AROUND AD 1000, Gerbert of Aurillac served a brief stint as pope. He was not an especially distinguished pontiff and he didn’t reign for very long, yet he is of perennial interest to both academic and popular historians. Why?
The answer can be found in books such as John William Draper’s 1874 History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. In it, Draper characterised the Middle Ages as an era of faith, a time when everyone thought that the Earth was flat. Draper may have been forgotten, but his narrative lives on. And that is what makes Gerbert of…
