the eminent Spanish theologian Tostatus, even as late as the age of
Columbus, felt called upon to protest against it as "unsafe." He had
shaped the old missile of St. Augustine into the following syllogism:
"The apostles were commanded to go into all the world and to preach the
gospel to every creature; they did not go to any such part of the world
as the antipodes; they did not preach to any creatures there: ergo, no
antipodes exist."

The warfare of Columbus the world knows well: how the Bishop of Ceuta
worsted him in Portugal; how sundry wise men of Spain confronted him
with the usual quotations from the Psalms, from St. Paul, and from St.
Augustine; how, even after he was triumphant, and after his voyage had
greatly strengthened the theory of the earth's sphericity, with which
the theory of the antipodes was so closely connected, the Church by its
highest authority solemnly stumbled and persisted in going astray. In
1493 Pope Alexander VI, having been appealed to as an umpire between the
claims of Spain and Portugal to the newly discovered parts of the earth,
issued a bull laying down upon the earth's surface a line of demarcation
between the two powers. This line was drawn from north to south a
hundred leagues west of the Azores; and the Pope in the plenitude of his
knowledge declared that all lands discovered east of this line should
belong to the Portuguese, and all west of it should belong to the
Spaniards. This was hailed as an exercise of divinely illuminated power
by the Church; but difficulties arose, and in 1506 another attempt
was made by Pope Julius II to draw the line three hundred and seventy
leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. This, again, was supposed to
bring divine wisdom to settle the question; but, shortly, overwhelming
difficulties arose; for the Portuguese claimed Brazil, and, of course,
had no difficulty in showing that they could reach it by sailing to the
east of the line, provided they sailed long enough. The lines laid down
by Popes Alexander and Julius may still be found upon the maps of
the period, but their bulls have quietly passed into the catalogue of
ludicrous errors.

Yet the theological barriers to this geographical truth yielded but
slowly. Plain as it had become to scholars, they hesitated to declare
it to the world at large. Eleven hundred years had passed since St.
Augustine had proved its antagonism to Scripture, when Gregory Reysch
gave forth his famous encyclopaedia, th