Medieval people believed the Earth was flat
| Medieval people believed the Earth was flat | |
|---|---|
| FALSE | |
| "Before Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492, educated Europeans, and the Church, believed that the Earth was flat, and Columbus had to overcome warnings that he would sail off the edge." | |
| Domain | Culture, Religion & Society |
| Tactic | Fabrication False Context |
| Era | Historical |
| First seen | 1828 |
| Origin | Washington Irving's 1828 romanticized biography of Columbus, and later 19th-century works by John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White that portrayed a historic conflict between science and religion |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-27 |
| Further reading: books on Culture, Religion & Society | |
The claim that medieval people believed the Earth was flat is a myth about the past. Educated people in medieval Europe, including church scholars, knew the Earth was a sphere, a fact established by ancient Greek thinkers. Eratosthenes estimated the Earth's circumference in the third century BCE. Medieval writers such as the Venerable Bede, Thomas Aquinas and the author of the widely used textbook On the Sphere, Johannes de Sacrobosco, described a spherical Earth. The debate about Columbus's voyage concerned the size of the Earth, not its shape. Columbus's critics were correct that the Earth was much larger than he believed. The myth was popularized in the 19th century, notably by Washington Irving.
What the evidence shows
- Ancient knowledge. Greek philosophers including Aristotle offered evidence for a spherical Earth, such as the curved shadow on the Moon during lunar eclipses.
- Medieval texts. Sacrobosco's De sphaera mundi, written around 1230, was a standard university text describing a spherical Earth. Medieval royal regalia included the orb, symbolizing the world.
- Columbus. Columbus underestimated the Earth's circumference and the distance westward to Asia. Scholars who opposed him had better estimates. He reached the Americas, unknown to Europeans, which he believed were part of Asia.
- 19th-century origins. Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell traced the myth to Irving's A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus and to works by Draper and White that promoted a narrative of conflict between religion and science.
- Exceptions. A few early Christian writers, such as Lactantius, argued against a spherical Earth, but they were not representative of medieval scholarship.
Why it persists
The myth makes the present seem enlightened compared with a supposedly ignorant past. It supports a simple story of science triumphing over religion, and it has been repeated in school textbooks.
Lessons for readers
- Myths about the past can tell us about the people who created them.
- Check primary sources from the period rather than later retellings.
- Historical debates are often about details, not basics.
- Simple narratives of progress can distort history.
See also
Sources
- Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (Praeger, 1991).
- Ronald L. Numbers, ed., Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (Harvard University Press, 2009).