102-651: The myth of the flat Earth , or the flat-Earth error , is a modern historical misconception that European scholars and educated people during the Middle Ages believed the Earth to be flat . The earliest clear documentation of the idea of a spherical Earth comes from the ancient Greeks ( 5th century BC ). The belief was widespread in the Greek world when Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of Earth around 240 BC. This knowledge spread with Greek influence such that during
204-519: A central authority, only individual efforts were initially successful in rebuilding Mainz. The reason for this was that the French wanted Mainz to expand and become a model city. Mainz lay within the French-controlled sector of Germany and it was a French architect and town-planner, Marcel Lods , who produced a Le Corbusier-style plan of an ideal architecture. But the first interest of the inhabitants
306-613: A chapter to the flat Earth, in which he portrayed Cosmas Indicopleustes as the founder of Christian geography. The flat Earth model has often been incorrectly supposed to be church doctrine by those who wish to portray the Catholic Church as being anti-progress or hostile to scientific inquiry. This narrative has been repeated even in academic circles, such as in April 2016, when Boston College theology professor and ex-priest Thomas Groome erroneously stated that "the Catholic Church never said
408-411: A city charter, allowing the citizens to establish and elect a city council. In 1461, a feud between two archbishops, Diether von Isenburg and Adolf II von Nassau , caused unrest in the city. Following Archbishop Adolf's raid on Mainz in 1462, those who opposed him, including Johannes Gutenberg , were either expelled or imprisoned. Ultimately, after the death of Archbishop Adolf II, Diether von Isenburg
510-534: A forceful Columbus challenging the "prejudices, the mingled ignorance and erudition, and the pedantic bigotry" of the churchmen. Abrams sees this image of a Romantic hero, a practical man of business, and a Yankee go-getter as crafted to appeal to nineteenth-century Americans. Russell suggests that the flat-Earth error was able to take such deep hold on the modern imagination because of prejudice and presentism . He specifically mentions "the Protestant prejudice against
612-467: A number of historical circumstances that contributed to the origin and widespread acceptance of the flat-Earth myth. American historian Jeffrey Burton Russell traced the nineteenth-century origins of what he called the Flat Error to a group of anticlerical French scholars, particularly to Antoine-Jean Letronne and, indirectly, to his teachers Jean-Baptiste Gail and Edme Mentelle . Mentelle had described
714-468: A period in which the perception of an antagonism between religion and science was especially strong. The disputes surrounding the Darwinian revolution contributed to the birth of the conflict thesis , a view of history according to which any interaction between religion and science would almost inevitably lead to open hostility. In 1828, Washington Irving's highly romanticized biography, A History of
816-408: A series of questions (queries), Jefferson uses the "Query" regarding religion to attack the idea of state-sponsored official religions. In the chapter, Jefferson relates a series of official erroneous beliefs about nature forced upon people by authority. One of these is the episode of Galileo 's struggles with authority, which Jefferson erroneously frames in terms of the shape of the globe: Government
918-690: A silver cross on a red background. Mainz has a population of about 220,000 and is the largest city in Rhineland-Palatinate . Mainz passed 100,000 in 1908. In 1945, After WWII, right side of the Rhine river, which were a part of Mainz, became a part of Wiesbaden and other part of Hesse due to its occupation zone where Mainz and Rhineland-Palatinate were French occupation zone and Wiesbaden and Hesse were American occupation zone where both cities became its state capital in 1946. Mainz lost 21.1% of population at this time. Mainz and Wiesbaden has rivalries who
1020-493: Is a simplification of Mogontiacum . The name appears to be Celtic , however, it had also become Roman and was selected by them with a special significance. The Roman soldiers defending Gallia had adopted the Gallic god Mogons (Mogounus, Moguns, Mogonino), for the meaning of which etymology offers two basic options: "the great one", similar to Latin magnus, which was used in aggrandizing names such as Alexander magnus , "Alexander
1122-449: Is just as infallible too when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the inquisition for affirming that the Earth was a sphere: the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher , and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length prevailed, the Earth became a globe, and Descartes declared it was whirled round its axis by a vortex . The 19th century was
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#17328555847101224-895: Is known as Mogontiacum ( pronounced [mɔɡɔnˈti.akũː] ) or Moguntiacum and, in the local Hessian dialect, it is Määnz [mɛːnt͡s] or Meenz [meːnt͡s] . It is known as Mayence [majɑ̃s] in French, Magonza [maˈɡontsa] in Italian, Maguncia [maˈɣunθja] in Spanish, Mogúncia [muˈɣũsjɐ] in Portuguese, Moguncja [mɔˈɡunt͡sja] in Polish, Magentza ( מגנצא ) in Yiddish, and Mohuč in Czech and Slovak ( Czech pronunciation: [ˈmoɦutʃ] ). Before
