Chili

The info probably comes from the secret vaults of the protestant library.

Chili

The "dark ages" make reference to the formation of heaven (which is the reign of our God) in the mind of Catholics. Remember here that eternal life belongs to the mythology and we are just partakers of that life = Rome sweet home."

The wedding in Cana is clear on this where the entire lineage of Joseph 'showed up' that took him right back past Jacob to Adam to God, wherefore then, our divine marriage will be just outside of Rome where Christ is home towards which Jesus died to set the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob free = NT people with a God of our own and hence the dark ages to follow.

Amedeo

To give a clear answer, I would have to wite a message longer than the last one. (I realize that the MANY thiongs which are packed in my posts can be confusing or misleading.)

Basically I stated that the theory of a spherical earth was started by the first philosopher, Anaximander in the 6th century B.C. Then the theory was developed (or proved, if you wish) by many ancient ones. // The information about nature that Aquinas (and other theologians) held was gathered from early theological works and from the books of Aristotle (and others) that had been recently brought into Europe. (Aristotle uses the argument of the cast shadows, etc., a couple of centuries before Archimedes' work. But some of the scholastic theologians may have read the recent translations of Aristotle into Latin.) // I used the word "empirical" in connection with Columbus and Magellan, because I referred to real evidence from the circumnavigation of the earth: If you travel west from A and eventually you arrive to the east of A, you traveled on a circle, not on a straight line. The arguments of Aristotle, Archimedes, and many others, are "demonstrations" based on facts on nature; they do not state one's ACQUAINTANCE with the contour of the earth itself. You should see already the difficulties of demonstrations, or judging from shadows, since (A) a globe casts a circular shadow, and (B), the flat earth, which was understood to be horizontally circular, like the top of a drum, also casts a circular shade, depending on its disposition relatively to the sun. (In my long incidentally discussion, I explained how the issue of the shape of the earth is tied up with the issue of geocentrism or heliocentrism: This was not the sort of discussion that any scholastic theologian carried out, otherwise they would have had to maintain that the earth is flat -- in order not to be heretical.) // I spoke of Columbus to begin with, not in order to declare that he empirically proved that the earth is round, but in order to say that the theologians of Salamanca (at the end of the high Middle Ages) were not concerned with or arguing about the earth being either flat or round. So, the shape of the earth was never an issue; they had to advice the King and Queen against the feasibility of Columbus's voyage on ground of "physics": the majesties would lose their ships after the sailors would reach the rim or equator of the spherical earth.

I did not expand on what happend after Salamanca, in order not to be off-topic, but since we are on the subject: Why did Isabella commission Columbus to undertake the trip?

Queen Isabella's confessor and advisor was Cardinal Geraldini (from a town near Rome). He advised her, and MUST have done much more; for after the successful voyage(s) to the new world, he was appointed, by the Vatican, the religious Legate to the new lands. What must he have done? From my studies of the whole adventure, I learned of Vatican records which, when published -- said one Pope -- will reveal of the great contribution that the Church made toward what turned out to be the discovery of a New Word [Novus Mundus, as Amerigo/Americus Vespucci named it, before a German map-maker called it Terra Americae, or America]. {And there is more than I just mentioned.} My suspicion is that Geraldini was the middle-man between the Vatican and the Spanish court, but I have no information of the extent to which the Vatican financed the voyage.

(Incidentally, a branch of the Geraldini family moved to Ireland in the 15th century. One of the Geraldinis is the "Fitzgerald" ancestor of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who himself mentioned his partial Italian ancestry.)

Columbus was known to have a missionary spirit, and the distinctive Templar cross marked the sails of the Spanish caravels. (When the Spanish admirals undertook expeditions, in one of his voyages, Columbus was refused access to the Spanish ports in the Caribbeans -- which tells a lot about many things!) History was not made by the scholastic theologians of the High Middles Ages, whether they held that the earth is flat or round.

Clivedurdle

Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Archimedes of Syracuse (Greek: Άρχιμήδης c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC

Why did the Church rely on the older guy when so much superb work was done after him? It is like relying on Newton when you have Einstein.

We all build on the shoulders of giants, but it does help to keep up to date! The Dark Ages were a period of significant loss of how to do things - what happened to literacy levels for example.

Amedeo

Thank you for reminding me of the correct time-distance between Aristotle (The Thracian philosopher who adopted Athens) and Archimedes (The Sicilian Greek, who may have attended that still existing and used theater in Syracuse).

