1st Edition
Flattening the Medieval Earth Seeking the Early Modern Origins of the Idea of an Historical Conflict between Science and Christianity
Introduction: Columbus and the flat Earth; 1. Searching for the origins and causes of an error; 2. From the Greek discovery of the spherical Earth to the Medieval debate of the antipodes; 3. Revival and criticism of early Christians's geographical views in the Early Renaissance (14th and 15th centuries); 4. Old texts and the geographical challenge of the voyages (1434-1522); 5. The early Copernicans and the flat-earthers (1541-1616); General Conclusions: From the invention of the flat error to the idea of an historical conflict between science and Christianity.
Biography
Pablo de Felipe is a researcher and lecturer, with a focus on the relations between science and Christianity, at the Protestant Faculty of Theology SEUT in Madrid (Spain). In the same city he also lectures at the Xavier Zubiri Foundation and is part of the advisory board of the Science, Technology and Religion Chair at the Comillas Pontifical University. He holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and a PhD in Religion and Theology from the University of Bristol (UK). He works as Head of Service (Virology) at the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices (AEMPS) in Madrid.
“Flattening the Medieval Earth is an important study of two historical transformations: of terrestrial geography in Columbus’s wake and of its later weaponisation in anti-religious rhetoric. Pablo de Felipe writes an engaging biography of a pervasive error –the belief that medieval Christendom had been flat-Earthbound.”
- John Hedley Brooke, Oxford University, UK
“Flattening the Medieval Earth is brilliant interdisciplinary research on how, in the 16th-17th centuries, several factors (including defending Copernicanism) led to the wrong idea of a medieval flat Earth, contributing to the prejudice of a permanent conflict between science and Christianity.”
- Miguel Á. Granada, University of Barcelona, Spain
“Flattening the Medieval Earth is a kaleidoscopic revelation of the richness of medieval discussions about the Earth’s shape and population. With masterful command of the sources and keen analytical eye, Pablo de Felipe clarifies the origin of the Flat Error and much more.”
- Henrique Leitão, University of Lisbon, Portugal
“Flattening the Medieval Earth is a ground-breaking study of the medieval debate around the shape of the Earth and the Antipodes. Pablo de Felipe convincingly demonstrates that it arose from within Christianity and not from a dichotomy between ‘science and faith’.”
- Karla Pollmann, University of Tübingen, Germany
“Flattening the Medieval Earth contains a wealth of information from a rich range of sources, many translated by de Felipe himself. It demonstrates pretty definitively that in the period of which he writes there were many voices raised on the subject of the shape of the Earth, and that these waxed and waned in the influence they exerted. The central argument of the book – that the medievals did indeed think that the Earth is spherical, but that the fiction that they did not can be traced to an earlier point in history than has hitherto been acknowledged – is persuasively made. […] This book is a valuable addition to the scholarship around a particularly fascinating historical episode, and I’m sure it will be very influential in the future of that scholarship for some time to come.”
- Michael Fuller in Irish Theological Quarterly