1326-589: Is located) was to be a demilitarized zone until 1935 and the French garrison, representing the Triple Entente , was to stay until reparations were paid. In 1923 Mainz participated in the Rhineland separatist movement that proclaimed a Rhenish Republic . It collapsed in 1924. The French withdrew on 30 June 1930. Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933 and his political opponents, especially those of
1428-469: Is shown floating inside a transparent sphere. According to Stephen Jay Gould , "there never was a period of 'flat Earth darkness' among scholars, regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now. Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the Earth's roundness as an established fact of cosmology ." Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that "there
1530-526: Is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate , and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is Germany's 35th-largest city . It lies in the Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region —Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after Rhine-Ruhr —which also encompasses the cities of Frankfurt am Main , Wiesbaden , Darmstadt , Offenbach am Main , and Hanau . Mainz is located at
1632-429: Is the seat of ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, lit. "Second German Television"), the second-most important German public service television broadcaster, as well as of 3sat , another television broadcaster, that is jointly operated by public broadcasters from Germany ( ARD and ZDF ), Austria ( ORF ), and Switzerland ( SRG SSR ). Mainz has a number of different names in other languages and dialects. In Latin it
1734-523: The Early Middle Ages ( c. 600–1000 AD), most European and Middle Eastern scholars espoused Earth's sphericity. Belief in a flat Earth among educated Europeans was almost nonexistent from the Late Middle Ages onward, though fanciful depictions appear in art, such as the exterior panels of Hieronymus Bosch 's famous triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights , in which a disc-shaped Earth
1836-678: The Frisians to Christianity and is buried in Fulda . The archbishopric of Mainz was established in 781 when Boniface's successor Lullus was granted the pallium by Pope Adrian I . Throughout history, the Archbishops of Mainz held high positions, including serving as archchancellors of the Holy Roman Empire. Notably, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mainz is unique as it is the only diocese in
1938-718: The Gutenberg Bibles , two of which are kept at the city's Gutenberg Museum . Mainz was heavily damaged in World War II ; more than 30 air raids destroyed around half of the old town in the city centre, but many buildings were rebuilt post-war. Like most cities in the Rhineland , Mainz holds extensive carnival celebrations , that are known as the second-most important in Germany, after the celebrations in Cologne . The borough of Lerchenberg
2040-602: The Judensand [ de ] (Jews' Sand), the second-oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe after the Heiliger Sand in Worms. Mainz is the birthplace of Johannes Gutenberg , who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable type printing press , starting the global spread of the printing press , and in the early 1450s manufactured his first books in the city, including
2142-625: The Mainz Sand Dunes for the training areas. Mainz is home to the headquarters of the Bundeswehr ' s Landeskommando Rhineland-Palatinate [ de ] and other units. The destruction caused by the Bombing of Mainz in World War II led to the most intense phase of building in the history of the town. During the last war in Germany, more than 30 air raids destroyed about 80 per cent of
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#17328555847102244-454: The Museum of Ancient Seafaring . A temple dedicated to Isis Panthea and Magna Mater was discovered in 2000 and is open to the public. The city was the provincial capital of Germania Superior , and had an important funeral monument dedicated to Drusus, to which people made pilgrimages for an annual festival from as far away as Lyon . Among the famous buildings were the largest theatre north of
2346-611: The National Socialist Party in Worms brought the party to Mainz. They hoisted the swastika on all public buildings and began to denounce the Jewish population in the newspapers. In 1936, the Nazis remilitarized the Rhineland with great fanfare, the first move of Nazi Germany 's meteoric expansion. The former Triple Entente took no action. During World War II the citadel at Mainz hosted
2448-510: The Neustadt . He also planned the first sewer system for the old part of town since Roman times and persuaded the city government to relocate the railway line from the Rhine side to the west end of the town. The main station was built from 1882 to 1884 according to the plans of Philipp Johann Berdellé [ de ] . Kreyßig constructed a number of state-of-the-art public buildings, including
2550-587: The Oflag XII-B prisoner of war camp. The city was also the location of four subcamps of the Hinzert concentration camp , mostly for Luxembourgish, Polish, Dutch and Soviet prisoners, but also Belgian, French and Italian. During World War II, several air raids destroyed about 80 per cent of the city's centre, including most of the historic buildings. Mainz was captured on 22 March 1945 against uneven German resistance (staunch in some sectors and weak in other parts of
2652-734: The Rheingauwall was taken in hand, according to the imperial order of Wilhelm II . During the German Revolution of 1918 the Mainz Workers' and Soldiers' Council was formed which ran the city from 9 November until the arrival of French troops under the terms of the occupation of the Rhineland agreed in the Armistice . The French occupation was confirmed by the Treaty of Versailles which went into effect 28 June 1919. The Rhineland (in which Mainz
