Jehanne

Anyone who had received a valid Christian baptism was regarded as "belonging" to the One True Church. This "dogma" persists, on paper, even in the post-Vatican II church.

lpetrich

"Basic Stuff" that's not exactly well-known.

And this is the same Augustine who wrote (City of God, Book 18):
But why weren't they copying all that "Egyptian gold" like crazy? If medieval copyists had devoted about half of their copying time and resources to important scientific and philosophical writings that they had devoted to stuff like hymnbooks and saint biographies, a LOT more would have come through.

Look at the recently discovered Archimedes manuscript -- it survived only because it was recycled into a prayer book.

Boethius and Cassiodorus were only Boethius and Cassiodorus.

A few others -- not quite a whole corpus

That's only the western Empire; the eastern Empire survived intact.

And look what they had decided to preserve

"Gold" like believing that the Universe is MUCH older than the Bible claims it is

And after the Church decided to endorse Aristotelianism, Aristotle became known as ille philosophus, the philosopher, whose works were treated as almost like the Bible. Copernicus, Galileo, and the like had to contend with Aristotle-thumpers as well as with Bible-thumpers.


All that being said, it's clear that the medieval Church did not regard the shape of the Earth as being doctrinally important; it was not as high a priority for them as (say) the Trinity was.

And they even thought that it was OK to discuss heliocentrism as long as one presented it as purely hypothetical, until Galileo got Pope Urban VIII's goat. It must be said that such fictionalism was common in the Middle Ages for potentially controversial subjects, like the possibility of a vacuum.

Amaleq13

Yes, an intelligent individual might suspect that the Church had no dogmatic position on the shape of the earth and, therefore, had no reason to accuse anyone who claimed it was flat of heresy.

This appears to be conflating acceptance by the Church of what was generally held by the scientists of the time with religious dogma. Contradicting the former meant you were uneducated and/or a fool while contradicting the latter meant you might be accused of heresy. Thinking that the former is the same as the latter is simply a matter ignorance that can be easily remedied by a little reading.

It has already been pointed out that the same article from which this was taken informs us that the vast majority of scholars studying Augustine conclude that he accepted a round earth. It is difficult to see how repeating this error despite having it pointed out in this very thread is not an example of willful ignorance.

Where is the evidence that the Church held a dogmatic position on the shape of the earth?

Jehanne

In the first-century, they clearly believed in it, at least Paul and the Gospel writers. (And, as I said before, I would be interested in one scholar who claims otherwise.) Certain "dogmas," such as the Accession of Christ, were framed on the Hebrew idea of a flat-earth. And, clearly, the belief in a flat-earth passed into the pre-Nicene and Nicene fathers of the Church. It was only after certain intellectuals, such as Augustine, converted to Christianity that the early to late Medieval theologians, who were (and are) the intellectuals of the Church, "reconciled" the clear Biblical teaching of a flat-earth with the modern scientific fact that the earth is a sphere (albeit, an oblate spheroid.) It is equally clear that the Magisterium of the Church, the Pope and the bishops, tolerated both positions throughout the early to late Middle Ages.

Amaleq13

Am I supposed to mistake this for the evidence I requested or interpret it as your acknowledgement that no such evidence exists?

Roger Pearse

I must be not following this, but I don't quite understand why one would expect monks to ignore saints lives in order to copy technical handbooks? The latter always appear at the end of medieval catalogues of books, as not very important.

Only isn't quite the word for these two giants of the 6th century, surely?

The Greeks who experienced the sack of the city in 1204 by the renegade army originally hired for the fourth crusade might not agree. The quantity of texts known to Photius which are not heard of thereafter rather supports this.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Chili

I read "The Consolation of Philosphy" by Boethuis which I think is truly the work of a giant. There, I found, that the poetry is inserted to streamline the message of the prose.

