that virtually all educated people believed the earth was a sphere. There is also some evidence that the less educated knew this too. For example, vernacular works by Chaucer and Dante contain references to the globe earth.
In spite of all this evidence, it is a common contention by the flat earth proponents on this forum that the idea of a spherical earth was introduced to the Catholic world by Copernicus in his work
De Revolutionibus published in 1543. They are simply wrong. In addition to the above evidence, there is an official Church docuмent, published 50 years before this, which shows acceptance of globe earth .
When both Spain and Portugal were exploring and laying claims to non-European territories, the Church issued a docuмent in 1493 describing the boundaries for these claims, called
Inter Caetera. In this docuмent we see references that clearly assume a globe earth, such as,
...all islands and mainlands found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered towards the west and south, by drawing and establishing a line from the Arctic pole, namely the north, to the Antarctic pole, namely the south...
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Alex06/alex06inter.htmThere is no flat earth model in which one can draw a straight line from the North Pole to the South Pole. Pope Alexander VI, like all other educated Catholics, obviously thought of the earth as a globe.
What then is the origin of the false idea that globe earth came from Pythagoras by way of Copernicus? It does not come from secular history books. While there have been (probably Freemason-influenced) false claims that Catholics believed the earth was flat until Columbus proved otherwise, they do not attribute the change to Copernicus. That idea comes from heretical anti-Catholic sites like this one:
http://greggfetter.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-flat-earth-movement-is-it-for-real.htmlThen in 1543, just three days before he died, a manuscript entitled “Small Commentary”, written by Nicolaus Copernicus became public. This manuscript contained Copernicus’ theory for a Heliocentric earth— an earth that revolved around the SUN.
In addition to this, Copernicus theorized, as had other philosophers before him that the earth and celestial bodies were spheres.
Although there was no way to prove these theories, because no one could get high enough to see the earth from a distance, Copernicus’ Heliocentric and globe earth model became the prominent world view for the next 500 years.
This site sounds very much like the flat earthers here when it comes to condemning Copernicus, NASA, and the nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr, until it gets to this part:
To understand why NASA would fake a globe earth you have to understand the PLAYERS and their motivation.
The REAL players are those who observed nαzι Germany from a far and tried to influence their decisions. Those players came from the Roman Catholic Church. Why would the Catholic church be interested in nαzι Germany? Because the goals of nαzι Germany matched those of the Catholic church—that of a nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr.
As I discussed in my article Misdirection, the Catholic church is the embodiment of the MYSTERIES, a Satanic religion formed in ancient Babylon. The Mysteries were trying to create a one world government until God put an end to it at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9)
The modern flat earth movement is based on historical inaccuracies and the lies of anti-Catholics. These are people who claim that Catholicism is a Satanic religion. No Catholic should believe anything they say or have anything to do with them.
Topic: Proof the Church accepted Globe Earth before Copernicus (Read 727 times)