Andreasyrt at 06:41, 7 February 2026

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{{short description|6th-century Greek traveller and merchant}}
[[File:WorldMapCosmasIndicopleustes.jpg|right|thumb|[[Early world maps|World map]], by Cosmas Indicopleustes. The map is oriented with north to the top.]]
'''Cosmas Indicopleustes''' ({{langx|grc-x-koine|Κοσμᾶς Ἰνδικοπλεύστης|lit=Cosmas who sailed to [[India]]}}; also known as '''Cosmas the Monk''') was a [[merchant]] and later [[hermit]] from [[Alexandria]] in [[Egypt]].<ref>Beatrice Nicolini, Penelope-Jane Watson, ''Makran, Oman, and Zanzibar: Three-terminal Cultural Corridor in the Western Indian Ocean (1799–1856)'', 2004, BRILL, {{ISBN|90-04-13780-7}}.</ref> He was a 6th-century traveller who made several voyages to the [[Kingdom of Aksum]], and [[India]] during the reign of emperor [[Justinian]]. His work ''[[Christian Topography]]'' contained some of the earliest and most famous [[Early world maps|world maps]].<ref name=Brit>''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'', 2008, O.Ed, Cosmas Indicopleustes.</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Yule|first=Henry|title=Cathay and the Way Thither|year=2005 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SAqgAb41ifIC&pg=PA212|publisher=Asian Educational Services|isbn=978-81-206-1966-1|pages=212–32}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Miller|first=Hugh|title=The Testimony of the Rocks|url=https://archive.org/details/testimonyrockso03millgoog|year=1857|publisher=Gould and Lincoln|location=Boston|page=[https://archive.org/details/testimonyrockso03millgoog/page/n438 428]}}</ref>
Cosmas was a pupil of the [[East Syriac Rite|East Syriac]] Patriarch [[Aba I]] and was himself a follower of the [[Church of the East]].<ref name="Indicopleustes2010">{{cite book|last=Cosmas Indicopleustes|title=The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk: Translated from the Greek, and Edited with Notes and Introduction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Cp9S9o5lj5oC|access-date=3 November 2012|date=24 June 2010|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-108-01295-9|page=87}}</ref><ref name="Johnson2012">{{cite book|last=Johnson|first=Scott |title=The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GKRybwb17WMC&pg=PA1019|access-date=3 November 2012|date=November 2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-533693-1|page=1019}}</ref>

==Voyage==
Around AD 550, while a monk in the retirement of a [[Sinai Peninsula|Sinai]] [[Enclosed religious orders|cloister]],<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Cosmas (of Alexandria)|display=Cosmas|volume=7|page=214}}</ref> Cosmas wrote the once-copiously illustrated ''[[Christian Topography]]'', a work partly based on his personal experiences as a merchant on the [[Red Sea]] and [[Indian Ocean]] in the early 6th century. His description of [[India]] and [[Ceylon]] during the 6th century is invaluable to historians. Cosmas seems to have personally visited the [[Kingdom of Axum]] in modern day northern [[Ethiopia]], as well as [[Eritrea]]. He sailed along the coast of [[Socotra]], but it cannot be ascertained that he really visited [[India]] and [[Ceylon]].

