The Flat Earth: The Myth Columbus Didn't Debunk
The story was born in an 1828 novelized biography, not in medieval classrooms that already taught the sphere.
Did the medieval church teach that the Earth was flat? No. The story was born in 1828, inside a novelized biography of Columbus. Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell traced it in a 1997 essay.
From the novel to the classroom
Washington Irving published a life of Columbus in 1828 where documents coexist with scenes that never happened. The most famous: the debate before the wise men of Salamanca. A French Hellenist, Jean-Antoine Letronne, repeated it in 1834. Later John William Draper (1874) and Andrew Dickson White (1894) used it as proof of a permanent quarrel between science and religion. Between 1870 and 1920, according to Russell, the story became established in school textbooks. From there it moved to memes, TV series, and dinner-table conversations, in Guadalajara as much as in Dallas. The scene works: a lone navigator, surrounded by doubting sages, and in the end he is right.
What was actually taught at the university
The manual De sphaera mundi, written by Sacrobosco around 1230, explained the terrestrial sphere and was copied for centuries in European universities. The University of Edinburgh keeps copies. Bede the Venerable, Roger Bacon, and Thomas Aquinas took roundness for granted. Dante assumes it in the Divine Comedy, without stopping to explain it. There were Christians who denied it, such as Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes, but they were the exception: other believers, including John Philoponus, corrected them. National Geographic Historia reviews the case.
«That a fact is popular does not make it true, and that faith is ancient does not make it an enemy of reason.»
With Columbus, the disagreement was not the shape of the planet, but its size. His calculations were too optimistic. Without a continent in between, the crew would have lacked water and food to return. No one was arguing about whether the ship would fall off the edge.
How to recognize the next myth
Some stories survive because they tell a good story. This one comes from a novel, not a council. Michael N. Keas and The Gospel Coalition point to Draper and White as those who made it common sense. eldiario.es recently recalled that many already knew about roundness when Columbus set sail.
The next time you see a video about "what the church hid from you," ask yourself three questions: Who told this first, and when? Is there any document from that era that affirms it? Did no one really raise their voice for centuries? Almost always the trail ends with a 19th-century author with a thesis to defend.
The Bible is not an atlas. Psalm 104 sings to the Creator: "covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent" (Psalm 104:2, ESV). It is poetry that celebrates, not a map. And Scripture itself calls for discernment: "but test everything; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21, ESV).
That a fact is popular does not make it true, and that faith is ancient does not make it an enemy of reason. No one needs a flat Earth to believe in Jesus, and whoever says otherwise is repeating a scene invented almost 200 years ago. This week, before sharing something that attacks or defends your faith, look it up in two serious sources and ask someone who knows about the topic. Your testimony is also built with that.
Sources
- Jeffrey Burton Russell, «The Myth of the Flat Earth», American Scientific Affiliation (1997)
- National Geographic Historia, «Terraplanismo en la Edad Media»
- Michael N. Keas, «Evaluating Warfare Myths about Science and Christianity», Religions 12(2):132 (2021)
- The Gospel Coalition, «The Two Guys to Blame for the Myth of Constant Warfare between Religion and Science»
- University of Edinburgh Library Heritage Collections, De Sphaera mundi (Sacrobosco, c. 1230)
- eldiario.es, «Colón no derribó el mito de la Tierra plana porque muchos ya conocían la realidad»
