Augustinian Studies 42:1 (2011) 33–48

Augustine and the Shape of the Earth:

A Critique of Leo Ferrari

C. P. E. Nothaft
University College, London

Introduction
If there was such a thing as a list of “secular heresies,” the claim that the earth
is flat would probably be at the top. Ever since Copernicus’s mocking reference
to Lactantius’s rejection of the earth’s sphericity in the preface to De revolutioni-
bus orbium coelestium (1543), the flat earth has been a symbol of ignorance and
backward thinking, an archetype for everything that separates our modern mindset
from that of the “Dark Ages.”1 Generations of schoolchildren on both sides of the
Atlantic have been taught how Christopher Columbus ushered in modernity by
bravely defending his conviction that the earth is a globe against the dogmatism of
the Church and the superstition of his sailors, who were allegedly afraid of falling
off the edge. To this day, the geographical paradigm shift from flat disk to round
globe remains a popular element in narratives of modernity, eagerly deployed in
passionate accounts of the eternal “warfare” between science and religion.2 As with

1. “Non enim obscurum est Lactantium, celebrem alioqui scriptorem, sed Mathematicum parum, ad-
modum pueriliter de forma terrae loqui, cum deridet eos, qui terram globi formam habere prodide-
runt. Itaque non debit mirum videri studiosis, si qui tales nos etiam ridebunt.” Nicholas Copernicus,
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, libri VI (Nuremberg: Petreius, 1543), 4v. See M. Weichen-
han, “Die Erfindung der Erdscheibe: Ein Kapitel copernicanischer Apologetik,” in Beiträge zur
Astronomiegeschichte 6 (Acta Historica Astronomiae 18) (Frankfurt: Deutsch, 2003), 7–28.
2. The standard monograph is J. B. Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern His-
torians (New York: Praeger, 1991). See also the recent contributions by J. Wolf, Die Moderne
erfindet sich ihr Mittelalter—oder wie aus der “mittelalterlichen Erdkugel” eine “neuzeitliche
Erdscheibe” wurde (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004); and T. Reinhard, “Die Erfindung der flachen Erde:

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Nothaft: Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari

all great mythologems, its suggestive power is hardly diminished by the patent
lack of historical foundations. For decades, historians have been at pains to point
out that “flat earthers” are extremely rare specimens in medieval literature and
that Columbus did not have to convince any educated contemporary of the earth’s
sphericity. Nevertheless, references to the “times when people thought the earth was
flat” or the medieval Church’s supposed stance on this matter continue unabated
outside scholarly literature.3
Yet it may be claimed that there is a further sense in which belief in a flat
earth is a profoundly modern phenomenon. For it was only during the nineteenth
century, when scientific naturalism became the dominant Western outlook on the
world, that the notion of a flat earth re-emerged, vigorously supported by a small
group of dissenters who used the methods of “zetetic astronomy” and citations
from the Old Testament in their determined effort to challenge established sci-
entific wisdom. Boasting a do-it-yourself ethos of scientific theorizing, the most
outspoken among these neo-flat earthers turned the tables on their opponents by
denouncing “globularism” as a pre-modern superstition, soon destined to crumble
under the victory of common sense over scientific elitism. Catherine Garwood
has written a brilliant and exhilarating account of the history of this movement,
whose ramifications range from the pioneering adventures of spin doctor Samuel
Birley Rowbotham alias “Parallax” in Victorian England to the quixotic struggles
of Charles Kenneth Johnson and his California-based International Flat Earth
Research Society of America (IFERS), which continued to organize resistance
against an international conspiracy of scientists and journalists, who had dedicated
themselves to mislead people into believing that they lived on a curved surface,
well into the 1990s.4

Der Mythos Kolumbus und die Konstruktion der Epochenschwelle zwischen Mittelalter und
Neuzeit,” Paideuma 53 (2007): 161–180.
3. L. M. Bishop, “The Myth of the Flat Earth” in Misconceptions About the Middle Ages, ed. S. J.
Harris and B. L. Grigsby (New York: Routledge, 2008), 97–101; L. B. Cormack, “That Medieval
Christians Taught that the Earth was Flat” in Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science
and Religion, ed. R. L. Numbers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 28–34. For
extensive documentation of medieval knowledge of the earth’s sphericity, see J. Hamel, Die Vor-
stellung von der Kugelgestalt der Erde im europäischen Mittelalter bis zum Ende des 13. Jahrhun-
derts—dargestellt nach den Quellen (Münster: Lit, 1996). See also Hamel, “Die Kugelgestalt der
Erde: Vorstellungen im europäischen Mittelalter bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts,” in Miscellanea
Kepleriana, ed. F. Boockmann, D. A. Di Liscia, and H. Kothmann (Augsburg: Rauner, 2005), 7–26;
R. Krüger, Das Überleben des Erdkugelmodells in der Spätantike (ca.60 v.u.Z.–ca. 550) (Berlin:
Weidler, 2000); Krüger, Das lateinische Mittelalter und die Tradition des antiken Erdkugelmodells
(ca. 550–1080) (Berlin: Weidler, 2000).
4. C. Garwood, Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea (London: Macmillan, 2007).

