Page "Middle Ages" Paragraph 49

The caricature of the period is also reflected in a number of more specific notions.

For instance, a claim that was first propagated in the 19th century and is still very common in popular culture is the supposition that all people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat.

This claim is mistaken.

In fact, lecturers in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in favor of the idea that the Earth was a sphere.

Lindberg and Numbers write: " There was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge sphericity and even know its approximate circumference ".