==''Indicopleustes''==
"Indicopleustes" means "Indian voyager", from {{wikt-lang|grc|πλέω}} "(I) sail".<ref>{{LSJ|ple/w|πλέω|ref}}.</ref> While it is known from [[classical literature]], especially the ''[[Periplus Maris Erythraei]]'', that there had been [[trade]] between the [[Roman Empire]] and [[India]] from the first century BC onwards, Cosmas's report is one of the few from individuals who had actually made the journey. He described and sketched some of what he saw in his ''Topography''. Some of these have been copied into the existing manuscripts, the oldest dating to the 9th century. In 522 AD, he mentions several ports of trade on the [[Malabar Coast]] ([[South India]]). He is the first traveller to mention [[Saint Thomas Christians|Soriyani Christians]] in present-day [[Kerala]] in [[India]]. He wrote: <blockquote>"Even in Taprobane, an island in Further India, where the Indian sea is, there is a Church of Christians, with clergy and a body of believers, but I know not whether there be any Christians in the parts beyond it. In the country called Malê, where the pepper grows, there is also a church, and at another place called Calliana there is moreover a bishop, who is appointed from Persia. In the island, again, called the Island of Dioscoridês, which is situated in the same Indian sea, and where the inhabitants speak Greek, having been originally colonists sent thither by the Ptolemies who succeeded Alexander the Macedonian, there are clergy who receive their ordination in Persia, and are sent on to the island, and there is also a multitude of Christians. […] The island [of Sri Lanka] has also a church of Persian Christians who have settled there, and a Presbyter who is appointed from Persia, and a Deacon and a complete ecclesiastical ritual. But the natives and their kings are heathens."<ref>{{cite book |title=The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2010 |isbn=9781108012959 |editor=J. W. McCrindle |pages=118–120, 365}}</ref></blockquote>

==''Christian Topography''==
[[File:Cosmas - universe.jpg|thumb|180px|A theoretical model of the universe.]]
[[File:Cosmas Indicopleustes - Topographia Christiana 1.jpg|right|thumb|180px|World picture from ''Christian Topography''.]]

A major feature of his ''[[Christian Topography]]'' is his worldview that the surface of ocean and earth is [[flat earth|flat]] (that is, nonconvex and nonspherical, as perceived by the human senses) and that the [[sky|heavens]] form the shape of a box with a curved lid. He was scornful of [[Ptolemy]] and others who held that the world's surface was, contrary to human perceptual experience, a spherical shape. Cosmas aimed to prove that pre-Christian geographers had been wrong in asserting that the surface of the earth and surface of the ocean was convex and spherical in shape, and that it was in fact modelled on the [[tabernacle]], the house of worship described to [[Moses]] by God during the [[The Exodus|Jewish Exodus]] from Egypt. In the centre of the plane is the inhabited earth, surrounded by ocean, beyond which lies the paradise of [[Adam]]. The sun revolves round a conical mountain to the north: round the summit in summer, round the base in winter, which accounts for the difference in the length of the day.<ref name="EB1911"/>

However, his idea that the surface of the ocean and earth is nonspherical had been a minority view among educated Western opinion since the 3rd century BC.<ref>{{cite web | last = Russell | first = Jeffrey B. | url = http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/history/1997Russell.html | title = The Myth of the Flat Earth | publisher = American Scientific Affiliation | access-date = 2007-03-14 }}</ref> Cosmas's view was never influential even in religious circles; a near-contemporary Christian, [[John Philoponus]], sought to refute him in his ''[[De opificio mundi (John Philoponus)|De opificio mundi]]'' as did many Christian philosophers of the era.<ref name=Brit/>

[[David C. Lindberg]] asserts: {{quote|''Cosmas was not particularly influential in Byzantium, but he is important for us because he has been commonly used to buttress the claim that all (or most) medieval people believed they lived on a flat earth. This claim...is totally false. Cosmas is, in fact, the only medieval European known to have defended a flat earth cosmology, whereas it is safe to assume that all educated Western Europeans (and almost one hundred percent of educated Byzantines), as well as sailors and travelers, believed in the earth's sphericity.''<ref>Lindberg, David "[[The Beginnings of Western Science]], 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450", p. 161</ref>}}

Cosmas was mentioned in Umberto Eco's historical novel, ''[[Baudolino]]''. In the book, a Byzantine priest and spy, Zozimas of Chalcedon, refers to his world topography as the key to finding the mythical [[Prester John]]:

{{quote|''Well, in the empire of us Romans, centuries ago there lived a great sage, Cosmas Indicopleustes, who traveled to the very confines of the world, and in his ''Christian Topography'' demonstrated in irrefutable fashion that the earth truly is in the form of a tabernacle, and that only thus can we explain the most obscure phenomena.''<ref>Eco, Umberto (2002). ''Baudolino.'' Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, Inc. p. 215</ref>}}