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Nothaft: Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari

Just when the Cold War space programs and the availability of photographs of the
earth taken from outside made it increasingly difficult for flat earthers to plausibly
uphold their position, a group of Canadian intellectuals, headed by the well-known
Augustine scholar Leo C. Ferrari, breathed new life into the infamous idea by found-
ing the Flat Earth Society of Canada (FESC) in 1970. Armed with both a serious
philosophical purpose and a good dose of humor, Ferrari and his colleagues publicly
championed the absurd doctrine of “planoterrestrialism” in order to subvert what
they critically perceived as a popular blind faith in science that allowed scientific
authority to overrule even the most basic inclinations of common sense.5 While the
FESC itself is now long defunct, the subject of the flat earth has found a second lease
of life in Ferrari’s own scholarship. In 1996, he published an extensive article on
Augustine’s Cosmography in which he reached the following conclusion: “Surpris-
ingly, he believed that the two greatest bodies in the universe were the sky and the
earth, with the former dome-shaped and covering the latter. The earth was essentially
flat and surrounded by the mighty Oceanus. The sun and moon were the two greatest
bodies in the sky, but each was much smaller than the earth.”6 Although the article
has failed to generate much scholarly echo, Ferrari’s views are in a good position to
become received wisdom, seeing how they provide the basis for the corresponding
entry in the standard encyclopedia for Augustinian studies.7 This situation is all the
more remarkable considering that other recent writers on the subject treat Augustine’s
acceptance of the earth’s spherical shape as a well-established fact.8
Ferrari’s work raises some interesting questions. First and foremost, it alerts
us to the fact that, although the medieval “flat earth myth” has rightly fallen into
disrepute, the precise extent to which knowledge of the earth’s sphericity may have
been in jeopardy during the transitional period from Late Antiquity to the Middle
Ages (c. 300–800) is not exactly a settled question. The problems involved are well
exemplified by the seventh-century encyclopedist Isidore of Seville, whose remarks
on the earth’s shape have elicited diverging interpretations, most notably from
William McCready, who controversially argues that although Isidore transmitted
traces of the spherical model in his writings, he really understood the earth to be
flat.9 Yet the mere fact that we seem to have serious difficulties in determining the

5. Ibid., 280–314.
6. L. C. Ferrari, “Augustine’s Cosmography,” Augustinian Studies 27 (1996): 129–177, 129.
7. See Ferrari’s entries on “Cosmography” and “Cosmology” in Augustine through the Ages: An
Encyclopedia, ed. A. D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 246–248.
8. See e.g., Russell, Inventing, 22–23 (n. 2); Garwood, Flat Earth, 24–25 (n. 4).
9. W. D. McCready, “Isidore, the Antipodeans, and the Shape of the Earth,” Isis 87 (1996): 108–127.
See however W. M. Stevens, “The Figure of the Earth in Isidore’s ‘De natura rerum,’” Isis 71

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Nothaft: Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari

cosmological stance of an author such as Isidore—or Augustine—should also raise

some doubts concerning the applicability of our present concepts to the distant past.
It is quite possible that the exclusive dichotomy of “flat disk” vs. “round globe,” as
it has informed modern discussions and polemics, has done more to obstruct our
view than to provide new vistas when it comes to the study of ancient and medieval
ideas. This holds especially true in the case of pre-modern depictions of the earth
as “round” or spherical. While it is correct to stress that medieval scholars knew
the earth to be a sphere, it is too often overlooked that medieval conceptualizations
of this fact were quite different from ours. Instead of a single globe, composed of
earth and water, medieval sources sometimes invoke the picture of a cosmic egg
(with the earth at the center representing the yolk or the fat drop), while many others
insist that earth and water are separate spherical bodies and that the dry lands of
the earthly sphere emerge from one side of the watery sphere owing to its excentric
position vis-à-vis the latter.10
In a similar vein, one may legitimately ask if the “planoterrestrial” scenery
invoked by Ferrari in the above quote owes more to the mental imagery created by
nineteenth-century “flat earthers” and enlightenment polemicists than to the actual
views of Augustine and other late antique Church fathers. There is no reason to
assume from the outset that Augustine’s written works can provide us with anything
close to a coherent picture of the physical world or that he himself felt compelled
to make a clear choice between “globe” and “disk,” notwithstanding our present-
day penchant for contrasting the two notions. More to the point, I believe that the
Augustinian flat world which Leo Ferrari has skillfully distilled out of the bishop
of Hippo’s writings rests on too shaky grounds to be maintained in its present form.
For these reasons, the present article aims at a reassessment of “Augustine’s cosmo-
graphy” by arguing that his views on the earth’s shape bore a stronger continuity to
the spherical model of Greek natural philosophy than Ferrari is prepared to admit.

Augustine and the School of Antioch

Since Augustine left us no systematic depiction of the physical structure of the
world, a study of his views cannot possibly abstract from the general context of the

(1980): 268–277; D. Woodward, “Medieval Mappaemundi,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 1,

Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. B. Har-
ley and D. Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 286–370, at 320; Krüger,
Das lateinische Mittelalter, 45–100 (see n. 3). See also the letters by Stevens and McCready to
Isis 87 (1996): 678–679.
10. See K. A. Vogel, Sphaera terrae: Das mittelalterliche Bild der Erde und die kosmographische
Revolution (PhD thesis, Göttingen, 1995), http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/diss/2000/vogel/index.htm.

