Note 238 — Chapter II · THE CONTRIBUTION OF WESTERN CHRISTENDOM BEFORE 1100 A. D.

De civ. Dei, XVI, 9. It should also be pointed out that Augustine (loc. cit.), in addition, objects to the possibility of there being inhabited antipodes on the purely rational grounds that it would be impossible for men to have reached such distant continents across the ocean. The Catholic father, P. Mandonnet (Les idées cosmogr., 1893, p. 55), asserted that it was rather on the strength of physical argument than on that of Scriptural exegesis that Augustine based his opposition to antipodeans. At all events, Mandonnet admits that it was largely through Augustine’s immense prestige that the theory of the possibility of inhabited antipodes was excluded from general acceptance throughout the Middle Ages (ibid., p. 56).