JESPER BAILIFF: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,
ha, let us talk of something else. That is some disturbed nonsense,
it can make you Catholic in the head
- Ludvig Holberg, Erasmus Montanus (Act 3, Scene 2) (my translation)
- Ludvig Holberg, Erasmus Montanus (Act 3, Scene 2) (my translation)
One of the most pernicious myths about
the Middle Ages remains the idea that medieval people held the earth
to be flat. This myth was perhaps most famously propagated in a
19th-century novel about Columbus, where the belief in a flat earth
was deployed as a foil to enhance Columbus' intrepid greatness as an
explorer and trailblazer. The belief in the medieval belief in a flat
earth has stuck resiliently to the collective consciousness, and even
today it lingers more strongly than medievalists would like to think.
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact
origin of the flat earth myth. In a previous blogpost I offered a
possible source for the idea that this was a medieval conviction, but
the trajectory is difficult to map. However, in this blogpost, I want
to present a very curious case from the 18th century, in which the
idea that the earth is flat is presented as a firmly Protestant idea,
and in which the idea of a round earth is frowningly labelled
Catholic (and as such practically medieval), and also Atheist. (The
tendency to conflate Atheism and Catholicism in Protestant countries
reaches back to the 16th century.) The case in question is fictional,
as it comes from the comedy Erasmus Montanus,
written by the Norwegian playwright Ludvig Holberg in 1722-23.
However, despite the fictionality of the story, the way the roundness
of the earth is treated is a funny and unusual affair, and one that I
as a medievalist find very pleasing. The translations of the quotes
from Danish are all mine.
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The
plot of the comedy is the homecoming of Rasmus Berg who has been
studying in Copenhagen and there taken the Latinised name Erasmus
Montanus. Upon his return, he starts exercising his prowess as a
debater and both proves and disproves that his mother is a stone. It
all goes wrong when he claims that the earth is round, because his
fellow villagers can all see that the earth is "as flat as a
pancake", and to claim otherwise is "disturbed nonsense"
which "can make one Catholic in the head" (act 3, scene 2).
It is further remarked that to believe in a round earth "is
nothing else than turn all religion on the head and lead people away
from faith. A heathen can not preach worse" (act 3, scene 4). By
defending his words and beliefs for the glory of philosophy, Erasmus
Montanus antagonises his father-in-law-to-be and various other
persons of note. When Erasmus tries to prove the roundness of the
earth by various scientific observations, he is met with scorn bred
from common sense, and the bailiff comments that Erasmus "is
quite close to become an Atheist" (act 3, scene 5). The debate
enrages his father-in-law-to-be so much that he ends the bethrotal
between his daughter and Erasmus on the grounds that his family has
always been good Christian people. In the end Erasmus is tricked into
enrolment in the army by a local lieutenant, and to escape from this
predicament he rescinds his opinions and professes loudly and
desperately that the earth "is as flat as a pancake".
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In
1722 when Holberg wrote Erasmus Montanus,
Denmark had been Protestant for almost two centuries. It is therefore
difficult to tell whether Catholicism was still seen as something of
the old order, something of the very distant past, or something whose
presence in Denmark was seen as newfangled and novel. Traditionally
in Protestant countries around this period, Catholicism is seen as a
vestige of an old world, an ancient superstition, an echo from a dark
age. This view is made very clear, for instance, in John Milton's
Paradise Lost, where
the fallen Adam witnesses the future history of mankind up to the
point of salvation and the second coming. We can't tell whether this
was also how Holberg's fictional farmers, bailiffs and lieutenants
would have seen things, and therefore we don't know whether the round
earth is considered an ancient superstition, or a newfangled
invention of the universities. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see
a feature so widely regarded as belonging to the Catholic Middle Ages
as the flat earth presented as a Protestant tenet, and as such
counter-medieval (although of course Holberg himself does not suggest
this). It is a useful reference for people who still believe that men
and women in the Middle Ages held the world to be flat as a pancake.
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