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cosmological assumptions that were current among educated North Africans in the
fourth and fifth centuries. A glance at the works of the great Roman encyclopedists,
from Pliny the Elder (c. 79) to Macrobius (c. 400) and Martianus Capella (c. 420),
strongly suggests that the dominant picture of the universe in Augustine’s day was
essentially still that propagated in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s On the Heavens.
According to this picture, the universe is composed of two main parts, a celestial
and an earthly (or sub-lunar) realm, both of which are structured by concentric
spheres. In the case of the sub-lunar realm, these spheres are made up by the four
elements, which are ordered according to their heaviness or density. Earth, as the
heaviest element, is massed together in the form of a solid globe at the center of
the universe, surrounded by concentric spheres of water, air and fire. Since Au-
gustine received a classical “pagan” education, which included some engagement
with Platonic philosophy, there is no reason to doubt that he was familiar with this
picture.11 In order for Ferrari to be right, however, he must have largely abandoned
it in his later years as a consequence of his conversion to Christianity, because the
cosmology contained in the Hebrew Scriptures precluded an acceptance of what I
will hereafter call the “spherical model.”12
There is no point in denying that the notion of the earth’s sphericity came under
attack from certain Christian quarters during late antiquity. The center of dissent
can be located in the exegetical school of Antioch, whose members professed a
literal reading of Genesis, tied to a strong skepticism towards the explanations of
the structure of the cosmos offered by pagan philosophers.13 An important witness
to the roots of this tradition is Photius of Constantinople, who informs us about the
lost tract Against Fate by Diodore, who became bishop of Tarsus in 378. It appears
that Diodore saw an intrinsic connection between deterministic astrology, which
he—like most Christian writers—rejected, and the pagan doctrine of a spherical
universe. In order to back up his conviction that the heaven was shaped like a tent
rather than a sphere, he produced “testimonies drawn from Scripture, not just

11. See Aristotle, On the Heavens, trans. W. K. C. Guthrie (London: Heinemann, 1960); F. M. Corn-
ford, Plato’s Cosmology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1937). On the encyclopedists see
Krüger, Das Überleben, 120–150, 189–192, 278–350 (see n. 3); F. S. Betten, “The Knowledge of
the Sphericity of the Earth during the Earlier Middle Ages,” Catholic Historical Review 9 (1923):
74–90, at 76–83. On Augustine’s knowledge of the Timaeus and other Platonic teachings see
F. van Fleteren, s.v. “Plato, Platonism,” in Augustine through the Ages, 651–654 (see n. 7).
12. On the cosmology of the bible see now L. Montagnini, “La questione della forma della terra:
Dalle origini alla tarda antichità,” Studi sull’Oriente Cristiano 13, no. 2 (2009): 31–68, at 34–35;
Garwood, Flat Earth, 363–369 (see n. 4).
13. C. Schäublin, Untersuchungen zu Methode und Herkunft der antiochenischen Exegese (Cologne:
Hanstein, 1974); Montagnini, “La questione,” 62–65 (see n. 12).

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concerning the form of the heaven, but also on the rising and setting of the sun.”
Photius was markedly critical of Diodore, noting that he was undoubtedly “a true
believer,” but that his scriptural proofs were lacking in cogency.14
There is some evidence that Diodore of Tarsus passed on his cosmological views
to his students, which included Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350–428/29) and John
Chrysostom (c. 345–407). In his tract On the Creation of the World (546/60), John
Philoponus repeatedly criticizes Theodore and his school for their use of biblical
citations in an effort to contradict the spherical cosmology of the philosophers.15
That Chrysostom held similar views to Diodore and Theodore concerning the earth’s
flatness becomes apparent from his references to the world as a cosmic tabernacle.16
An even clearer picture is provided by one of Chrysostom’s contemporaries (and
personal rivals), Severianus of Gabala (d. after 408), whose Homilies on Genesis
depict a tabernacle-shaped universe with a flat earth at the bottom.17 Finally, there
is the famous sixth-century case of Cosmas Indicopleustes, whose Christian To-
pography (ca. 550) contains by far the most elaborate and systematic example of
a scripturally derived flat-earth cosmology that has come down to us. Although
Cosmas spent most of his life in Byzantine Egypt, there are clear links between his
own writings and the aforementioned Syriac or Antiochene tradition. Not only did
he incorporate numerous citations from Severianus of Gabala in his works, but his
teachers included Patricius of Nisibis, who served as katholikòs of the Nestorian
Church in Persia under the name Mar Aba (540–552).18
It is worth pointing out that all of these authors wrote in Greek and that their
cosmological views failed to exert any influence on Latin Medieval thought. This
is particularly important to stress in the case of Cosmas Indicopleustes, whose

14. Mh; sfai`ran de; to;n oujrano;n ei\nai, ajlla; skhnh`~ kai; kamavra~ diaswv/zein. Kai; tauvth~
th`~ uJpolhvyew~ grafivkav~, wJ~ oi[etai, probavllei marturiva~, ouj movnon peri; tou` schv-
mato~, ajlla; kai; peri; duvsew~ kai; peri; ajnatolh`~ hJlivou. . . . E
j x ou| eujsebou`nta me;n to;n
a[ndra, oi|~ kevcrhtai, qeivn a[n ti~, ajkribeiva/ de; logismw`n th;n tw`n grafikw`n marturivan
proteivnein oujkevti oJmoivw~ fhvsei. Photius, Bibliothèque (cod. 223), vol. 4, ed. R. Henry (Paris:
Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1965), 42–43. See also ibid., 13–14.
15. Johannes Philoponos, De opificio mundi (3.10), ed. W. Reichhardt (Leipzig: Teubner, 1897),
131–141.
16. John Chrysostom, Homiliae XXXIV in Epistolam ad Hebraeos, Patrologia Graeca 63, 109–111.
17. Severianus of Gabala, In mundi creationem orationes, Patrologia Graeca 56, 441–443, 452–454.
18. Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographie Chrétienne (2.2, 8.25), ed. W. Wolska-Conus, 3 vols. (Paris:
Éditions du CERF, 1968–1973), 1:307, 3:195. See Montagnini “La questione,” 65–68 (see n. 12);
W. Wolska, La Topographie Chrétienne de Cosmas Indicopleustès: Théologie et science au VIe
siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962); K.-H. Uthemann, “Kosmas Indikopleustes,
Leben und Werk: Eine Übersicht,” in Christus, Kosmos, Diatribe: Themen der frühen Kirche als
Beiträge zu einer historischen Theologie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 497–561.

