Johannes de Sacrobosco
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Johannes de Sacrobosco or Sacro Bosco (John of Holywood, c. 1195 – c. 1256) was a scholar, monk, and astronomer (probably English, but possibly Irish or Scottish) who taught at the University of Paris and wrote the authoritative mediaeval astronomy text Tractatus de Sphaera.
Tractatus de Sphaera
About 1230, his best known work, Tractatus de Sphaera, was published. In this book, Sacrobosco gives a readable account of the Ptolemaic universe. It was required reading by students in all Western European universities for the next four centuries. Though principally about the heavens it contains a clear description of the Earth as a sphere and its popularity shows the nineteenth-century opinion that medieval scholars after this date thought the Earth was flat as a fabrication (See: Flat Earth).
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