Jehanne

The "dogmatic evidence" among the first-century (and early second-century) authors of the New Testament was that of a flat-earth. The institutionalized Church that became known as the Medieval Roman Catholic Church, clearly, held to the Aristotelian idea of a spherical earth at the center of the Cosmos as being dogma; however, as with the current Church's toleration of a six-day literal interpretation of the Creation story, the Medieval Church almost certainly tolerated a flat-earth belief as being orthodox.

Amaleq13

First, the thread is about the "Medieval Church" so, even if you could support this assertion, it is irrelevant to the discussion. Second, I doubt you have any evidence that either of the two groups you identify considered a flat earth to be dogma. I'm actually starting to wonder if you know what the word means.

With this statement, at least, you have obtained relevance to the thread though I doubt you have any actual evidence to support your contention that a round earth was held as dogma.

Are you aware that nothing you've posted as a response to my question actually offers an answer to it? Do you or don't you know of any evidence that supports the notion that the Medieval Church held a dogmatic position on the shape of the earth?

Antipope Innocent II

Which was the question we began this thread with and, after eight pages of flailing around on Jehanne's part and running in ever decreasing circles of confusion on aa5874's part, the answer is clearly "No, we don't know of any such evidence."

That's because there is no such evidence and the Medieval church not only didn't hold a dogmatic position on the shape of the Earth but happily supported the teaching of a scientific position that the Earth was a sphere.

Which is what historians of science in the period have always known. If some of the contrarians on this thread had bothered to crack open a book or two they might have saved themselves a lot of embarrassment.

On another but related issue:

Probably because medieval philosophy and science aren't exactly hot topics for the average person. Most people work from their popular conceptions of the Medieval period, which are "informed" more by half-remembered High School oversimplifications or, worse, Hollywood or Sunday school cliches. Not surprisingly, if they get exposed to the realities of the Medieval period it can come as something of a shock. Look at the frenzied attempts of some on this thread to desperately preserve their belief that the Medieval Church taught the Earth was flat, for example.

If they realised the cataclysms that were about to come in the following centuries and the devastating impact this was to have on Western knowledge they probably would have. But they didn't have crystal balls or our benefit of hindsight. When Augustine was writing the educational infrastructure of the Western Empire was still intact. It was in bad shape, but it was still there. Monastic scriptoria, when they arose somewhat later, on the other hand were supposed to be "devoted to stuff like hymnbooks and saint biographies". If a monk wanted a work of Plato or Ovid and one came his way, he might copy it, but the preservation of ancient knowledge was not their business.

It was only later, in the time of Charlemagne and Alfred, that it began to become clear that the loss of ancient knowledge wasn't just a local thing, but was actually widespread. That's when the first efforts to revive this lost information began, but by then a great deal had already been lost.

Probably because the guy who decided to reuse its parchment couldn't read Greek and didn't have a clue what he was erasing. Greek was dying out in the West even before the Fall of the West. But we have most of Archimedes thanks to William of Moerbeke and some unnamed Arabs and Persians.

Boethius and Cassiodorus worked in a brief period of peace after the chaos of the Fifth Century and before the chaos of the Gothic Wars that followed the death of their patron Theodoric the Ostrogoth. In that window of opportunity the educational intrastructure of the Western Empire (at least in Italy) was still intact enough for works to surive and they were wise enough to see that they needed to translate them into Latin for them to surivive. Thanks to them, key works on logic survived that laid the foundations of the later Medieval education system.

Than that window closed and few people had the luxury, the knowledge or the texts to do much more for several centuries.

See above. Youy're making the mistake that these people didn't want to preserve this stuff. They did, but they usually either didn't have the skills or the access to the texts. When they had both, texts were preserved. Often only to be lost again.

In Greek. Which by the time the smoke cleared in Europe, no-one could read anymore.

The gold of the Egyptians was always subordinate to the Tabernacle of the Lord. The Bible took precedence. Unless the Bible was clearly contradicted by observation and reason, whereupon it was interpreted figuratively. Christianity does much the same to this day.

Yes. And? That's how a system of knowledge based on auctoritas works.

It wasn't a priority at all.