Note 226 — Chapter II · THE CONTRIBUTION OF WESTERN CHRISTENDOM BEFORE 1100 A. D.

The question of exactly what the early medieval thinkers in the West thought on this subject has been acrimoniously discussed from opposite points of view by Catholic and Protestant scholars. In the seventies of the last century Schneid (Erdrundung, 1877) defended the science of the Middle Ages against the attacks of Protestants like Whewell, Draper, and Günther, who accused the early ecclesiastical writers of servile dependence upon the letter of Scripture. Schneid’s article is more particularly an indictment of another article of the same title by Siegmund Günther in: Studien, 1877–1879. Schneid believed that Günther, through insufficient acquaintance with the literature of the period, had been led to minimize the achievements and worth of patristic science. Augustine, declared Schneid, nowhere denied the sphericity of the earth, 384and his mention of the antipodes shows that he was well acquainted with the theory. Isidore, Bede, Raban Maur, and Adam of Bremen, he maintained, were all firmly convinced that the earth is a sphere. While we may concede that Schneid was right in the case of Bede and Adam, that Isidore and Raban Maur held to the doctrine of a spherical earth is perhaps more doubtful. See below, note 51, and p. 385, note 53. Furthermore, it is a little difficult to understand Schneid’s contention (p. 436) that Cosmas did not deny the sphericity of the earth through religious obscurantism but rather on the grounds of practical experience. See also below, p. 386, note 64, and p. 424, note 100.

More recently the Jesuit father, Reverend F. S. Betten, has contributed an article entitled Knowledge of the Sphericity of the Earth During the Earlier Middle Ages to the Catholic Historical Review, vol. iii (N. S.), Washington, D. C., 1923, pp. 74–90. In this he argues that “we have ... at least one witness in every century to the tradition of the sphericity of the earth” (p. 86), and he cites as these witnesses Hilary of Poitiers (died 366), Ambrose of Milan (died 397), Augustine (died 430), Cassiodorus (died 575), and Isidore of Seville (died 636). Echoes of the Ptolemaic astronomy, to be sure, may be detected in the writings of these men. On the other hand, no one of them makes a clean-cut avowal of belief that the earth is a globe, and the passages quoted by Father Betten are not wholly irreconcilable with the doctrine of a flat earth. It is not enough, in dealing with the cosmographical opinions of the Church Fathers, to cite isolated remnants of classical science scattered through their works. Without taking into consideration all of a writer’s assertions regarding a specific topic one can hardly arrive at safe conclusions regarding his opinions on that topic. Father Betten puts much stock in Isidore’s supposed “faithful representation of the main tenets of Ptolemy’s theory” (ibid., p. 84). On the other hand he makes no mention of passages in Isidore which may be reconciled only with belief in a flat earth (see below, notes 50, and 51). We venture to hold that we are not as yet in a position to make any definite pronouncements upon the cosmographical opinions of the other writers cited by Father Betten. Such pronouncements should be made only after thorough investigation of all that these writers stated bearing directly or indirectly on matters of cosmography. Such an investigation has not been made as yet. Is it not, however, probable that the theories of a flat earth elaborated by the Eastern Fathers (see above, p. 383, note 45), theories built upon the interpretation of Scripture, were at least as influential in molding the early medieval cosmology of the Occident as the then often discredited relics of Greek science?