I am confused, didn't St Thomas believe in a global Earth.
Yes, St. Thomas absolutely did believe in a global Earth. Let's not let ourselves continue to be gaslit by the miniscule number of flat earth promoters. And let us recall that there are absolutely no prominent Flat Earthers today. The deafening silence to my open inquiry on the subject on CathInfo only confirms this.
Flat-earth promoters sometimes try to claim Aquinas as a flat-earther, but
their arguments have no basis in Aquinas’s actual texts. The claims usually fall into a few predictable patterns:
1. Misreading Aquinas’s use of biblical cosmologySome flat-earth promoters assert that because Aquinas took Scripture as authoritative, he must have held a “biblical cosmology” identical to their own.
However, Aquinas explicitly states that
Scripture uses figurative language when describing the physical world (e.g.,
Summa Theologiae I.1.10). He does not read biblical descriptions of the “firmament,” “the ends of the Earth,” etc., as physical models.
2. Ignoring Aquinas’s reliance on Aristotelian astronomyFlat-earth proponents often downplay or ignore that Aquinas adopted Aristotle’s physics and cosmology nearly wholesale—including a
spherical Earth.
Instead, they claim medieval thinkers were “biblical literalists” who rejected Greek science. This is historically inaccurate and contradicted by Aquinas’s own writing.
3. Selective quotation from secondary sourcesSometimes they quote isolated passages from pre-scholastic or non-Aquinas medieval authors (e.g., early Church Fathers with ambiguous language) and imply Aquinas shared their views. They then treat “the medieval Church” as a monolith and incorrectly insert Aquinas into that narrative.
They do
not cite any passage where Aquinas states the Earth is flat—because none exists.
4. Confusion over Aquinas’s acceptance of geocentrismAquinas accepted
geocentrism, as every scholar did before Copernicus.
Flat-Earth promoters sometimes conflate geocentrism with flat-earth belief, even though the two are
logically and historically distinct. Medieval geocentric models—including those Aquinas adopted—
assume a spherical Earth.
5. Claiming that medieval Christians “had” to be flat-earthersSome flat-earth advocates rely on the narrative that “the Church hid the truth about the Earth’s shape,” so they retroactively project flat-earth belief onto major Christian thinkers, including Aquinas, to support a conspiracy narrative.
This is revisionism, not evidence.
SummaryFlat-earth promoters claim Aquinas believed in a flat Earth not because of anything Aquinas wrote, but because they:
- misread biblical language,
- ignore Aquinas’s clear reliance on Aristotelian spherical-Earth arguments,
- conflate geocentrism with flat-earth belief, and
- retrofit their worldview onto historical figures.
There is
no textual evidence that Aquinas held a flat-earth view, and considerable evidence that he accepted Earth’s sphericity.
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Some flat-earth advocates do try to argue that historical references to a “round” or “spherical” Earth actually meant a
round, flat disk rather than a sphere. This claim is not based on historical sources but on rhetorical strategies intended to preserve flat-earth interpretations when confronted with ancient or medieval texts.
Here are the main methods they use and the basis for each:
1. Exploiting ambiguity of the word “round”Many ancient authors described the Earth as
“round” (Latin
orbis, Greek
kyklos).
Flat-earthers argue that
“round” means “circular”, not “spherical,” so historical texts could be referring to a disk.
Basis they claim:- Linguistic ambiguity of “round.”
Why this fails:- Authors like Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Aquinas explicitly argue for three-dimensional curvature, not a 2D circle.
- They describe phenomena that require a sphere (e.g., curved shadow on the Moon, changing star visibility with latitude).
2. Misinterpreting medieval diagramsFlat-earth promoters sometimes show medieval illustrations that depict the Earth as a
circle inside a cosmological diagram.
They then claim this is proof medieval scholars thought Earth was a disk.
Basis they claim:- Medieval drawings look flat on manuscript pages.
Why this fails:- Those diagrams are symbolic representations, not literal cross-sections.
- Medieval texts that accompany the diagrams describe Earth as a globus (sphere).
- Aquinas explicitly follows Aristotle’s spherical model.
3. Attacking translation differencesThey sometimes claim that words like:
- sphaera
- globus
- orbis terrarum
could be interpreted as a
round, flat form, not necessarily a 3D sphere.
Basis they claim:- Etymological cherry-picking.
Why this fails:- Sphaera and globus are unambiguously three-dimensional in scholastic philosophy.
- Aquinas uses Aristotelian astronomy exactly as Aristotle intended—a spherical Earth and spherical heavens.
4. Claiming a conspiracy by “mainstream history”A few flat-earth authors argue that historians reinterpret “round” as “sphere” to hide the supposed biblical or medieval “true” flat cosmology.
Basis they claim:- Conspiracy narrative, not evidence.
Why this fails:- Medieval scientific works (Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Renaissance textbooks) all discuss Earth’s curvature, shadow on the Moon, antipodes, and latitude-based star changes—all impossible on a disk.
ConclusionFlat-earthers occasionally argue that “round earth” references actually referred to a
flat, circular disk, but this rests on:
- exploiting ambiguous translations,
- misreading symbolic medieval art, and
- ignoring explicit spherical-Earth arguments in primary sources.
No credible historical, linguistic, or textual evidence supports their reinterpretation.
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