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Nothaft: Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari

work, after its initial “discovery” at the end of the seventeenth century, was often
perversely used to prove that educated people in the Middle Ages thought that
they lived on a flat disk under a vaulted sky.19 But there is reason to believe that
even for their own time and place, the views of Diodore and Cosmas can hardly
be taken as representative. Cosmas in particular was obviously well-acquainted
with the spherical model, which he sometimes describes in great detail in order
to refute it, and the polemical tone of his Topography suggests that it remained
the dominant view in his own time, that is, even among Christians. His resistance
to this picture is hence best viewed as an attack from the intellectual periphery,
maybe not too dissimilar to the efforts of nineteenth-century flat earthers to chal-
lenge conventional wisdom.20
Yet even if this interpretation is not shared, it is undeniable that the extreme
biblical literalism espoused by Cosmas and his predecessors is far removed from
the approach to Genesis taught by some of the foremost Church fathers. Besides
the allegorical style of interpretation championed by Origen, an influential line of
thought was forged by Basil of Caesarea (329–379), who did not shy away from
occasionally incorporating Greek natural philosophy into his exposition of Genesis.
Wondering about the earth’s ability to sustain itself in the universe, Basil paraphrased
the doctrine of Aristotle’s On the Heavens (2.14): the earth manages to rest upon
itself, because it is placed in the center of the universe, which is the natural target of
motion for all heavy bodies. As a consequence, the earth’s surface is everywhere at
the same distance from the center, which naturally implies that the earth is a sphere.
Yet while Basil’s treatment of the problem suggests that he accepted this explana-
tion, he did not want to compel his readers to follow any particular theory of the
physical universe: “If there is anything in this system which might appear probable
to you, keep your admiration for the source of such perfect order, for the wisdom of
God. . . . At all events let us prefer the simplicity of faith to the demonstrations of
reason.”21 In a similar vein, Ambrose (339–397), who baptized Augustine in Milan

19. Krüger, Das Überleben, 351–446 (see n. 3). See also R. Krüger, “Ein Mythos der Moderne: Die
Erdscheibentheorie im Mittelalter und die Verfälschung des ‘Hexaemeron’ des Basilius von Cae-
sarea durch Bernard de Montfaucon (1706),” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 36 (2001): 3–29.
20. See Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographie (1.3), 1:275–277 (n. 18).
21. Touvtwn a[n soi doch/` ti piqano;n ei\nai tw`n eijrhmevwn, ejpi; th;n ou[tw tau`ta diataxamevnhn
tou` qeou` sofivan metavqe~ to; qau`ma. Ouj ga;r ejlattou`tai hj ejpi; toi`~ megivstoi~ e[kplhxi~,
ejpeida;n ov trovpo~ kaq j o}n givnetaiv ti tw`n paradovxwn ejxeureqh/` eij de; mhv, a;lla; tov ge
aJplou`n th`~ pivstew~ ijscurovteron e[stw tw`n logikw`n ajpodeivxew;n. Basil of Caesarea, Homi-
lien zum Hexaemeron (1.10), ed. E. A. de Mendieta and S. Y. Rudberg, Die griechischen christ-
lichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte, Neue Folge 2 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), 18.
Translation according to Basil, Letters and Select Works, trans. B. Jackson, The Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers, Second Series 8 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 57. See also C. Scholten,

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in 387, repeatedly referred to the notion of the earth’s sphericity without either
explicit endorsement or criticism.22
It is this latter exegetical tradition, represented by Basil and Ambrose, to which
Augustine, in his role as an expositor of Genesis, himself belonged.23 In On the
Literal Interpretation of Genesis (Gn. litt.), composed between 401 and 415, he
warns his readers that the knowledge attained by non-Christians about the natural
world should not be recklessly opposed by incompetent exegetes, who extract false
wrong readings from Scripture (a warning evidently not heeded by Cosmas).24 In-
stead, believers should strive to “show that whatever [the philosophers] have been
able to demonstrate from reliable sources about the world of nature is not contrary
to our literature.”25 One striking example for this method is Augustine’s discussion
of the shape of the material heaven. As he points out, the scriptural depiction of the
sky as a “dome” (Isaiah 40:22) need not exclude that it (and, by implication, the
earth) was really a sphere, for “it is reasonable to assume that scripture wished to
talk about the shape of the sky with reference to that part of it which is above us.
So if the sky is not a globe, it is in one part—the part which covers the earth—a
dome, while if it is a globe, then it is a dome all around.”26
The point Augustine is trying to make here and elsewhere, is that Scripture should
not be misused as a textbook on natural philosophy. At the same time, he is careful
not to force any particular picture of the physical world upon his readers. On the
circumpolar motion of the stars, he remarks that this rotation is to be understood “like
a sphere or globe, if there is another pole, hidden from us, at the other extremity, or

“Weshalb wird die Schöpfungsgeschichte zum naturwissenschaftlichen Bericht?” Theologische

