Article. McCready. Isidore, the Antipodeans, and the Shape of the Earth. 1996.
Isidore, the Antipodeans, and the Shape of the Earth
William D. McCready
Isis
Vol. 87, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 108-127
ALTHOUGH THE IDEA OF INHABITED ANTIPODES seems to have been generally endorsed in the ancient world, in Christian circles it found less favor and was rejected from the patristic period right up to the rise of scholasticism. Its most vehement opponent was Lactantius, to whom it was manifest nonsense. “Is there anyone,” he asks, “so foolish as to believe that there are men whose feet are higher than their heads? Or that things that lie flat with us hang suspended there; that crops and trees grow downwards; that rain and snow and hail fall upwards upon the earth?” The root of such absurdities, he explains, is the notion that the universe is shaped like a globe and that consequently the earth, enclosed at its very center, must also be a sphere. If this is true, each part of the earth’s surface must display the same range of topographical features and must as well be inhabited by human beings and other animals. “If you ask those who defend these monstrosities how it is, then, that everything does not fall into that lower part of the sky, they answer that this is the nature of things. Heavy bodies are borne into the middle, and they are all connected at the center, just like the spokes in a wheel. Things without weight, such as clouds, smoke, and fire, are dispersed from the center, so that they might seek the sky.” All things considered, this states the scientific view of the ancient world reasonably well. However, Lactantius does not seem fully to have grasped it. To his mind, up and down remained absolute, privileged directions, with the consequence that Antipodeans must be people literally standing on their heads.
Similar incomprehension characterizes the sixth-century Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes, although there is no indication that this marginal figure could have exerted any real influence. Much more significant, and more representative of the Christian view in general, was the reluctance of both Jerome and Augustine to endorse Antipodae. Augustine discusses the issue at length, from which it is clear that, in his case, theological considerations were paramount. The idea rests on no empirical basis whatever, he insists, but is simply an example of weak inferential reasoning. “Since the earth is suspended between the celestial hemispheres,” he states, “and since the universe must have a similar lowest and central point,” it is thought that “the other portion of the earth which is below us cannot be without human inhabitants.” It is the same argument that Lactantius encountered. However, Augustine responds by attacking its logic directly. Even if the universe could be proved to be spherical in shape, he says, there is no assurance that the earth’s other hemisphere must be a mirror image of the one we inhabit. For all we know, it could be covered entirely by water. Even if it is habitable, it does not necessarily follow that it is actually inhabited by human beings. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that it is not, for “it is utterly absurd to say that any men from this side of the world could sail across the immense tract of the ocean, reach the far side, and then people it with men sprung from the single father of all mankind.”
Although he does not treat the theological aspects of the issue, the Venerable Bede endorses Augustine’s judgment. In chapter 34 of his De temporum ratione, Bede discusses the five earthly climate zones: the torrid zone at the equator, the arctic and antarctic zones at either pole, and the two temperate zones in between. With regard to the latter, he states that
only one of these can be proven to be inhabited. No credence whatever is to be given to popular tales about Antipodeans, nor does any historian say that he has either seen or heard or read of anyone who, leaving the winter sun behind and traveling into the southern regions, has crossed the extreme heat of Ethiopia and found in the areas beyond regions tempered by heat on the one side and cold on the other and fit for human habitation. Pliny, the expert investigator of the facts of nature, maintains [non negat] that the earth, "although in the shape of a pine cone, is nonetheless inhabited all around." Note, however, what he says when writing of these zones:
"There are only two temperate zones between the torrid one and the frozen ones, and these have no communication with each other because of the fiery heat of the heavenly body."
Bede is clearly aware of the views of Pliny the Elder, who states that the weight of learned opinion is that human beings are distributed all around the world, treading the same earth at the center of the universe beneath their feet and sharing the same sky overhead. The uneducated, Pliny goes on to say, are inclined to wonder why those on the other side of the world do not fall off -as if their counterparts in the other hemisphere could not equally well ask the same question of us! Generally Bede is respectful of Pliny’s views. Here, however, he rejects them categorically, arguing that, on Pliny’s own premises, they are unverifiable.
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