2754-464: The Rhine-Main S-Bahn rapid transit system. Before 1945, Mainz had six boroughs on the other side of the Rhine (see: de:Rechtsrheinische Stadtteile von Mainz ). Three have been incorporated into Wiesbaden (see: de:AKK-Konflikt ), and three are now independent. Mainz was founded as Castrum Mogontiacum by Roman general Nero Claudius Drusus in the 1st century BC on the northern frontier of
2856-604: The Rhineland massacres of 1096 and by mobs in 1283. Outbreaks of the Black Death were usually blamed on the Jews, at which times they were massacred, such as the murder of 6000 Jews in 1349. Outside of the medieval city centre, there is a Jewish cemetery, with over 1500 headstones dating from the 11th through the 19th centuries. The earliest known gravestone is date to 1062 or 1063, and these early gravestones resemble those found in Italy in
2958-786: The Roman Empire , and became the capital of the Roman province of Germania Superior . The city was settled by the Franks from 459 on, and in the 8th century it became an important city within the Holy Roman Empire , as capital of the Electorate of Mainz and seat of the Archbishop-Elector of Mainz , the primate of Germany. Mainz Cathedral is one of the three Rhenish Imperial Cathedrals along with Speyer Cathedral and Worms Cathedral . Since
3060-511: The Social Democratic Party , were either incarcerated or murdered. Some were able to move away from Mainz in time. One was the political organizer for the SPD, Friedrich Kellner , who went to Laubach, where, as the chief justice inspector of the district court, he continued his opposition against the Nazis by recording their misdeeds in a 900-page diary . In March 1933, a detachment from
3162-470: The Unetanneh Tokef prayer. From the late 12th century rabbis met in synods. The city of Mainz responded to the Jewish population in a variety of ways, behaving in a capricious manner towards them. Sometimes they were allowed freedom and were protected; at other times, they were persecuted. The Jews were expelled in 1438, 1462 (after which they were invited to return), and in 1470. Jews were attacked in
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3264-667: The War of the Sixth Coalition , the weakened Napoleon and his troops had to leave Mainz in May 1814. In 1816, the part of the former French Département which is known today as Rhenish Hesse (German: Rheinhessen ) was awarded to the Hesse-Darmstadt , Mainz being the capital of the new Hessian province of Rhenish Hesse. From 1816 to 1866, a part of the German Confederation , Mainz was
3366-495: The cenotaph raised by legionaries to commemorate their general, Drusus . In the 4th century, Alemans repeatedly invaded the neighborhood of Mogontiacum. In 357, the city was liberated by the Emperor Julian . The last emperor to station troops serving the western empire at Mainz was Valentinian III (reigned 425–455), who relied heavily on his Magister militum per Gallias , Flavius Aëtius . In 451, Attila 's Huns sacked
3468-555: The conflict thesis for their own purposes, but historical research gradually demonstrated that Draper and White had propagated more fantasy than fact in their efforts to prove that science and religion are locked in eternal conflict. French dramatist Cyrano de Bergerac in chapter 5 of his Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (published two years posthumously in 1657) quotes Augustine of Hippo as saying "that in his day and age
3570-567: The 12th century, Mainz was one of the ShUM-cities [ de ] —a league formed by the cities of Speyer , Worms and Mainz—which are referred to as the cradle of Ashkenazi Jewish life and as the center of Jewish life during Medieval times. The Jewish heritage of these cities is one of a kind, and has been declared the UNESCO World Heritage Site of " ShUM Sites of Speyer, Worms and Mainz " [ de ] , which includes
3672-471: The 1990s the Kisselberg and the "Fort Malakoff Center" at the site of the old police barracks were built. The city of Mainz is divided into 15 local districts according to the main statute of the city of Mainz. Each local district has a district administration of 13 members and a directly elected mayor, who is the chairman of the district administration. This local council decides on important issues affecting
3774-457: The 19th. Another early mention in literature is Ludvig Holberg 's comedy Erasmus Montanus (1723). Erasmus Montanus meets considerable opposition when he claims the Earth is round, since all the peasants hold it to be flat. He is not allowed to marry his fiancée until he cries "The Earth is flat as a pancake". In Thomas Jefferson 's book Notes on the State of Virginia (1784), framed as answers to
3876-498: The 20th century, Mainz was commonly known in the Anglosphere either as Mentz , its English version, or by its French version Mayence . It is the namesake of two American cities named Mentz . Mainz is on the 50th latitude north, on the left bank of the Rhine . The east of the city is opposite where the Main falls into it. As of 2021 , the population was 217,272. The city is part of
3978-667: The 8th–9th centuries. Nowadays the Jewish community is growing rapidly, and a new synagogue by the architect Manuel Herz was constructed in 2010 on the site of the one destroyed by the Nazis on Kristallnacht in 1938. As of 2021 , the Jewish community Mainz has 985 members. During the French Revolution , the French Revolutionary army occupied Mainz in 1792; the Archbishop-elector of Mainz, Friedrich Karl Josef von Erthal , had already fled to Aschaffenburg by
