Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/154

152 was Lactantius who asked, "Is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? That the crops and trees grow downward? That the rains and snow and hail fall upwards toward the earth? I am at a loss as to what to say of those, who, when they have once erred, steadily persevere in their folly, and defend one vain thing by another."

St. Augustine insisted that men could not be allowed by the Almighty to live there, since, if they did, they could not see Christ at His second coming, descending through the air.

In the eighth century, a Bishop Virgil of Salzburg dared to assert that there were men living in the antipodes. He was strongly attacked by St. Boniface of Germany, who appealed to Pope Zachary for a decision. The Pope, as the infallible teacher of Christendom, made the following response: He declared, it, "Perverse, iniquitous, and against Virgil's soul." And again another infallible statement by the infallible Pope Zachary became a doctrine of the Church.

In Italy, in 1316, Peter of Abano, famous as a physician, promulgated the opposite view to that of the Church, for which he was persecuted by the Inquisition, and barely escaped with his life. In 1327, Cecco d'Ascoli, an astronomer, was burned alive at Florence for daring to assert that men lived in the antipodes.

The difficulties that beset Columbus are well known. How he was hounded both in Portugal and in Spain by the Clergy; and even after his discovery of America, the Papacy still maintained its theory of the flatness of the earth and the nonsense of the antipodes. Pope Alexander VI and Pope Julius II attempted to settle the disputes between Spain and Portugal by drawing some remarkable maps that may still be found; but no one dares to disturb the quiet of the