Not even Zacharia Lilio

      Contra James J. Allegro, "What was in doubt at the end of the fifteenth century was not the spherical composition of the cosmos, as expounded by Sacrobosco and many others, but the way the two lowermost spheres, of earth and water, were positioned in relation to each other.  In the context of this debate, Zacharia Lilio was a traditionalist who upheld the two-sphere conception against recent attempts to reinstate Ptolemy’s notion of a combined sphere of earth and water, also known as the terraqueous globe.  His stance was still tenable in the year 1496 in so far as the exploratory voyages organized by European maritime powers had not yet brought back news of a large landmass in the 'opposite' part of the world.  The incipient exploration of the coastline of South America in the years 1498-1504, which is associated with names such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, and Gonçalo Coelho, was about to change this.  Allegro is hence right that Lilio adhered to a conception of the earth’s physical configuration that was eventually proven wrong as a result of new empirical data. . . .  The nature of Lilio’s error, however is very different from what Allegro’s essay would have us believe.  [For 'Lilio here, as elsewhere, uses the term terra to denote the habitable landmass'.  He is discussing 'pars nostra terrarium' and not its 'universum circuitum', and for that reason cannot be enlisted in support of the claim that, as Allegro says, 'Europeans were not always united in their spherical earth beliefs'.]
     "James Allegro declined an invitation to respond."

     C. Philipp E. Nothaft, "Zaccaria Lilio and the shape of the earth: a brief response to Allegro’s 'Flat earth science,'" History of science 55, no. 4 (December 2017):  496-497, 496 (490–98), underscoring mine, and James J. Allegro, "The bottom of the universe:  flat earth science in the Age of Encounter," History of science 55, no. 1 (March 2017):  62 (61-85).  Cf. this earlier post, and this one, too.