272 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



as to what suppositions would explain the pheno- 

 mena. He describes the earth as an oblong floor, 

 surrounded by upright walls, and covered by a vault, 

 below which the heavenly bodies perform their re- 

 volutions, going round a certain high mountain, 

 which occupies the northern parts of the earth, and 

 makes night by intercepting the light of the sun. 

 In Augustin 10 (who flourished A.D. 400) the opinion 

 is treated on other grounds;* and without denying 

 the globular form of the earth, it is asserted that 

 there are no inhabitants on the opposite side, be- 

 cause no such race is recorded by Scripture among 

 the descendants of Adam (L). Considerations of the 

 same kind operated in the well-known instance of 

 Virgil, bishop of Salzburg, in the eighth century. 

 When he was reported to Boniface, archbishop of 

 Mentz, as holding the existence of Antipodes, the 

 prelate was shocked at the assumption, as it seemed 

 to him, of a world of human beings, out of the reach 

 of the conditions of salvation ; and application was 

 made to Pope Zachary for a censure of the holder 

 of this dangerous doctrine. It does not however 

 appear that this led to any severity ; and the story 

 of the deposition of Virgil from his bishopric, which 

 is circulated by Kepler and by more modern writers, 

 is undoubtedly altogether false. The same scruples 

 continued to prevail among Christian writers to 

 a later period ; and Tostatus 1 ' notes the opinion of 

 the rotundity of the earth as an " unsafe" doctrine, 



10 Civ. D. xvi. 9. " "Montfaue. Pair. t. ii 