4080-509: The Alemannian Crocus. Throughout the changes of time, the Roman castrum never seems to have been permanently abandoned as a military installation, which is a testimony to Roman military judgement. Different structures were built there at different times. The current citadel originated in 1660, but it replaced previous forts. It was used in World War II. One of the sights at the citadel is still
4182-608: The Alps and a bridge across the Rhine. The city was also the site of the assassination of emperor Severus Alexander in 235. Alemanni forces under Rando sacked the city in 368. From the last day of 405 or 406, the Siling and Asding Vandals , the Suebi , the Alans , and other Germanic tribes crossed the Rhine , possibly at Mainz. Christian chronicles relate that the bishop, Aureus , was put to death by
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4284-530: The Altstadttangente ( intersection of the old town ), new neighbourhoods as Westring and Südring contributed to the extension. By 1970 there remained only a few ruins. The new town hall of Mainz had been designed by Arne Jacobsen and finished by Dissing+Weitling . The town used Jacobsens activity for the Danish Novo company erecting a new office and warehouse building to contact him. The urban renewal of
4386-601: The Caribbean islands allowed him to return safely to Europe. Otherwise his crews would have died, and the ships foundered. In 1834, a few years after the publication of Irving's book, Jean Antoine Letronne , a French academic of strong antireligious ideas, misrepresented the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat Earth in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers . Then in 1837,
4488-512: The Church to the advancement of science. The story of widespread religious belief in the flat Earth was repeated by Andrew Dickson White in his 1876 The Warfare of Science and elaborated twenty years later in his two-volume History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom , which exaggerated the number and significance of medieval flat-Earthers to support White's model of warfare between dogmatic theology and scientific progress. As Draper and White's metaphor of ongoing warfare between
4590-436: The Earth is round, but just stopped saying it was flat." The 1937 popular song " They All Laughed " contains the couplet "They all laughed at Christopher Columbus/When he said the world was round". In the Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon Hare We Go (1951) Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand the Catholic quarrel about the shape of the Earth; the king states the Earth is flat. In Walt Disney's 1963 animation The Sword in
4692-409: The Earth was as flat as a stove lid and that it floated on water like half of a sliced orange." Robert Burton , in his The Anatomy of Melancholy wrote: Virgil , sometime bishop of Salzburg (as Aventinus anno 745 relates), by Bonifacius , bishop of Mentz , was therefore called in question, because he held antipodes (which they made a doubt whether Christ died for) and so by that means took away
4794-409: The Earth's shape, when he mocks those who declared that the Earth has the form of a globe". Other historians quickly followed Whewell, although they could identify few other examples. The American chemist John William Draper wrote a History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874), employing the claim that the early Church fathers thought the Earth was flat as evidence of the hostility of
4896-428: The English philosopher of science William Whewell , in his History of the Inductive Sciences , identified Lactantius , author of Institutiones Divinae (c. 310), and Cosmas Indicopleustes , author of Christian Topography (c. 548), as evidence of a medieval belief in a Flat Earth. Lactantius had been ridiculed much earlier by Copernicus in De revolutionibus of 1543 as someone who "Speaks quite childishly about
4998-437: The FrankfurtRheinMain area of 5.9 million people. Mainz can easily be reached from Frankfurt International Airport in 30 minutes by commuter railway [REDACTED] or regional trains RE 2 RE 3 RB 31 . The river port of Mainz is located on the Rhine and thus on one of the most important waterways in Germany. The container port hub is north of the town centre. After the last ice age , sand dunes were deposited in
5100-470: The French dominated Mainz was neither free nor democratic). Prussian troops had already occupied the area and besieged Mainz by the end of March 1793. After a siege of 18 weeks, the French troops in Mainz surrendered on 23 July 1793; Prussians occupied the city and ended the Republic of Mainz. It came to the Battle of Mainz in 1795 between Austria and France. Members of the Mainz Jacobin Club were mistreated or imprisoned and punished for treason. In 1797,
5202-516: The French returned. The army of Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the German territory to the west of the Rhine , and the Treaty of Campo Formio awarded France this entire area, initially as the Cisrhenian Republic . On 17 February 1800, the French Département du Mont-Tonnerre was founded here, with Mainz as its capital, the Rhine being the new eastern frontier of la Grande Nation. Austria and Prussia could not but approve this new border with France in 1801. However, after several defeats in Europe during
