Cosmas Indicopleustes
Cosmas Indicopleustes ('India-voyager') of Alexandria was a Greek sailor in the early 6th century who travelled to Ethiopia, India and Sri Lanka. He then became a monk, probably of Nestorian tendencies, and around 550 wrote a strange book, which he copiously illustrated.
There can be few books which have attracted more derision, mixed with wonder, than the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes. It advances the idea that the world is flat, and that the heavens form the shape of a box with a curved lid. The author cites passages of scripture which he distorts wildly in order to support his thesis, and attempts to argue down the idea of a spherical earth by stigmatizing it as 'pagan.' The approach to scripture is discreditable, and the conclusion made simply wrong.
The book is often cited as evidence that Christianity introduced the idea of the flat-earth into the world, and brought in the age of ignorance. This is hardly fair, since Cosmas does not represent a mainstream of any kind, personally or spiritually. The latter pages of his work are devoted to rebutting the criticism of his fellow-monks, that what he was saying was wrong.
The book is not without value, however. 'Indicopleustes' means 'Indian voyager'. We learn from stray scraps in classical literature that there was some trade between the Roman empire and India. But Cosmas was one of the rare souls who had actually made the journey. Indeed we learn from his book that he had travelled over much of the Red Sea coast, and as far as Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), and he describes some of what he saw, and even drew pictures of the strange animals in his autograph manuscript. Some of these have been copied into the existing manuscripts. Away from his daft theory, Cosmas proves to be an interesting and reliable guide. He happened to be in Ethiopia at the time when the King of Axum was preparing a military expedition to attack Jewish Arabs in the Yemen. He records now vanished inscriptions. In short, he gives us a window into a fascinating world of which we would otherwise know nothing. This is the main value of his work.