I’ve devoted many years to this research on paradise on maps. I recollect that many years ago I went to Rome and then I asked the Vatican Lib to reproduce some of the maps they’d in their possession. I specified in my application that I needed a reproduction of the whole map and all the detail of the earthly paradise on those maps. Then I came back to London and I was waiting for the answer. Then, after a couple months, the horrible news came. I was running by one staff of the Vatican Library, they told me that they located in maps, but they weren’t able to discover the earthly paradise. Then I thought: “Oh dear, if in the Vatican they don’t know the earthly paradise is, we’re really in trouble”. So I thought I should discover out about this.
Then I discovered that people were already troubled many centuries ago. Beca at the beginning of the whole legend people read the Bible. Augustine told that they’d to read the Bible in a literal way. So, if a garden is mentioned that meant that this garden had been and still was on Earth. They accepted more or less that it was vaguely located in a distant East, but then this number had to be located some. Then problems became to emerge already around the twelfth – thirteenth centuries, when we’d a Scientific Revolution in the West, the introduction of the Greek science through the mediation of the Arab scholars, which totally renewed the approach to geography and astronomy.
Christian scholars, such as Thomas Aquinas, were very brave, they accepted the challenge. They wanted to indicate through the new scientific tools that the Bible was right, that actually there was a Garden of Eden some on the globe. And this is a fascinating history, I think. Beca it was a kind of impossible attempt to dispose the unloca. There was something about this notion, which was intriguing: this space was totally separated the daily life, the known world, yet it was still connected to it. There was a separation: a temporal separation (the fall of Adam and Eve) and geographical separation (a barrel of fire, a navigable ocean, very high peak). But then the connection was ensured by the four rivers, beca the text of the Bible mentions four rivers: the Gichon, the Pishon, which were interpreted as the Nile and the Ganges, the Tigris and Euphrates, which were really famous rivers. So, there was a connection. This space was on Earth, but not of the Earth.
They began to look that just to say it’s in the E in a vague way was number longer enough. Debate started in the thirteenth century. They began to discuss it is. It’s maybe on the Torrid Zone, beca the Arab scientists declare that it’s very temperate. Avicenna says that the climate there is perfect, but Aristotle says it’s torrid. Then, perhaps, it’s in the Southern hemisphere that they didn’t know. And perhaps, it’s empty. This is Dante’s idea. Perhaps, it’s there and we can’t approach it beca this is a Torrid Zone, the flaming sword of the cherubim is actually the Torrid Zone. Other people said:” No, it’s in the Distant East, it’s on a very high mountain”. The debate was very likely. I won’t go into details here, but is fascinating to look how they filtered the traditional biblical law, their own faith through new Aristotelian science. They were very intrepid in that.
But, of course, in the fourteenth cent the disappointment came, beca it was impossible to dispose the Garden of Eden. There was number agreement, there were also many factors involved in this fall of a notion. And the main factors, to slice a very long legend short, first of all, that new information came into Western Europe the East. In around one thousand two hundred many European travelers went to the East – Marco Polo, Niccolo de Conti – there were travel reports, and nobody came across anything love the earthly paradise.
Then the production of culture shifted monasteries to universities in mercantile cities. Then the emergence of nautical cartography – people began to map worlds of the present to comprise the calculation of distance, proportion, to think more of modern trade and less of biblical or classical history. Then the rediscovery of Ptolemy and the new kind of modern mapping. Perhaps, we can think of the Italian novel ‘The Leopard’ of the nineteenth century, one of the characters says: “Everything has to change, so that nothing changes”. And this happens to the mapping of paradise.
The medieval mapping or paradise was transformed into what I’d call the modern, the Renaissance, mapping of paradise. In between there is a transitional period, which is very fascinating, including pretty maps of the fifteenth century, you discover the original notion, the original map sign indicating paradise in a totally different cartographical context. Map makers in the fifteenth cent number longer mapped the universal history and geography of mankind. They were much more interested in and informed about contemporary geography, trade. In the E there was Kathai or the Arabs had told them about the coasts of Africa. There was new information that’d to be taken into account. Yet they still mapped the Garden of Eden some in the East.
