Message #17588

[Jason]

Later Medieval Europe

By the 11th century, Europe had learned of Islamic astronomy. Around 1070 started the Renaissance of the 12th century, featuring an intellectual revitalization of Europe with strong philosophical and scientific roots, and increased appetite for the study of nature. By then, abundant records suggest that any doubts that Europeans may have had in earlier times in regard to the spherical shape of the Earth were generally eliminated.

Hermannus Contractus (1013–1054) was among the earliest Christian scholars to estimate the circumference of Earth with Eratosthenes' method. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the most important and widely taught theologian of the Middle Ages, believed in a spherical Earth; and he even took for granted his readers also knew the Earth is round.[43] Lectures in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in favor of the idea that the Earth was a sphere.[44] Also, "On the Sphere of the World", the most influential astronomy textbook of the 13th century and required reading by students in all Western European universities, described the world as a sphere.

The shape of the Earth was not only discussed in scholarly works written in Latin; it was also treated in works written in vernacular languages or dialects and intended for wider audiences. The Norwegian book Konungs Skuggsjá, from around 1250, states clearly that the Earth is round - and that it is night on the other side of the Earth when it is daytime in Norway. The author also discusses the existence of antipodes - and he notes that they (if they exist) will see the Sun in the north of the middle of the day, and that they will have opposite seasons of the people living in the Northern Hemisphere.

 
Illustration of the spherical Earth in a 14th century copy of L'Image du monde (ca. 1246).Dante's Divine Comedy, the last great work of literature of the Middle Ages, written in Italian, portrays Earth as a sphere. Also, the Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis (c. 1120), an important manual for the instruction of lesser clergy which was translated into Middle English, Old French, Middle High German, Old Russian, Middle Dutch, Old Norse, Icelandic, Spanish, and several Italian dialects, explicitly refers to a spherical Earth. Likewise, the fact that Bertold von Regensburg (mid-13th century) used the spherical Earth as a sermonic illustration shows that he could assume this knowledge among his congregation. The sermon was held in the vernacular German, and thus was not intended for a learned audience.

Reinhard Krüger, a professor for Romance literature at the University of Stuttgart (Germany), has discovered more than 100 medieval Latin and vernacular writers from the late antiquity to the 15th century who were all convinced that the earth was round like a ball. However, as late as 1400s, the Spanish theologian Tostatus still disputed the existence of any inhabitants at the antipodes.[45] From a European perspective, Portuguese exploration of Africa and Asia and Spanish explorations in the Americas in the 15th century and finally Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation of the earth brought the experimental proofs for the global shape of the earth.