Contrary to popular myth, the Church was a great supporter of science. Many universities were founded directly by the Catholic Church. Students and lecturers traveled and communicated across borders in the first truly international language of learning: Latin. Sacrobosco’s Sphere, and many other works of science, were enthusiastically studied in the new universities that sprung up across Europe from the 12th century onwards. Scholars did mostly think the Sun and other planets went around the Earth, but even that was argued about in the Middle Ages, and it didn’t stop them doing some very clever and precise astronomy. The answer he gave was remarkably accurate. Sacrobosco went on to explain how you could calculate the size of the earth, simply by measuring the height of the sun above the horizon in two different cities. A beautiful diagram in many manuscripts illustrates how this shows that the seas must be round. As a ship sails away from harbor, noted Sacrobosco, a lookout at the top of the mast will still be able to see land long after the sailors on deck have lost sight of it. It was written in about 1230 by Johannes de Sacrobosco-John of Hollywood. They recorded the proofs in textbooks, handwritten on smooth animal-skin parchment.
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