Quartalschrift 177 (1997): 1–15, at 3–7.
22. Ambrose, Expositio psalmi CXVIII 12,20 (CSEL 62, 262–263); Hexaemeron 1,3,10; 2,3,9 (CSEL
32.1, 9, 47). On Origen, Basil, and Ambrose see also Montagnini, “La questione,” 51–52, 54–60
(see. n. 12); Krüger, Das Überleben, 197–206, 217–226 (see n. 3).
23. See D. C. Lindberg, “The Medieval Church Encounters the Classical Tradition,” in When Science
and Christianity Meet, ed. D. C. Lindberg and R. L. Numbers (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2003), 7–32, at 12–19; Montagnini, “La questione,” 60–62 (see n. 12); Krüger, Das Über-
leben, 236–270 (see n. 3).
24. Gn. litt. 1,19,39.
25. “Quidquid ipsi de natura rerum veracibus documentis demonstrare potuerint, ostendamus nostris
litteris non esse contrarium.” Gn. litt. 1,21,41 (CSEL 28.1, 31). Translation according to WSA
I.13, 188.
26. “Et illa quidem apud nos camerae similitudo etiam secundum litteram accepta non impedit eos
qui sphaeram dicunt. bene quippe creditur secundum eam partem, quae super nos est, de caeli
figura scriptura loqui voluisse. si ergo sphaera non est, ex una parte camera est, ex qua parte cae-
lum terram contegit; si autem sphaera est, undique camera est.” Gn. litt. 2,9,22 (CSEL 28.1, 47).
Translation according to WSA I.13, 202. See Krüger, Das Überleben, 246–250 (see n. 3).

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like a discus if there is no other pole.”27 Augustine correctly observes that the no-
tion of a spherical heaven presupposes the existence of a second (southern) pole of
rotation, thereby displaying his general familiarity with the spherical model. To his
readers, however, he presents the matter as merely hypothetical, in order to confirm
his main point that such questions are of secondary importance for the pursuit of a
blessed life.28 But do we need to assume that he himself was completely undecided
on such cosmological questions? If Augustine was familiar with the spherical model,
this familiarity must have also extended to the arguments traditionally given in its
favor. These included the fact that the visible star-constellations change according
to the geographical latitude at which the observer is located. As Aristotle points out,
this change “shows not only that the earth is spherical but that it is of no great size,
since a small change of position on our part southward or northward visibly alters the
circle of the horizon.”29 Closer to Augustine’s own time, similar points were made by
Calcidius in his commentary on the Timaeus. Given the importance of the fixed stars
as indicators of the earth’s sphericity, it may be doubted that the bishop of Hippo
saw the possibility that the heavens rotated like a “disk” as a serious alternative.30
Augustine’s knowledge of Platonist cosmology transpires in several of his de-
scriptions of the physical world, especially where he appeals to the four elements
and their layering according to weight.31 This picture of the cosmos, while it does
not necessarily preclude a flat earth, is congenial to the spherical model, according
to which the earthly sphere at the center of the cosmos is surrounded by additional
spheres of water, air and fire. On the other hand, Augustine follows Scripture in
dividing the world into “two immense parts (duo corpora maxima), higher and
lower,” namely heaven and earth.32 Ferrari concedes that the “conception of the
heaven and earth as the two greatest parts of the universe and as upper and lower,

27. “Ut caelum, si est alius nobis occultus cardo ex alio vertice, sicut sphaera, si autem nullus alius
cardo est, velut discus rotari videatur.” Gn. litt. 2,10,23 (CSEL 28.1, 48). Translation according to
WSA I.13, 203.
28. “Multi enim multum disputant de his rebus, quas maiore prudentia nostri auctores omiserunt ad
beatam vitam non profuturas discentibus et obbupantes, quod peius est, multum pretiosa et rebus
salubribus impendenda temporum spatia.” Gn. litt. 2,9,20 (CSEL 28.1, 45).
29. Aristotle, On the Heavens 2,14 (297b–298a), trans. Guthrie, 253 (see n. 11).
30. See Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus (60), ed. J. H. Wasznik, in Plato
Latinus, vol. 4, ed. R. Klibansky (London: Warburg Institute, 1962), 108. For a useful summary
of ancient arguments in favor of the earth’s sphericity see James Evans, The History and Practice
of Ancient Astronomy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 47–53.
31. See especially Gn. litt. 2,1,3–3,6. Cf. Plato, Timaeus 49c–63e.
32. “Unde caelum et terram deum fecisse scriptura praedixit, totam scilicet corpoream mundi molem
in duas maximas partes superiorem atque inferiorem distributam cum omnibus quae in eis sunt
usitatis notis que creaturis.” Conf. 12,21,30 (CCL 27, 231–232). See also Gn. litt. 2,13,27; 3,7,9.

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Nothaft: Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari

respectively, goes back at least to Plato.”33 However, he also claims that “Augustine
seems to be ignoring Plato’s observation . . . that God made the world in the form of
a globe.”34 Ferrari’s reasons why we should attribute such an attitude to Augustine
are not convincing. He begins by asserting that Augustine’s references to heaven
and earth as duo corpora maxima must be rendered as “two greatest parts” rather
than “immense” or merely “great,” as previous translators had assumed. This may
well be, but he goes too far in claiming that this talk of two greatest parts “cannot
possibly make sense” in a spherical, geocentric universe, because in the latter case
the earth would be much smaller than the heavens.35 Once we substitute “heaven”
and “earth” for the celestial and the sub-lunar realm, it becomes clear how such a
division of the cosmos into duo corpora maxima can be accommodated.
Ferrari also shows himself impressed by Augustine’s depiction of the earth as
being situated at the “bottom” (fundus) of the universe, from which he infers that
the bishop of Hippo believed in a “vertical universe,” with a flat earth at the bot-
tom and a dome-shaped heaven on top.36 Yet while it is true that, on the spherical
model of Plato’s Timaeus (62c–63e), the up vs. down-distinction collapses into
one of center vs. periphery, it does not automatically follow that references to the
“bottom” of the universe are irreconcilable to it. As Augustine himself indicates in
On the City of God (ciu.), the spherical model simply implies that the bottom and
the center of the universe are one and the same (eundemque locum mundus habeat
et infimum et medium).37 Since the earth is located at the center of the universe and
everything that falls “down” describes a motion towards the center, there remains
a (figurative) sense in which it is still true that the earth located at the “bottom.”
In the absence of any additional evidence of Augustine’s belief in a flat earth, it is
thus hardly advisable to deduce from his use of expressions such as duo corpora
maxima and fundus a “vertical universe” in the sense that Leo Ferrari makes of it.

