“People in the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat”

The notion that people in the Middle Ages widely believed the Earth was flat is a persistent modern misconception, largely originating from 19th-century narratives. This myth gained significant traction with works like Washington Irving's 1828 romanticized biography, "A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus." Irving dramatically depicted Columbus as a visionary battling ignorant churchmen who insisted on a flat Earth, when in reality, the debate was about the Earth's circumference and the feasibility of Columbus's proposed route, not its shape. Later, historians like John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White perpetuated this idea, using it to portray a historical conflict between religious dogma and scientific progress.

However, historical evidence overwhelmingly shows that educated people in medieval Europe understood the Earth to be spherical. This knowledge was a direct inheritance from ancient Greek scholarship, particularly from philosophers like Aristotle, who provided empirical proofs such as the curved shadow Earth casts on the Moon during a lunar eclipse and the way ships disappear hull-first over the horizon. Eratosthenes had even calculated Earth's circumference with remarkable accuracy centuries before the medieval period. Throughout the Middle Ages, prominent scholars and figures like the Venerable Bede in the 8th century and later thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, and Johannes de Sacrobosco explicitly affirmed Earth's spherical nature in their writings and teachings.

The enduring belief in this myth stems partly from a modern tendency to view earlier historical periods, often labeled "The Dark Ages," as inherently ignorant or superstitious. This perspective, fueled by the compelling but inaccurate historical accounts of the 19th century, served to highlight perceived intellectual superiority and to frame historical struggles, such as those surrounding evolutionary theory, as a continuation of science triumphing over religious obscurantism. In truth, the spherical nature of our planet was a well-established fact among scholars long before Columbus set sail.