A most shocking historical fallacy

It is a myth that medieval people used to believe that earth was flat which was invented in 19th century. This is the finding of a book by Jeffrey Burton Russell, Professor Emeritus, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, called: Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (1997).

I came across this paper which briefly documents evidence against what may turn out to be, as information of the research of professor trickles down, one of the biggest historical lies taught at school and wide-spread in public discourse in the world. Author goes on to write:

A curious example of this mistreatment of the past for the purpose of slandering Christians is a widespread historical error, an error that the Historical Society of Britain some years back listed as number one in its short compendium of the ten most common historical illusions. It is the notion that people used to believe that the earth was flat--especially medieval Christians.

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In my research, I looked to see how old the idea was that medieval Christians believed the earth was flat. I obviously did not find it among medieval Christians. Nor among anti-Catholic Protestant reformers. Nor in Copernicus or Galileo or their followers, who had to demonstrate the superiority of a heliocentric system, but not of a spherical earth. I was sure I would find it among the eighteenth-century philosophers, among all their vitriolic sneers at Christianity, but not a word.

Read rest of the short article here.