But then around one thousand five hundred – the turning point. Again I’ve to slice a long legend short, but what’s happened is that suddenly in order to hold the truthfulness of scripture Christian scholars began to see at a paradise in the past. There was always something implicit in the medieval notion – paradise belonged to the past, beca paradise was the space of Adam and Eve. But for the medieval scholars paradise was still on Earth, was still in the present, even though it was an unknown and unapproachable, unthinkable present in geographical reality.
The very first scholar to think that the Garden of Eden was number longer on Earth was actually a catholic, the librarian of the Vatican Library, Augustinus Steucus. And then curiously this became then later a typical protestant argument against catholic tradition. Luther played a very necessary role, beca Luther thought that the Garden of Eden was left vacant after the banishment of Adam and Eve, but then was totally destroyed by the flood. You look the parallel, not the human nature, the sin corrupted us, the sin corrupted the Earth. There is number longer Eden on the Earth. For Luther number maps of paradise would be possible, beca the Earth changed totally after the flood. The flood destroyed the four rivers, destroyed everything.
What allowed the modern flourishing of maps of paradise was the very complex theological thinking of Calvin. Calvin had a slightly different approach Luther. Yes it’s true that sin destroyed us, but God didn’t abandon us, God cares for us, God wanted to give a sign of like to man. In one of these signs of like according to Calvin was the four rivers of Eden still here. Calvin reassured the readers of his comment of Beginning published in one thousand five hundred fifty-sixth, I think, by saying: “Yes, we were expelled paradise, but we’re meant to be on Earth, on our journey to heaven. God is caring after us and shows us his benevolence by keeping the four rivers. Calvin provided the map of these four rivers.
Calvin’s map is the very first example of a very wealthy torrent of modern photography. Beca after Calvin subsequent map-makers, without the complex theological thinking of Calvin, wanted to specify precisely the longitude and latitude of the Garden of Eden. Calvin in his map of Eden didn’t actually dispose Eden precisely, he just said it was in Mesopotamia, beca Mesopotamia is a productive land and you discover here the four rivers.
The key of Calvin’s revolutionary idea, which was anticipated by Augustinus Steucus is that the Gichon and the Pishon, the Hebrew terms for the two rivers, which since Flavius Josephus were with the Nile and the Ganges, according to Calvin they were not, but they were just local streams in Mesopotamia. This is how this paved the way to the modern mapping, beca after Calvin other people didn’t resist the temptation to dispose more precisely the Garden of Eden, to give precise latitude and longitude. Then we’ve other scholars locating paradise in southern Mesopotamia, in Armenia, in the Holy Land, more recently in the Seychelles Islands or in Iran.
But this kind of modern paradise is very different the Medieval paradise. You may go to Iran or to Mesopotamia, particularly now, you wouldn’t discover the Garden of Eden, beca it disappeared. So the modern Renaissance mapping of Eden is an archeological, historical, regional cartography. This is just the very isolated piece of the Earth, the Garden of Eden was located once, but it’s number longer there. Medieval mapping was wider cartography including the whole of history of salvation, the location of paradise was left in a distant, remote East.
This is the disagreement between the Medieval mapping of paradise and the modern mapping of paradise. In the Center Ages there is still the idea that paradise is on Earth, even though distant in a remote E or any else. In the modern mapping of paradise it’s in the known portion of the Earth, but it’s number longer there, it’s in the past. A typical paradise on Earth but distanced some else is Dante’s paradise, but Dante’s paradise is a portion of a journey, is a portion of a narrative going the Earth through the depths of hell as the only way to rise up to the light, to heaven. Dante, the pilgrim, has to go through the geography, which is a medieval geography, to access Heaven. In this way we can declare that Dante is an elderly poet love Milton, and he, as a poet, anticipates the conclusion of scientists, seeing the notion of the Garden of Eden as a preliminary stepping stage towards heaven, beca modern marking of paradise would then emphasize the importance of heavenly paradise and forget this issue that occupied the most brilliant minds of the Center Ages so much. but it number longer does. If you approach any clerics or biblical scholars, or necessary theologians of any Christian denominations, they’re not worried about the latitude or longitude of the Garden of Eden, they’ve other things to worry about.
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