[106]
This decision seems to have been regarded as final, and five
centuries later the great encyclopedist of the Middle Ages, Vincent
of Beauvais, though he accepts the sphericity of the earth, treats
the doctrine of the antipodes as disproved, because contrary to
Scripture. Yet the doctrine still lived. Just as it had been
previously revived by William of Conches and then laid to rest, so
now it is somewhat timidly brought out in the thirteenth century by
no less a personage than Albert the Great, the most noted man of
science in that time. But his utterances are perhaps purposely
obscure. Again it disappears beneath the theological wave, and a
hundred years later Nicolas d'Oresme, geographer of the King of
France, a light of science, is forced to yield to the clear
teaching of the Scripture as cited by St. Augustine.
Nor was this the worst. In Italy, at the beginning of the
fourteenth century, the Church thought it necessary to deal with
questions of this sort by rack and fagot. In 1316 Peter of Abano,
famous as a physician, having promulgated this with other obnoxious
doctrines in science, only escaped the Inquisition by death; and in
1327 Cecco d'Ascoli, noted as an astronomer, was for this and other
results of thought, which brought him under suspicion of sorcery,
driven from his professorship at Bologna and burned alive at
Florence.
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