The T-O-fallacy
There are essentially two passages in Augustine’s works which Ferrari cites as
positive proof for his claim that the bishop of Hippo believed the earth to be flat.
The first of these can be found among his Letters (no. 199, written in 419), where
Augustine refers to the orbis terrarum, the “circle of the lands,” which is surrounded

33. Ferrari, “Augustine’s Cosmography,” 139 (see n. 6).

34. Ibid., 139, n. 44.
35. Ibid., 137.
36. Ibid., 138–139.
37. Ciu. 16,9 (CCL 48, 510).

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Nothaft: Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari

by the great Oceanus.38 To this statement can be added his exposition of Psalm 76:19
(“the voice of thy thunder in a wheel”), which he interprets as an allusion to the
orbis terrarum, shaped like a wheel (rota).39 At first glance, Augustine’s vocabulary
might seem to commit him to a non-spherical, disk- or wheel-shaped picture of
the earth. Yet to draw this conclusion would mean to commit what I would like to
call the “T-O-fallacy.” The nature of this fallacy is most easily grasped from the
role medieval T-O-maps have played in past debates over the state of geographical
knowledge in the Middle Ages. These maps usually depict the orbis terrarum as a
circular land-mass, made up of the three continents (Europa, Africa, Asia), with the
ocean forming a large “O” at its periphery. Scholars working in the field of medieval
geography have long understood that these maps aimed at a schematic depiction of
the oikoumene, the habitable landmass of the world, which, contrary to what has
often been assumed, in no way presupposes a flat earth.40 The picture of a wheel-
shaped orbis terrarum is perfectly compatible with the spherical model, because
it can be taken (and was usually meant) to represent just a small part of the total
surface of the globe, the rest of which was thought to be either completely covered
with water or containing unknown further continents.41 Hence, it is no surprise that
Augustine’s contemporary and fellow North African Martianus Capella could talk of
the rotunditas of the landmass, engirded by the Oceanus, even though he is a clear
representative of the spherical model.42 In the same vein, Augustine’s reference to

38. “Dominabitur a mari usque ad mare et a flumine usque ad terminos orbis terrae [Ps 71.8], ‘a
flumine’ scilicet, ubi baptizatus est, quia inde coepit evangelium praedicare, ‘a mari’ autem ‘us-
que ad mare’ totus est orbis cum omnibus, quoniam mari Oceano cingitur universus. . . . Domi-
nabitur a mari usque ad mare, quo uaquaeque insula cingitur, sicut in universo orbe terrarum,
quae tamquam omnium quodam modo maxima est insula, quia et ipsam cingit Oceanus, ad cuius
littora in occidentalibus partibus ecclesiam pervenisse iam novimus et, quocumque litorum eius
nondum pervenit, perventura est utique fructificando atque crescendo.” Ep. 199,12,47 (CSEL 57,
285–286).
39. “Orbis terrarum est rota; nam circuitus orbis terrarum, merito et orbis dicitur; unde brevis eti-
am rotella, orbiculus appellatur. Vox tonitrui tui in rota; apparuerunt fulgura tua orbi terrarum.
Nubes illae in rota circumierunt orbem terrarum; circumierunt tonando et coruscando, abyssum
commoverunt, praeceptis tonuerunt, miraculis coruscaverunt, in omnem enim terram exiit sonus
eorum, et in fines orbis terrae verba eorum.” En. Ps 76,20 (CSEL 39, 1064). See also en. Ps 59,12;
71,11; ciu. 16,17.
40. See Stevens, “The Figure” (n. 9); Woodward, “Medieval Mappaemundi,” 318–321, 342 (n. 9);
R. Simek, Erde und Kosmos im Mittelalter: Das Weltbild vor Kolumbus (Munich: C. H. Beck,
1992), 37–54; A.-D. von den Brincken, Fines Terrae: Die Enden der Erde und der vierte Kon-
tinent auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten (Hannover: Hahn, 1992); E. Edson, Mapping Time and
Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their World (London: British Library, 1997).
41. See the various ancient views discussed in Vogel, Sphaera terrae, 34–69 (see n. 10).
42. “Rotunditatis autem ipsius extima circumfusus ambit Oceanus, sicut navigatus undique compro-
batur; nam a Gadibus per Hispaniae Galliarumque flexum occidentalis plaga omnis hodieque nav-

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Nothaft: Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari

the orbis terrarum as round or wheel-shaped no more commits him to a flat-earth

cosmology than two-dimensional depictions or verbal descriptions of the shape of
Australia would commit anyone to an assumption that the “whole world” is in some
way shaped like this particular continent.