Cosmology aside, Cosmas proves to be an interesting and reliable guide, providing a window into a world that has since disappeared. He happened to be in [[Adulis]] on the [[Red Sea]] Coast of modern [[Eritrea]] at the time (c. AD 525) when the King of [[Kingdom of Axum|Axum]] was preparing a military expedition to attack the [[Jew]]ish king [[Dhu Nuwas]] in [[Yemen]], who had recently been persecuting Christians. On request of the Axumite king and in preparation for this campaign, he recorded now-vanished inscriptions such as the [[Monumentum Adulitanum]] which he mistook for a continuation of another monument detailing [[Ptolemy III Euergetes]]'s conquests in Asia. Neither have been located by archeologists.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Rossini |first1=A. |date=December 2021 |title=Iscrizione trionfale di Tolomeo III ad Aduli |url=https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni/riviste/axon/2021/2/iscrizione-trionfale-di-tolomeo-iii-ad-aduli/ |journal=Axon |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=93–142 |doi=10.30687/Axon/2532-6848/2021/02/005|doi-access=free }}</ref> Allusions in the Topography suggest that Cosmas was also the author of a larger cosmography, a treatise on the motions of the stars, and commentaries on the [[Psalms]] and [[Canticle]]s.<ref name="EB1911" />

==See also==
*[[Chronology of European exploration of Asia]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Kenneth Willis Clark collection of Greek Manuscripts: Cosmas Indicopleustes, ''Topographia''.
* Cosmas Indicopleustes, ed. John Watson McCrindle (1897). [https://archive.org/details/christiantopogra00cosm ''The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk'']. [[Hakluyt Society]]. (Reissued by [[Cambridge University Press]], 2010. {{ISBN|978-1-108-01295-9}})
* Cosmas Indicopleustes, Eric Otto Winstedt (1909). ''The Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes''. The University Press
* Jeffrey Burton Russell (1997). ''Inventing the Flat Earth''. Praeger Press
* Dr. Jerry H Bentley (2005). ''Traditions and Encounters''. McGraw Hill.
* Schneider, Horst (2011). ''Kosmas Indikopleustes, Christliche Topographie. Textkritische Analysen. Übersetzung. Kommentar.'' Turnhout: Brepols.
* Wanda Wolska-Conus. ''La topographie chrétienne de Cosmas Indicopleustes: théologie et sciences au VIe siècle'' Vol. 3, Bibliothèque Byzantine. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962.
* Cosmas Indicopleustes. ''Cosmas Indicopleustès, Topographie chrétienne.'' Translated by Wanda Wolska-Conus. 3 vols. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1968–1973.

==External links==
*[http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/#Cosmas_Indicopleustes The Christian Topography] by Cosmas Indicopleustes
*[http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/morefathers.html#Cosmas_Indicopleustes The Christian Topography] by Cosmas Indicopleustes (other site)
*[http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/30_20_0500-0600-_Cosmas_Indicopleustis.html Greek Opera Omnia by Migne Patrologia Graeca with analytical indexes]
*[https://archive.today/20150419140638/http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.699/0001/thumbs?sid=093d29441ce90fbfec1f878486263cd3%23current_page Scan of the entire Codex Vat.gr.699 on Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana website]

''This article uses text taken from the Preface to the [http://www.tertullian.org/fathers#Cosmas_Indicopleustes Online English translation of the Christian Topography], which is in the public domain.''

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Byzantine geographers]]
[[Category:Explorers of Asia]]
[[Category:Church of the East writers]]
[[Category:6th-century Byzantine monks]]
[[Category:6th-century Byzantine writers]]
[[Category:Greek explorers]]
[[Category:6th-century Byzantine scientists]]
[[Category:Flat Earth proponents]]
[[Category:6th-century geographers]]
[[Category:Explorers of South Asia]]
[[Category:Monks of the Church of the East]]

Cosmas Indicopleustes - Revision history

Andreasyrt at 06:41, 7 February 2026