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#17328555847105304-400: The Great" and Pompeius magnus , "Pompey the great", or the god of "might" personified as it appears in young servitors of any type whether of noble or ignoble birth. Mogontiacum was an important military town throughout Roman times, probably due to its strategic position at the confluence of the Main and the Rhine. The town of Mogontiacum grew up between the fort and the river. The castrum
5406-404: The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus , was published and mistaken by many for a scholarly work. In Book II, Chapter IV of this biography, Irving gave a largely fictional account of the meetings of a commission established by the Spanish sovereigns to examine Columbus 's proposals. One of his more fanciful embellishments was a highly unlikely tale that the more ignorant and bigoted members on
5508-417: The Mainz town hall – which was the largest of its kind in Germany at that time – as well a synagogue, the Rhine harbour and a number of public baths and school buildings. Kreyßig's last work was Christ Church ( Christuskirche ), the largest Protestant church in the city and the first building constructed solely for the use of a Protestant congregation. In 1905 the demolition of the entire circumvallation and
5610-407: The Middle Ages as twelve ignorant centuries of "profound night", a theme exemplified by the flat-Earth myth in Letronne's "On the Cosmological Opinions of the Church Fathers". Historian of science Edward Grant makes a case that the flat-Earth myth developed in the context of a more general assault upon the Middle Ages and upon scholastic thought, which can be traced back to Francesco Petrarch in
5712-409: The Middle Ages for Being Catholic ... the Rationalist prejudice against Judeo-Christianity as a whole", and "the assumption of the superiority of 'our' views to those of older cultures". Historical misconception Each entry on this list of common misconceptions is worded as a correction; the misconceptions themselves are implied rather than stated. These entries are concise summaries;
5814-452: The Middle Ages thought the Earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching. But it gained currency in the 19th century, thanks to inaccurate histories such as John William Draper's History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Atheists and agnostics championed
5916-415: The Rhine valley at what was to become the western edge of the city. The Mainz Sand Dunes area is now a nature reserve with a unique landscape and rare steppe vegetation for this area. While the Mainz legion camp was founded in 13/12 BC on the Kästrich hill, the associated vici and canabae (civilian settlements) were erected towards the Rhine. Historical sources and archaeological findings both prove
6018-408: The Stone , wizard Merlin (who has traveled into the future) explains to a young Arthur that "man will discover in centuries to come" that the Earth is round, and rotates . In 2019, CNN published an article on the modern flat earth movement featuring the Flammarion engraving with an inaccurate caption "A medieval engraving of a scientist leaving the world, representing the change in conceptions of
6120-413: The banks of the Rhine to the north of the rampart. The city expansion more than doubled the urban area which allowed Mainz to participate in the industrial revolution which had previously avoided the city for decades. Eduard Kreyßig [ de ] was the man who made this happen. Having been the master-builder of the city of Mainz since 1865, Kreyßig had the vision for the new part of town,
6222-403: The border of their territories, whereby the three important episcopal cities of Mainz, Worms and Speyer with their counties to the left of the Rhine were assigned to East Francia . In the early Middle Ages , Mainz played a significant role in the Christianisation of the German and Slavic peoples . The first archbishop in Mainz, Boniface , was killed in 754 while attempting to convert
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#17328555847106324-488: The capital of the new state. In 1962, the diarist, Friedrich Kellner , returned to spend his last years in Mainz. His life in Mainz, and the impact of his writings , is the subject of the Canadian documentary My Opposition: The Diaries of Friedrich Kellner . Following the withdrawal of French forces from Mainz, the United States Army Europe occupied the military bases in Mainz. Today United States Army Europe and Africa only occupies McCulley Barracks in Wackernheim and
6426-410: The city of Wiesbaden (on the north bank of the river). The AKK was separated from Mainz when the Rhine was designated the boundary between the French occupation zone (the later state of Rhineland-Palatinate ) and the U.S. occupation zone ( Hesse ) in 1945. The coat of arms of Mainz is derived from the coat of arms of the Archbishops of Mainz and features two six-spoked silver wheels connected by
6528-475: The city's centre, including most of the historic buildings. The attack on the afternoon of 27 February 1945 remains the most destructive of all 33 bombings that Mainz has suffered in World War II in the collective memory of most of the population living then. The air raid caused most of the dead and made an already hard-hit city largely levelled. Nevertheless, the post-war reconstruction took place very slowly. While cities such as Frankfurt had been rebuilt fast by
6630-407: The city) by the 90th Infantry Division under William A. McNulty , a formation of the XII Corps under Third Army commanded by General George S. Patton Jr. From 1945 to 1949, the city was part of the French zone of occupation . When the state of Rhineland-Palatinate was founded on 30 August 1946 by the commander of the French army on the French occupation zone Marie Pierre Kœnig , Mainz became
