Late last year, I came across a particularly erudite comment on a friend’s Facebook post, detailing the evidence for ancient and medieval knowledge that the world was spherical, contrary to the modern myth that people used to believe the Earth was flat.
Unfortunately, I have lost the information, but this was most striking: the writer, Joe Cole, pointed out that iconography attests to the widespread idea that the Earth was in fact a globe.
On Wikipedia, it is noted:
Holding the world in one’s hand, or, more ominously, under one’s foot, has been a symbol since antiquity. To citizens of the Roman Empire, the plain spherical globe held by the god Jupiter represented the world or the universe, as the dominion held by the Emperor.
… With the growth of Christianity in the 5th century, the orb (in Latin works ‘orbis terrarum’, the ‘world of the lands’, whence “orb” derives) was surmounted with a cross, hence ‘globus cruciger’, symbolizing the Christian God’s dominion of the world.
What a simple refutation of the flat earth myth, with such readily available images! Yet, people persist in believing that our forebears thought the Earth was flat, sometimes using this myth as an example of the purported ignorance of religious people. Worse, a friend of mine knows someone who actually believes the Earth is indeed flat. One wonders if he has ever taken a plane and observed the curvature of the Earth’s surface.
Although we have infinitely more information accessible at our fingertips than people of yore, we still suffer the effects of the Fall, including a dimmed intellect. Thus, I suppose we should not be too hard on those who persist in believing falsehoods, but bear with them patiently. As regards ourselves, we ought to cultivate the humility of being able to examine our own dearly-held beliefs, and be able to explain why we hold them.
True charity consists in putting up with all one’s neighbor’s faults, never being surprised by his weakness, and being inspired by the least of his virtues.
— St. Thérèse of Lisieux
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Image: Our Lady Derzhavnaya icon, Wikimedia Commons / PD-US
