COSMA INDICOPLEUSTE. – Byzantine writer of the first half of the 6th century. Born in Egypt, he was initially a merchant, and around 520 travelled in East Africa, Arabia, and as far as India: hence his appellation of I., that is, navigator of the Indies. Later he became a hermit and lived in Alexandria and perhaps also
at Mount Sinai. Endowed with a spirit of observation and broad learning, he worked for twenty years, from 535 onward, on his work Χριστιανική τοπογραφία (“Christian Topography”), in 12 books and furnished with geographical-cosmological drawings, which are particularly highly regarded.
Written in a ponderous style, the work is now valuable as a disorderly repertory of the most diverse kinds of information, especially for the history of geography and cosmology, but also for Greek Christian literature, the liturgy, archaeology, etc. As already appears from the title, the principal aim of C. I. was to demonstrate that a Christian must follow the astronomical-cosmological concepts found in the Bible (that is, those of ancient Judaism), absolutely rejecting the Greek concepts (that is, essentially, those of Ptolemy) as false and heretical. Indeed, C. I. makes the universe into an immense chest, whose lid is the upper heaven: beneath it there is a plane that divides the universe longitudinally in two and is the firmament, or lower heaven; the space between the two heavens is the dwelling place of God and the elect, while the earth, which is beneath the firmament, is the dwelling place of man.
BIBL. Works: The first ed. is that of the Maurist B. Montfaucon, in Collectio nova Patrum et scriptorum Graecorum, II, Paris 1707, reprinted in PG, cols. 10–176; the critical edition is that of E. O. Winstedt, The Christian Topography of C. I., Cambridge 1909; the drawings in the work, already studied by R. Garrucci, Storia dell'arte cristiana, III, Prato 1876, pp. 70–83 and pls. 142–53, were published separately by C. Stornalolo, Le miniature della topografia cristiana di C. I. Cod. Vat. gr. 699, Milan 1908; furthermore, J. W. Mac Crindle, The Christian Topography of C., London 1897, translation with introduction and notes. Studies: G. Leopardi, Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi, chap. 12; furthermore H. Gelzer, Kosmos der Indienfahrer, in Jahrbücher für protest. Theologie, 9 (1883), pp. 105–41; Ch. R. Beazley, The dawn of modern Geography, I, London 1897; G. Marinelli, La geografia e i Padri della Chiesa, reprinted in Scritti minori, I, Florence 1908; G. L. Bertolini, Su la cosmografia di C. I., in Bollettino della Soc. geogr. ital., 4th series, 12 (1911), pp. 1455–97; E. Peterson, Die alexandrinische Liturgie bei K. I., in Ephemerid. Liturgicae, 46 (1932), p. 66 ff.