The medieval church did not pursue academic subjects and did not build a curriculum of Studies. The French theological school was the center where theologians adopted works of antiquity. Aristotle stood out, for them, as the major philosopher of all times (covering all sorts of subjects, wherefore he was called -- in the words of Dante -- the master of those who know). Archimedes dealt with mathematics and physics. So, even though the works of Aristotle and of Archimedes became equally available to the "scholastic theologians," they were only incidentally interested in matters of "natural philosophy" [physics, astronomy, biology, and mathematics]. The quadrivium curriculum comprised arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music -- under the roof of the Pythagorean ideology that natural things are numbers, but this quadrivium was not enriched by the newly acquired books of Archimedes or others, precisely because the quadrivium was for the general education of the clergy, whereas theology was the central field of education and pursuit, wherefore there arose different theological "schools" [frameworks]. The works of Archimedes and of Arabic Arithmetic were learned and pursued by people outside the theological universities, that is by people involved in making commercial calculations, keeping accounts, keeping things afloat, shooting ball in parabolic curves, etc. etc., (And it is in this practical world that Galileo will study the strength of construction materials, the course of projectiles, and all distance-time phenomena. Galileo picked up where Archimedes left off (in physics), even though many others touched on this or that particular natural phenomenon. But people who do not know the difference between empirical observation and Galilean investigations of empirical phenomena are still packing books to show that of Galileo's discoveries had been made by clerics in the middle Ages and call the result science. You may as well take all the empirical knowledge that a child has and label it Science. You may as well take all the empirical geometries of people before Euclid and call them Mathematics, as it has become fashionable to do today. My foot!)
---------------
I personally find talking about the medieval theologians rather boring, but I have been doing it in response to challenges about their importance in an unfortunate world [the medieval world] dominated and repressed by feudal lords and ecclesiastical lords. So, I close my discussion, unless someone, in some other forum, want to discuss, for Europe, the Classical Culture, the Renaissance Culture, and the Recontrivance Culture (which started in the 17th century Western World and is now showing signs of obsolescence).

Antipope Innocent II

Of course it did. But Medieval interpretation of the Bible wasn't simple-minded literalism (we'd have to wait for much more modern fundamentalist Biblical inerrantists for that). They had four levels of exegesis - the literal level, the tropological level, the allegorical level and the anagogical level. You can see a summary of what these mean here. A given passage or story could be regarded as having all of these meanings, some of them or just one of them.

And Medieval scholars were well aware of these ancient empirical proofs and described them in their books on astronomy. The use of the astrolabe to determine the circumference of the Earth was a common problem laid out with full instructions in even the most basic manual on the use of that scientific instrument.

Colombus' voyage proved absolutely nothing other than the fact that Colombus had been WRONG in his calculation of the size of the Earth.

I seem to be able to manage Amedeo. But it's the things that aren't in your windy and wheezing posts that are the real problem.

So you keep saying. And if this were the case, it would be no problem for you to produce some evidence that this was the concern of the Salamanca Commission. You've been asked to produce this evidence twice now and you've failed to do so. Why is that Amedeo?

You've also been asked to back up your assertion that there was some kind of "split" in the Middle Ages over the shape of the Earth. You've been asked to do that twice as well and failed to do so. Why would that be Amedeo?

Stop trying to avoid these questions. Put up or shut up.

Edward T. Babinski

Hi Roger,

Agreed, it's a complex subject. Because long after the 7th century bishop you mentioned attacked astrology as "superstition," the practice of astrology continued. So the "division" you speak of did not take place overnight, nor was it completely "forced" by Christian supernaturalism as over against pagan supernaturalism. For instance:

Galileo was a practicing astrologer during most if not all of his career
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/colloquia0405.html

Copernicus certainly had an interest in astrology, which was even taught at Italian medical schools:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/

Melanchthon, Martin Luther's friend and fellow Reformer, was quite fond of astrology. (Though Calvin was not.)

Even by the 1600s the distinction between science and magic remained blurry. Issac Newton spent a considerable amount of time studying not just nature and math but also, astrology, numerology, natural magic, and biblical prophecy.
Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer (or via: amazon.co.uk)

The planets (which were viewed as "stars," i.e., "wandering stars") remained somewhat "powerful" and "divine" in light of passages in the Bible itself regarding "the host of heaven," and the ancient Hebrews' temptations to worship them as mentioned in the Bible.

Also, check out, Origen and the Life of the Stars: A History of an Idea (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Alan B. Scott:

"The ancient Greek view that the stars were alive grew more questionable and even rejected as Greek astronomy began its scientific development on the other side of the Greek-speaking world among the Ionians. As a result, belief in the divinity of the stars is conspicuously rare in Greek philosophy between Alcmaeon and Plato..."

Origen held the view that the stars were "alive" and their influence was benefic [or beneficial], insofar as they aid the soul in its striving for divine life. However, elsewhere, Origen argued that stars could "sin," citing Job 25:5 "The stars are not clean in Thy sight." "Ambrose of Milan carried on Origen's view that the stars were alive," though that view was replaced by one more in line with an Ionian Greek view of the stars, but with the addition of the notion that "angels" were "assigned" to the sun, moon and stars (as well as angels being assigned to things on earth as well, including the four elements, air, earth, wind, water), and these angels either rejoiced or were grieved by us when we acted righteously or sinned (cf. Jer. 12:4, "How long will the earth mourn, and the grass of the field wither because of the wickedness of its inhabitants").

Toto

An unseemly digression by Amadeo has been split off here and locked.

Roger Pearse

No indeed. But the division now existed in a way that it did not in pagan times, and whenever people paid attention, it tended to push superstition out. This was not the case before then. Previously it would be pious to introduce superstition; after that the 'drag' was the other way.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ray Moscow

Thanks. If you come across any specific instances of their religious speculations on the shape of the earth, please post a couple of them.