Absolutely. Which makes those uneducated masses irrelevant to the myth or its origins and hence the specific issue I was addressing.
As I’ve previously pointed out on the SDMB, about the earliest data point for the beliefs about any general population that I can think of is that enough Londoners evidently understood the truth by 1599 for it to make sense to call a new theatre The Globe. Before that, it’s guesswork. But what Russell convincingly shows is that it’s extremely unlikely that either the Church or any other educated group was teaching anybody that the earth was flat. It’s quite possible many people remained ignorant through, well, sheer ignorance.
And one can turn the issue around. If the uneducated masses did believe it was flat, how do we know that Columbus’ voyages convinced them of anything? There are no records of any of them writing “dang, that Italian fellow’s obviously proved me wrong.”