Introduction

Mappamundi by Giovanni Leardo located at the Biblioteca Civica in Verona, Italy

Liber Floridus Mappamundi by Lambert of St. Omer located at Wolfenbuttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Codice de Girona by Beatus of Liebana located at the Museo de la Catedral in Girona, Spain

Time and space were conceptualized and presented differently in the Middle Ages, and Paradise was both a time and a place. Alessandro Scafi writes: “Medieval space was what it contained, and time was what had happened.” (Scafi 129). Paradise was both a time and place; it was the Garden of Eden, and it was the moment at which Adam and Eve were banished.

In the Bible, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, sometimes called the earthly paradise. They went west, as did their offspring, the ancestors of humanity. The origin of humanity started in the east, at the point at which Adam and Eve fell. Placing paradise on a map then was reasonably simple; establish Asia on the map, and at the easternmost border of the known world, place paradise.

Paradise was normally symbolized either by a Biblical image like Eve eating an apple, or it was shown as a city. The former was more narrative and symbolic, while the latter was more substantive and easier for the viewer to imagine. However, paradise is often distinguishable today on many medieval maps as the source of 4 rivers. According to the Bible, there were 4 rivers that flowed from paradise: the Hiddekel (Tigris), the Phrath (Euphrates), the Gihon (Nile), and the Pishon, whose identity was debated upon between the Ganges or the Tigris (Scafi 138).