6732-533: The city. The Franks from the middle and upper Rhine area took Mainz shortly before 460. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the Franks under the rule of Clovis I gained control over western Europe by the year 496. Clovis, son of Childeric , became king of the Salians in 481, ruling from Tournai . He converted from paganism to Catholic Christianity . Theudebert I ( c. 500–547 or 548) had installed Sidonius [ de ] as bishop of Mainz. Dagobert I (605/603–639) reinforced
6834-600: The commission had raised scriptural objections to Columbus's assertions that the Earth was spherical. The issue in the 1490s was not the shape of the Earth, but its size, and the position of the east coast of Asia, as Irving in fact points out. Historical estimates from Ptolemy onward placed the coast of Asia about 180° east of the Canary Islands . Columbus adopted an earlier (and rejected) distance of 225°, added 28° (based on Marco Polo's travels), and then placed Japan another 30° further east. Starting from Cape St. Vincent in Portugal , Columbus made Eurasia stretch 283° to
6936-421: The death and funeral of Nero Claudius Drusus ). Although the city is situated opposite the mouth of the Main , the name of Mainz is not from Main , the similarity being perhaps reinforced by folk-etymological reanalysis. Main is from Latin Moenis (also Moenus or Menus ), the name the Romans used for the river. Linguistic analysis of the many forms that the name "Mainz" has taken on make it clear that it
7038-411: The degree and for the circumference of the Earth was therefore about 25% too small. The combined effect of these mistakes was that Columbus estimated the distance to Japan to be only about 5,000 km (or only to the eastern edge of the Caribbean ) while the true figure is about 20,000 km. The Spanish scholars may not have known the exact distance to the east coast of Asia, but they believed that it
7140-402: The east, leaving the Atlantic as only 77° wide. Since he planned to leave from the Canaries (9° further west), his trip to Japan would only need to cover 68° of longitude. Columbus mistakenly assumed that the mile referred to in the Arabic estimate of 56⅔ miles for the size of a degree matched the Italian mile of about 1,480 meters, when it was about 30% longer . His estimate for the size of
7242-418: The fact that in Dante's The Divine Comedy , about an epic voyage through hell, purgatory and heaven, the Earth is spherical with gravity being towards the center of the Earth. As the Devil is frozen in a block of ice in the center of the Earth, Dante and Virgil climb down the Devil's torso, but up from the Devil's waist to his feet, as his waist is at the center of the Earth. Jeffrey Burton Russell rebutted
7344-470: The first time. In 1950, the seat of the government of Rhineland-Palatinate had been transferred to the new Mainz and in 1963 the seat of the new ZDF, notable architects were Adolf Bayer, Richard Jörg and Egon Hartmann. At the time of the two-thousand-years-anniversary in 1962 the city was largely reconstructed. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Oberstadt had been extended, Münchfeld and Lerchenberg added as suburbs,
7446-532: The flat-Earth error as one of a number of widespread misconceptions in popular views of the Middle Ages . Both E. M. W. Tillyard's book The Elizabethan World Picture and C. S. Lewis' The Discarded Image are devoted to a broad survey of how the universe was viewed in Renaissance and medieval times, and both extensively discuss how the educated classes knew the world was round. Lewis draws attention to
7548-703: The fourteenth century. Grant sees "one of the most extreme assaults against the Middle Ages" in Draper's History of the Intellectual Development of Europe , which appeared a decade before Draper presented the flat-Earth myth in his History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science . Andrew Dickson White's motives were more complex. As the first president of Cornell University , he had advocated that it be established without any religious ties, instead serving as "an asylum for science". Furthermore, he
7650-596: The history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the Earth was flat", and ascribes popularization of the flat-Earth myth to histories by John William Draper , Andrew Dickson White , and Washington Irving . In Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians , Jeffrey Russell describes the Flat Earth theory as a fable used to impugn pre-modern civilization and creationism . James Hannam wrote: The myth that people in
7752-430: The importance of the military and civilian Mogontiacum as a port city on the Rhine. Mainz experiences an oceanic climate ( Köppen climate classification : Cfb ). The Roman stronghold or castrum Mogontiacum , the precursor to Mainz, was founded by the Roman general Drusus perhaps as early as 13/12 BC. As related by Suetonius the existence of Mogontiacum is well established by four years later (the account of
7854-578: The local area, however, the final decision on new policies is made by Mainz's municipal council. In accordance with section 29 paragraph 2 Local Government Act of Rhineland-Palatinate , which refers to municipalities of more than 150,000 inhabitants, the city council has 60 members. Districts of the town are: Until 1945, the districts of Bischofsheim (now an independent town), Ginsheim-Gustavsburg (which together are an independent town) belonged to Mainz. The former districts Amöneburg , Kastel , and Kostheim – (in short, AKK ) are now administered by
