Medieval Cosmology

The superb Museum of Alexandria, Egypt, was founded around 300 BC by one of the generals of Alexander the Great. It housed half a million manuscripts (papyrus scrolls) which scholars could use in their studies of literature, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Ptolemy was the last of the great scientific figures in Alexandria. He lived when the cultural heritage of Greece was already declining. During the next few centuries creative scientific activity diminished everywhere in the disintegrating Roman Empire.

In AD 312, Constantine the Great embraced Christianity which became the offi- cially sanctioned faith in the Empire. The Church was, during its first centuries of existence, either indifferent to or even against science. There were extremists who opposed classical culture and attacked the Alexandrian library and those working there, murdering the mathematician Hypatia in AD 415. Among other works, she is thought to have assisted her father Theon with a commentary on the Almagest. Many scholars found it safer to go to the Academy in Athens and to Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.