De kosmos als kijkdoos

Abstract

Draft for a monographic study on the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes, a retired merchant who wrote his twelve books work in VI century Alexandria. The focus is on Book IV, since it is at the core of the Topography, epitomizing its cosmological ideas and biases while adding graphics for all clarity. For the very same reason it is translated here from the Greek in its completeness along with Cosmas' Introduction; the remaining books are drawn upon in the extensive commentary, where other cosmographers of Antiquity are frequently referred to as well. In his Topography Cosmas is propagating the idiosyncrasy of a Bible-based cubic universe, shaped as a huge box with a vaulted lid, in replacement of the common spheric model of the cosmos adhered to by the Hellenic scientists, and which he rejects as a mere product of the pagan mind. On closer investigation, his cosmology turns out to be ancillary to his christological message, and that's why he cannot resist digressing time and again in the areas of biblical history and exegesis, which, ill-placed though these may seem, show him to be a lesser Herodote of a narrator