Evidence for a Spherical Earth in Augustine’s Works

While Ferrari’s attempts to prove that the bishop of Hippo championed a flat-
earth cosmology have thus turned out to be unconvincing, his position is further
undermined by all those statements in Augustine’s works that can instead be inter-
preted as endorsements of the spherical model. For instance, in chapter 18 of book
13 of ciu., which contains a comment on Job 26:7 (“He . . . hangs the earth upon
nothing”) that is reminiscent of Basil, Augustine holds that “perhaps an even more
probable argument against our view [that there can be earthly bodies in heaven] may
be drawn from the very existence of a centre of the universe and from the fact that
all heavier bodies converge upon it.”43 Ferrari is ready to admit that this statement
presupposes the earth to be situated at the center of the universe, “and therefore to
be global in shape, with the spherical heavens surrounding it.” However, he takes
the “hypothetical tone” of Augustine’s statement as evidence that this spherical
“viewpoint .  .  . was useful to Augustine for purposes of rhetorical rebuttal, but
which, to the best of my knowledge, is not demonstrably his own. Otherwise it
would be incompatible with his oft-repeated phrase duae maximae partes mundi for
the earth and sky.”44 We have already seen that Augustine’s use of this phrase can
hardly qualify as a decisive hint for his acceptance of any cosmology, be it “flat”
or “spherical.” More importantly, however, there are further instances in his work,
where the spherical model is presupposed in a tone that can hardly be dismissed
as “hypothetical.”
In Gn. litt., Augustine ponders the question whether day and night were created
simultaneously when God spoke the words “Let the light be called Day and the
darkness be called Night (Genesis 1:5).” After having made the initial suggestion
that day and night may have succeeded each other, he immediately goes on to say:

igatur.” Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (617–618), ed. J. Willis (Leipzig:
Teubner, 1983), 216.
43. “Fortassis enim de ipso medio mundi loco, eo quod in eum coeant quaeque graviora, etiam argu-
mentatio verisimilior habeatur.” Ciu. 13,18 (CCL 48, 401). Translation according to The City of
God against the Pagans, vol. 4, Books XII–XV, ed. P. Levine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1966), 203.
44. Ferrari, “Augustine’s Cosmography,” 140 (see n. 6).

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Nothaft: Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari

But if I say that, I am afraid I will be laughed at by those who know for certain,
and by those who can easily work out, that during the time when it is night with
us the presence of light is illuminating those parts of the world past which the sun
is returning from its setting to its rising, and that thus during the entire twenty-
four hours, while it circles through its whole round, there is always day-time
somewhere, night-time somewhere else.45
Taken by itself, this statement strongly evokes a spherical, geostatic picture of
heaven and earth. Ferrari tries to undercut this line of reasoning by claiming that “for
Augustine the sun kept traveling around in very large horizontal circles or ellipses
above the disk-shaped earth.”46 It remains questionable, however, whether the notion
of the sun constantly “traveling” above the earth, sending down its beams like a
flashlight over a large plate, can be reasonably taken to account for the simultaneity
of day and night. Ferrari’s explanation that “the disk-shaped earth was one of the
two greatest bodies in the universe, so that there were plenty of distant lands for
the sun to visit after it went behind the nearest horizon” is question-begging in this
respect and seems to owe more to the kind of arguments developed by modern-
day flat earthers than to anything Augustine recognizably committed himself to in
writing.47 It may be worth adding that Cosmas Indicopleustes, in order to account
for the sun’s nightly disappearance, felt compelled to posit enormous mountain
ranges that blocked the sun from sight once it reached the northwestern parts of the
world.48 Needless to say, Augustine never makes any such claim, but simply asserts
that the sun describes a circular path (circuitum gyri) about the earth, which is fully
consistent with the spherical model. Augustine’s aim, in the passage cited above,
was not to discuss rival cosmological conceptions, but to appeal to a well-known
fact (namely the simultaneity of day and night) in order to shed light on a difficult
exegetical question. In doing so, he appealed to the common cosmological knowl-
edge of his readers, which was anchored in the spherical model. He continued his
discussion of the creation of day and night in another passage, which is completely
ignored by Ferrari even though it can be read as an unequivocal endorsement of
the spherical model:

45. “Sed, si hoc dixero, vereor ne deridear et ab his, qui certissime cognoverunt, et ab his, qui possunt
facillime advertere, quod eo tempore, quo nox apud nos est, eas partes mundi praesentia lucis in-
lustret, per quas sol ab occasu in ortum redit, ac per hoc omnibus viginti quattuor horis non deesse
per circuitum gyri totius, alibi diem, alibi noctem.” Gn. litt. 1,10,21 (CSEL 28.1, 15). Translation
according to WSA I.13, 176. On this passage see also Krüger, Das Überleben, 244–246 (see n. 3).
46. Ferrari, “Augustine’s Cosmography,” 167 (see n. 6).
47. Ibid., 166–167.
48. Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographie (2.34), 1:339–41 (see n. 18). See the criticism in John Philo-
ponus, De opificio mundi (3.10), 138–139 (see n. 15), for whom the phenomenon of sunrise and
sunset was clear proof of the earth’s sphericity.

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Nothaft: Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari

Although water still covered the whole earth, there was nothing to stop this wa-
tery and globular mass from causing day on one side from the presence of light,
and night on the other from the absence of light, which would follow round to
the first side at the time of evening, while the light sank down to the other side.49
Once again we have a clear depiction of the simultaneity of day and night that is most
straightforwardly associated with the spherical model. More importantly, however,
this passage includes an unambiguous description of the earth (covered by water)
as a globular mass (globosa moles).50 This creates a considerable obstacle to any
attempt to impute to Augustine a flat-earth cosmology. Rather than reinterpreting
in Ferrari’s fashion all traces of the spherical model in Augustine’s work as being
really based on a “flat” cosmology, it would seem far more economical to assume
that Augustine was ready to accept the spherical concept of heaven and earth that
was doubtlessly common in his age.

