According to conventional thought, with the collapse of civilization at the end of the Roman Empire, Europe slipped back into believing in a flat Earth, and that as late as the Renaissance sailors feared falling off its edge if they sailed to far out. However, there is little or no evidence that this was the case, and educated people probably never abandoned the spherical Earth. [Jeffrey Burton Russell]?, an American scholar whose main contribution to historical scholarship is a series of books on the history of concepts of evil and ideas of Satan, explored the issue in his Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. Russell claims that the Flat Earth Theory is a myth used to impugn pre-modern civilization, especially that of the Middle Ages in Europe.
The allegation is that people in some past era believed that the world was flat and that those sailing too far would go off the edge. This legendary belief-system is frequently ascribed to the Catholic Church, especially in the time of Christopher Columbus. The attack is often validated by being linked to the genuine controversy over the geocentric and heliocentric models of the cosmos (see History of astronomy, Ptolemy (2), and Copernicus). However, this is somewhat disingenuous, as neither side in that debate doubted that the world was a sphere: the diameter of the world had been calculated quite accurately by Eratosthenes? in the 3rd century BC, and was regularly taught as part of the geometry curriculum in medieval universities. Russell's ultimate conclusion is that a series of 19th century popular historians and serious historians invented and perpetuated this legend in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Some have claimed that Russell has gone too far overboard on the evidence, however, pointing to various Church fathers such as [Diodorus of Tarsus]? who almost certainly supported a flat Earth. This is based on various implications of the Bible, which was written before the spherical Earth model gained currency. However, Diodorus's opinion on the matter is preserved only in an attack on it by the ninth century patriarch of Constantinople, Photius; the lack of any other reference suggests that Diodorus's ideas did not have wide currency. Another early medieval author often cited as believing in a Biblical model of a flat earth, [Cosmas Indicopleustes]?, survives in 3 substantially complete Greek manuscripts and was not translated into Latin until 1706.
Modern persons who do not accept the spherical Earth and base this opinion on scripture do not represent a continuing school of Biblical exegesis.
References
Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth (1991), ISBN 027595904X
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