7956-573: The main subject articles can be consulted for more detail. Common misconceptions are viewpoints or factoids that are often accepted as true, but which are actually false. They generally arise from conventional wisdom (such as old wives' tales ), stereotypes , superstitions , fallacies , a misunderstanding of science, or the popularization of pseudoscience . Some common misconceptions are also considered to be urban legends , and they are sometimes involved in moral panics . Mainz Mainz ( German: [maɪnts] ; see below )
8058-452: The most important fortress in the defence against France, and had a strong garrison of Austrian , Prussian and Bavarian troops. On the afternoon of 18 November 1857, a huge explosion rocked Mainz when the city's powder magazine, the Pulverturm , exploded. Approximately 150 people were killed and at least 500 injured; 57 buildings were destroyed and a similar number severely damaged in what
8160-482: The new border between the two countries. For centuries the inhabitants of the fortress of Mainz had suffered from a severe shortage of space which led to disease and other inconveniences. In 1872 Mayor Carl Wallau and the council of Mainz persuaded the military government to sign a contract to expand the city. Beginning in 1874, the city of Mainz assimilated the Gartenfeld , an idyllic area of meadows and fields along
8262-578: The northern end of the Upper Rhine Plain , on the left bank of the Rhine , opposite the Hessian capital of Wiesbaden and the mouth of the River Main into the Rhine. It is the largest city of Rhenish Hesse , a region of Rhineland-Palatinate that was historically part of Hesse , and is one of Germany's most important wine regions because of its mild climate. Mainz is connected to Frankfurt am Main by
8364-677: The old town changed the inner city. In the framework of the preparation of the cathedrals millennium, pedestrian zones were developed around the cathedral, in northern direction to the Neubrunnenplatz and in a southern direction across the Leichhof to the Augustinerstraße and Kirschgarten. The 1980s brought the renewal of the façades on the Markt and a new inner-city neighbourhood on the Kästrich. During
8466-588: The preface to his History of the Warfare of Science and Theology in Christendom , where he explained the lack of advanced instruction in many American colleges and universities as a consequence of their "sectarian character". The flat-Earth myth, like other myths, took on artistic form in the many works of art displaying Columbus defending the sphericity of the Earth before the Council of Salamanca . American artists depicted
8568-526: The prevalence of belief in the flat Earth in a monograph and two papers. Louise Bishop states that virtually every thinker and writer of the 1000-year medieval period affirmed the spherical shape of the Earth. Although the misconception has been frequently refuted in historical scholarship since at least 1920, it has nonetheless persisted in popular culture and even some school textbooks into the 21st century. An American schoolbook authored by Emma Miller Bolenius and published in 1919 contains this introduction to
8670-651: The scientific progress of the Enlightenment and the religious obscurantism of the " Dark Ages " became widely accepted, it spread the idea of medieval belief in the flat Earth. The widely circulated engraving of a man poking his head through the firmament surrounding the Earth to view the Empyrean , executed in the style of the 16th century, was published in Camille Flammarion 's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163). The engraving illustrates
8772-618: The seat of hell, or so contracted it, that it could bear no proportion to heaven, and contradicted that opinion of Austin [St. Augustine], Basil, Lactantius, that held the Earth round as a trencher (whom Acosta and common experience more largely confute) but not as a ball. Thus, there is evidence that accusations of Flat Earthism, though somewhat whimsical (Burton ends his digression with a legitimate quotation of Augustine: "Better doubt of things concealed, than to contend about uncertainties, where Abraham's bosom is, and hell fire"), were used to discredit opposing authorities several centuries before
8874-534: The second half of the 20th century and persists in most historical textbooks written for German and Austrian schools. As recently as 1983, Daniel Boorstin published a historical survey, The Discoverers , which presented the Flammarion engraving on its cover and proclaimed that "from AD 300 to at least 1300 ... Christian faith and dogma suppressed the useful image of the world that had been so ... scrupulously drawn by ancient geographers." Boorstin dedicated
8976-538: The ships barely reached the islands of the eastern Caribbean. Already the crews were mutinous, not because of some fear of "sailing off the edge", but because they were running out of food and water with no chance of any new supplies within sailing distance. They were on the edge of starvation. Columbus' expedition was saved by reaching the Americas, about which he knew nothing, precisely at the point he thought he would reach Japan. His ability to resupply with food and water from
9078-422: The statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met". In its original form, the engraving included a decorative border that places it in the 19th century. In later publications, some of which claimed that the engraving dates to the 16th century, the border was removed. Since the early 20th century, a number of books and articles have documented
