Abstract
In the year A.D. 1486, the prior of the Dominican convent at Salamanca summoned a meeting of divines for the purpose of investigating the alleged discovery of a new world by Columbus. It was a period of intense excitement. Up to that moment, science and Scripture had alike been made to teach that the world was raound like a plate. The voyage of Columbus, and the theory which he propounded, completely overthrew that opinion. It produced, therefore, the greatest consternation among all orthodox divines. At the solemn conclave just mentioned, it was seriously contended that Columbus could not be right; otherwise St. Jerome and St. Augustine must have been wrong. Among the arguments it was also contended that, however easily Columbus might have crossed over the ocean on the downward side of the sphere, yet he never could have sailed up-hill in coming back again! But the reason which appears to have finally decided them in the rejection of the new theory was its incompatibility with Scripture; "since to believe in inhabited lands on the opposite side of the globe would be equivalent to maintaining that there were nations not descended from Adam, it being impossible for them to have passed the intervening ocean"!