Cosmas Indicopleustes (Koine Greek: Κοσμᾶς Ἰνδικοπλεύστης, lit. 'Cosmas who sailed to India'; also known as Cosmas the Monk) was a merchant and later hermit from Alexandria in Egypt. He was a 6th-century traveller who made several voyages to India during the reign of emperor Justinian. His work Christian Topography contained some of the earliest and most famous world maps.Cosmas was a pupil of the East Syriac Patriarch Aba I and was himself a follower of the Church of the East.
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Cosmas Indicopleustes in the context of Early Greek cosmology
Early Greek cosmology refers to beliefs about the origins, development, and structure of the universe in Ancient Greece that existed before the development of Ancient Greek astronomy. The basic elements of this early cosmology included a flat earth, heaven, a cosmic ocean, the afterworld (Hades), and the netherworld (Tartarus). The first three were represented by the gods Gaia, Uranus, and Oceanus (or sometimes Pontus). Ancient Greek cosmology was related to ancient Near Eastern cosmology, and was ultimately replaced by a more systematic and demythologized approach found in ancient Greek astronomy. Its main sources are the poetry of Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey), Hesiod (the Theogony and the Works and Days), and surviving fragments from Mimnermus.
Beginning in the 5th century BC, elements of the traditional Greek cosmos began to be modified and challenged. One of the earliest of these challenges came from the emergence of the view that the cosmos as a whole was spherical (advocated by Xenophanes, Parmenides, Empedocles, and others). The rotation of the spherical cosmos was said to explain the visible rotation of the stars (an idea called "vortex"). Soon, a spherical model of the earth itself was proposed, which gradually gained acceptance, although the flat earth view never entirely disappeared during either classical antiquity or late antiquity, continuing to receive support from geographers and others like Ctesias, Ephorus, Strabo, Tacitus, and the Epicureans. The last Greek advocate of the traditional cosmology was Cosmas Indicopleustes.
Cosmas Indicopleustes in the context of East Syriac Rite
The East Syriac Rite, or East Syrian Rite (also called the Edessan Rite, Assyrian Rite, Persian Rite, Chaldean Rite, Nestorian Rite, Babylonian Rite or Syro-Oriental Rite), is an Eastern Christian liturgical rite that employs the Divine Liturgy of Saints Addai and Mari and utilizes the East Syriac dialect as its liturgical language. It is one of the two main liturgical rites of Syriac Christianity, along with the West Syriac Rite (Syro-Antiochene Rite).
The East Syriac Rite originated in Edessa, Mesopotamia, and was historically used in the Church of the East—the largest branch of Christianity operating primarily east of the Roman Empire—, with pockets of adherents as far as South India, Central and Inner Asia, and a strong presence in the Sasanian (Persian) Empire. The Church of the East traces its origins to the 1st century, when Saint Thomas the Apostle and his disciples Saint Addai and Saint Mari brought the faith to ancient Mesopotamia (today's modern Iraq, eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and regions along the Turkish–Syrian and Iran–Iraq borders). According to traditional accounts, Thomas the Apostle is believed to have traveled as far as the Malabar coast of southwestern India. This account is not yet confirmed, as the earliest-record for an organised Christian presence in India is from the 6th century account of Alexandrian traveller Cosmas Indicopleustes.
Cosmas Indicopleustes in the context of Christian Topography
The Christian Topography (Ancient Greek: Χριστιανικὴ Τοπογραφία, Latin: Topographia Christiana) is a 6th-century work, one of the earliest essays in scientific geography written by a Christian author. It originally consisted of five books written by Cosmas Indicopleustes and expanded to ten and eventually to twelve books at around 550 AD.