He, “just a Christian,” as he described himself, was shocked by the existence of “false Christians” who did not understand how the world isconstructed, and who preached false doctrine. He tells us he wrote in Alexandria, addressing himself to a friend who had come from Jerusalem and encouraged him to write. Cosmas complains to us of his weak eyesight and poor digestion, and laments that he has not the fine education that others have, yet he plunges into his theories. His topic is the tabernacle the Jews built in the desert at their God’s command.
Cosmas learned all that is true on this subject from the “most holy Patrikios,” who came from the land of the Chaldeans. Now this Patrikios, son of Abbas, was (at the time Cosmas wrote) the katholikos—something between pope and patriarch— of the Christian church in Persia, though Cosmas may have met him in Alexandria or closer to the frontier. In the Christian church of the time, Patrikios led the faction usually called Ne- storian, named after a patriarch of Constantinople who never actually preached the doctrines attributed to him. This is oddly appropriate, for the Nestorians never preached them either, but were nonetheless separated from other branches of Christianity THE VIEW FROM ALEXANDRIA. Patrikios did at one point travel to Alexandria, accompanied by a disciple—a visit mentioned by Cosmas because it lets him make the point that just as Abraham came from the land of the Chaldees to bring the true faith to the Egyptians, so too did Patrikios.
The lesson Cosmas ascribes
The lesson Cosmas ascribes to this master is that the Jewish tabernacle, rather in the shape of an old, round-topped New England barn, was constructed as a model of the whole universe. The tabernacle floor is the flat earth, and the visible sky arches above. The sun, if you must know, rises in the east, sets in the west, and then scoots around to the north, behind the Alps, to return to the east for the next day’s rise. Cosmas even has the pictures to prove just how intelligently designed this world is.
What is striking about his flat-earth doctrine is the way it uses the authority of a book to stand truth on its head. Cosmas sounds deferential and humble. He praises a book that teaches a true and unchanging fact about the world, and then applies his modest interpretative skills to reveal that fact, even though we now know the truth is the reverse. The authoritative book lets him remake his world in whatever image he chooses.