9180-463: The suggested reading for Columbus Day (12 October): When Columbus lived, people thought that the Earth was flat. They believed the Atlantic Ocean to be filled with monsters large enough to devour their ships, and with fearful waterfalls over which their frail vessels would plunge to destruction. Columbus had to fight these foolish beliefs in order to get men to sail with him. He felt sure the Earth
9282-656: The time the French marched in. On 18 March 1793, the Jacobins of Mainz, with other German democrats from about 130 towns in the Rhenish Palatinate , proclaimed the ' Republic of Mainz '. Led by Georg Forster , representatives of the Mainz Republic in Paris requested political affiliation of the Mainz Republic with France, but too late: Prussia was not entirely happy with the idea of a democratic free state on German soil (although
9384-461: The walls of Mainz. Charlemagne (768–814), through a succession of wars against other tribes, built a vast Frankish empire in Europe. Mainz from its central location became important to the empire and to Christianity. Meanwhile, language change was gradually working to divide the Franks. After the death of Charlemagne, distinctions between France and Germany began to be made. The Rhine roughly formed
9486-409: The world in the 16th century". The Hebrew Bible depicts a three-part world, with the heavens ( shamayim ) above, Earth (eres) in the middle, and the underworld (sheol) below. The Old Testament teaches the view that was current at the time and place of its writing: that the earth is a disk, with stars on a firmament above it, and beyond the stars is the cosmic sea. Historical writers have identified
9588-456: The world with an episcopal see called a Holy See (sancta sedes). Ibrahim ibn Yaqub , a 10th-century Hispano-Arabic, Sephardi Jewish traveler, writes the following about the city: "Mainz [Maghānja] is a very large city, partly inhabited and partly cultivated fields. It is in the land of the Franks, on a river called the Rhine [Rīn]. Wheat, barley, rye, grapevines and fruit are plentiful." In 1244, Archbishop Siegfried III granted Mainz
9690-466: Was a strong advocate of Darwinism , saw religious figures as the main opponents of Darwinian evolution, and sought to project that conflict between theology and science back through the entire Christian Era. However, as some historians have pointed out, the nineteenth-century conflict over Darwinism incorporated disputes over the relative authority of professional scientists and clergy in the fields of science and education. White made this concern manifest in
9792-582: Was reinstated as the Archbishop of Mainz, duly elected by the chapter and appointed by the Pope. The Jewish community of Mainz dates to the 10th century CE. It is noted for its religious education. Rabbi Gershom ben Judah (960–1040) taught there, among others. He concentrated on the study of the Talmud , creating a German Jewish tradition. Mainz is also the legendary home of the martyred Rabbi Amnon of Mainz , composer of
9894-401: Was round. Previous editions of Thomas Bailey 's The American Pageant stated that "The superstitious sailors [of Columbus's crew] ... grew increasingly mutinous ... because they were fearful of sailing over the edge of the world"; however, no such historical account is known. A 2009 survey of schoolbooks from Austria and Germany showed that the Flat Earth myth became dominant in
9996-409: Was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference". Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell says the flat-Earth error flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over biological evolution . Russell claims "with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in
10098-628: Was significantly further than Columbus's projection; and this was the basis of the criticism in Spain and Portugal, whether academic or among mariners, of the proposed voyage. The disputed point was not the shape of the Earth, nor the idea that going west would eventually lead to Japan and China, but the ability of European ships to sail that far across open seas. The small ships of the day (Columbus's three ships varied between 20.5 and 23.5 m – or 67 to 77 feet – in length and carried about 90 men) simply could not carry enough food and water to reach Japan. As it was,
10200-477: Was the base of Legio XIV Gemina and XVI Gallica (AD 9–43), XXII Primigenia , IV Macedonica (43–70), I Adiutrix (70–88), XXI Rapax (70–89), and XIV Gemina (70–92), among others. Mainz was also a base of a Roman river fleet, the Classis Germanica . Remains of Roman troop ships ( navis lusoria ) and a patrol boat from the late 4th century were discovered in 1982/86 and may now be viewed in
10302-543: Was the restoration of housing areas. Even after the failure of the model city plans it was the initiative of the French (founding of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz , elevation of Mainz to the state capital of Rhineland-Palatinate, the early resumption of the Mainz carnival ) driving the city in a positive development after the war. The City Plan of 1958 by Ernst May allowed a regulated reconstruction for
10404-674: Was to be known as the Powder Tower Explosion or Powder Explosion . During the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, Mainz was declared a neutral zone. After the founding of the German Empire in 1871, Mainz no longer was as important a stronghold, because in the Franco-Prussian War France had lost the territory of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany (which France had occupied bit by bit from 1630 to 1795), and this defined
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