If for a branch of Islamic theology paradise had assumed a eschatological facet and ascended to the upper spheres of the cosmos (6.5), in the Christian world it was held, well into the Renaissance, that paradise was earthly still. According to historian Jean Delumeau, there are three significant documents in this regard. The first, The Travels of Sir John de Mandeville, a compilation of geographical knowledge of the 12th century on the territories of Asia minor, the Middle East, Egypt and Ethiopia, in which the characteristics of the Eden we have seen so far reappear:

The Earthly Paradise, so men say, is the highest land on earth; it is so high it touches the sphere of the moon. For it is so high that Noah’s flood could not reach it, though it covered all the rest of the earth. Paradise is encircled by a wall… there is no way into it open because of ever burning fire…¹

The narration of Mandeville, whose identity lies between between fiction and reality, is part of a medieval tradition in which the tacit wall of Eden is transformed, after the expulsion of Adam and Eve (6.3), into a huge wall of fire. Its elevated situation makes paradise the place from whence flow all the waters of the rest of the world.² The second document is Imago Mundi by Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly (1351-1420), which characterizes the earthly paradise as

a pleasant spot, located in certain regions of the east that are separated by land and sea from our inhabited world. It is so high up that it abuts on the sphere of the moon, and the water of the flood did not reach it… The waters that descend from this very high mountain form vast lake… from this lake as from their main source flow (it is believed) the four rivers of paradise…³

El emplazamiento del paraíso terrenal en el límite superior del mundo sublunar, recuerda la ubicación del mismo en la Divina Comedia, justo en el umbral entre el purgatorio y las esferas superiores del cosmos, como también la ubicación de las acrópolis (tanto elevadas como amuralladas) del mundo antiguo (0.27). Por otra parte, en la descripción de d’Ailly encontramos una nueva característica: el paraíso está más allá de un gran cuerpo de agua, una cuestión apenas natural en un mundo cuyas fronteras empezaban a estrecharse a medida que el comercio empezaba a cubrir gran parte del continente euroasiático. Tanto el libro de Mandeville como el Imago Mundi de d’Ailly, se contaban entre los libros preferidos de Cristobal Colón, cuyo descubrimiento de América estuvo motivado por encontrar una nueva ruta al Oriente, sede ancestral del Edén. En el diario de su tercera expedición a América, que lo llevó al delta del Orinoco (y que él tomó por las extremidades de Asia), Colón afirmó haber llegado a las inmediaciones del paraíso:

All this provides great evidence of the earthly Paradise, because the situation agrees with the beliefs of those holy and wise theologians and all the signs concord strongly with this idea. For I have never read or heard of such a quantity of fresh water flowing so close to the salt and flowing into it, and the very temperate cli mate provides a further confirmation. If this river [the Orinoco] does not flow out of the earthly paradise, the marvel is still greater. For I do not believe that there is so great and deep river anywhere in the world.⁴

The opinion of Columbus was not at all unreasonable for his time and, in fact, in his History of the Indies Bartolomé de las Casas supports him: “Finally, we must conclude that the earthly paradise is located in the highest place in all the world, one that is higher that all the other mountains, however high these may be. The waters of the flood could not reach it.”⁵.

But was it a paradise what Columbus found on the American continent or, rather, did he bring with him a paradeisos from the Old world?

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1. Jean Delumeau, History of paradise, 52. ↩︎
2. Ibid, 50. ↩︎
3. Ibíd., 24. ↩︎
4. Ibid., 55. ↩︎
5. Quoted by Delumeau in History of Paradise, 55 ↩︎