The Earth’s Shape and the Antipodes

The claim that Augustine of Hippo was a “flat-earther,” although its force had
considerably weakened in the decades previous to Ferrari’s article, is in itself hardly
new. As a matter of fact, Augustine’s views have sometimes been assimilated to
those of his predecessor Lactantius (c. 250–c. 325), who famously ridiculed the
idea that the earth could be spherical, because people in the southern hemisphere
would have to have their feet above their hands and trees would grow downwards
(Divine Institutes 3.24).51 It is far from obvious how Lactantius’s refutation, which
is hardly a serious foray into matters of natural philosophy, but rather a rhetorical
exercise, must be understood. What seems clear is that the prime target of his criti-
cism was not so much the shape of the earth as the existence of Antipodes, an idea

49. “Cum enim totam terram adhuc aqua tegeret, nihil impediebat, ut aquosa et globosa moles ex una
parte faceret diem lucis praesentia, ex alia noctem lucis absentia, quae in eam partem succederet
a tempore vespertino, ex qua lux in aliam declinaret.” Gn. litt. 1,12,25 (CSEL 28.1, 18).
50. This passage is also discussed in Krüger, Das Überleben, 250–254 (see n. 3), who takes it as
explicit proof that Augustine accepted the spherical model. Ferrari claims to have conducted a
search “of all of his works for the key words which could possibly be used in maintaining a global
theory of the earth’s shape. With two merely speculative exceptions already encountered, no pas-
sages were found in which Augustine was promoting the idea of a global or spherical earth.”
Ferrari, “Augustine’s Cosmography,” 142 (see n. 6). Gn. litt. 1,12,25 is not cited among those
“speculative exceptions.”
51. See C. R. Beazley, The Dawn of Modern Geography: A History of Exploration and Geographical
Science, vol. 1 (London: Murray, 1897), 274–275; Krüger, Das Überleben, 255–265 (see n. 3);
Montagnini, “La questione,” 52–54 (see n. 12). On the background see also V. I. J. Flint, “Mon-
sters and the Antipodes in the Early Middle Ages and Enlightenment,” Viator 15 (1984): 65–80.

46
Nothaft: Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari

which Augustine likewise denied. In ciu., he introduces the Antipodes as “men on

the other side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets for us, who plant their
footsteps opposite ours,” immediately adding that “there is no rational ground to
believe this.” His rejection of the idea was grounded in his belief in the unity of
mankind as descendants from Adam, which would have been seriously challenged by
the existence of another race of humans in far away and unreachable regions of the
world. That there had to be such regions was sometimes inferred from the spherical
shape of the earth: since all parts of the earth’s surface were at the same distance
from the center of the universe, they had to be all alike in being inhabited by humans.
Augustine’s countered this argument by showing that it contained a non-sequitur:
They fail to observe that even if the world is held to be global or rounded in
shape, or if some process of reasoning should prove this to be the case, it would
still not necessarily follow that the land on the opposite side is not covered by
masses of water. Furthermore, even if the land there be exposed, we must not
jump to the conclusion that it has human inhabitants.52
There are basically two ways of refuting an argument based on conditional reason-
ing: by denying its antecedens or by showing how the consequens fails to follow
from the former. What Augustine wants to stress is that even if the antecedens is
accepted in the above case, the consequens (namely the existence of Antipodes)
can still be denied. The rhetorical aims of this passage thus fully account for the
hypothetical fashion in which he refers to the earth’s sphericity. There is no need
to take this passage, as Ferrari does, as evidence of the “antipathy of Augustine for
the global shape of the earth.”53

Conclusion
One of the guiding concerns of Augustine’s interpretation of Genesis was to
avoid confrontation between the literal sense of Scripture and the knowledge of the

52. “Quod vero et antipodas esse fabulantur, id est homines a contraria parte terrae, ubi sol ori-
tur, quando occidit nobis, adversa pedibus nostris calcare vestigia: nulla ratione credendum est.
Neque hoc ulla historica cognitione didicisse se adfirmant, sed quasi ratiocinando coniectant,
eo quod intra convexa caeli terra suspensa sit, eundemque locum mundus habeat et infimum et
medium; et ex hoc opinantur alteram terrae partem, quae infra est, habitatione hominum carer
non posse. Nec adtendunt, etiamsi figura conglobata et rutunda mundus esse credatur sive aliqua
ratione monstretur, non tamen esse consequens, ut etiam ex illa parte ab aquarum congerie nuda
sit terra; deinde etisamsi nuda sit, neque hoc statim necesse esse, ut homines habeat.” Ciu. 16,9
(CCL 48, 510). Translation according to Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, vol.
5, Book XVI–Book XVIII, Chapters I–XXXV, trans. E. M. Sanford and W. M. Green (London:
Heinemann, 1965), 49, 51.
53. Ferrari, “Augustine’s Cosmography,” 148 (see n. 6).

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Nothaft: Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari

natural world that had been attained by the philosophers. This explains his repeated
assertion that quarrels over details only detract the Christian reader from the es-
sential aim of biblical lecture, namely his personal salvation.54 In this context, his
neutral presentation of the spherical model as “hypothetical” is best understood as
part of his effort to liberate the exegesis of Genesis from the strictures imposed by
the need to reconcile it with any particular cosmological theory. At the same time,
however, his discussions of the natural world clearly reflect his classical or “pagan”
education, for which reason it is no surprise that some of his remarks presuppose
the spherical conception of heaven and earth. Ferrari is certainly correct in insist-
ing that Augustine does not go out of his way to defend this picture. But neither
is he able to show conclusively that Augustine committed himself to any other
cosmological model. The important point to make is that Augustine’s works were
written for purposes other than furthering insight into the structure of the natural
world. Any attempt to construct a single unified “cosmography” from these works
is thus open to serious criticism.

54. “Quid enim ad me pertinet, utrum caelum sicut sphaera undique concludat terram in media mundi
mole libratam, an eam ex una parte desuper velut discus operiat?” Gn. litt. 2,9,22 (CSEL 28.1,
45–46). See also Gn. litt. 2,9,20; ench. 3,9.

48