Editing Flat Earth (section)

====Europe: High and Late Middle Ages====
{{Further|Spherical Earth#Medieval Europe}}
[[Image:Sacrobosco-1550-B3r-detail01.jpg|thumb|left|Picture from a 1550 edition of ''[[De sphaera mundi|On the Sphere of the World]]'', the most influential [[astronomy]] textbook of 13th-century Europe]]
[[Hermann of Reichenau]] (1013–1054) was among the earliest Christian scholars to estimate the circumference of Earth with [[Eratosthenes]]' method. [[Thomas Aquinas]] (1225–1274), the most widely taught theologian of the Middle Ages, believed in a spherical Earth and took for granted that his readers also knew the Earth is round.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2054.htm |title=SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The distinction of habits (Prima Secundae Partis, Q.&nbsp;54) |website=www.newadvent.org}}</ref><ref name=":1" /> Lectures in the [[medieval universities]] commonly advanced evidence in favor of the idea that the Earth was a sphere.<ref>{{Citation | last = Grant | first = Edward | author-link = Edward Grant | date = 1994 | title = Planets. Stars, & Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 | publisher = Cambridge University Press | location = Cambridge | pages = 626–30 | isbn = 978-0-521-56509-7}}</ref>

[[Image:Gossuin de Metz - L'image du monde - BNF Fr. 574 fo42 - miniature.jpg|thumb|upright|Illustration of the [[spherical Earth]] in a 14th-century copy of ''[[Gautier de Metz|L'Image du monde]]'' (c.&nbsp;1246)]]
Jill Tattersall shows that in many [[vernacular]] works in 12th- and 13th-century French texts the Earth was considered "round like a table" rather than "round like an apple". She writes, "[I]n virtually all the examples quoted&nbsp;... from epics and from non-'historical' romances (that is, works of a less learned character) the actual form of words used suggests strongly a circle rather than a sphere", though she notes that even in these works the language is ambiguous.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=The Earth, Sphere or Disc? |author=Jill Tattersall |date=1981 |journal=Modern Language Review |pages=31–46 <!--quote pp 45–46-->|volume=76 |issue=1 |doi=10.2307/3727009 |jstor=3727009}}</ref>

[[Portuguese discoveries#Atlantic exploration (1415–1488)|Portuguese navigation]] down and around the coast of [[Africa]] in the latter half of the 1400s gave wide-scale observational evidence for Earth's sphericity. In these explorations, the Sun's position moved more northward the further south the explorers travelled. Its position directly overhead at noon gave evidence for crossing the equator. These apparent solar motions in detail were more consistent with north–south curvature and a distant Sun, than with any flat-Earth explanation. The ultimate demonstration came when [[Magellan's circumnavigation|Ferdinand Magellan's expedition]] completed the first global circumnavigation in 1521. [[Antonio Pigafetta]], one of the few survivors of the voyage, recorded the loss of a day in the course of the voyage, giving evidence for east–west curvature.