COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES. - Byzantine writer of the first half of the 6th century. Born in Egypt, he was first a merchant, and around 520 he traveled in eastern Africa, in Arabia and as far as the Indies: hence his appellation of I., that is, navigator of the Indies. Later he became a hermit, and lived in Alexandria and perhaps also on Mount Sinai. Endowed with a spirit of observation and broad culture, he worked for twenty years, from 535 onward, on his work Χριστιανική τοπογραφία ("Christian Topography"), in 12 books and accompanied by geographical-cosmological drawings, particularly appreciated.
Written in a heavy style, the work is valued today as a disorderly repertory of the most disparate pieces of information, especially for the history of geography and cosmology, but also for Greek Christian literature, 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 repudiating Greek concepts (that is, in substance, those of Ptolemy) as false and heretical. Indeed C. I. makes of the universe an immense chest, whose lid is the upper heaven: beneath it there exists 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 of God and of the elect, and the earth, which is beneath the firmament, is the dwelling of man.
BIBL. Works: The first ed. is by the Maurist B. Montfaucon, in Collectio nova Patrum et scriptorum Graecorum, II, Paris 1707, reprinted in PG, coll. 10-176; the critical one is that of E. O. Winstedt, The Christian Topography of C. I., Cambridge 1909; the drawings of the work already studied by R. Garrucci, Storia dell'arte cristiana, III, Prato 1876, pp. 70-83 and plates 142-53, were published separately by C. Stornalolo, Le miniature della topografia cristiana di C. I. Cod. Vat. gr. 699, Milan 1908; moreover, 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, ch. 12; moreover 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, reprint 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.