Umberto Eco: Exploring Imaginary Lands With One of Italy’s Masters of Fiction
28th November 2013
Read it.
Q. Your new book begins with a falsehood that has endured to the present: That people in the Middle Ages thought the earth was flat.
A. Yes, and even cultivated people still repeat it to this day. The official culture in the Middle Ages was absolutely convinced that the earth was spherical and they accepted the Greek idea of the measure of the equator. It’s just intellectual and cultural laziness. We are also continuously told that during the Middle Ages they burned witches, when the real burning of witches started in the Renaissance.