"Nothing," he says, "could show me better how little is really known about the situation of the terrestrial paradise than the differences in the opinions of those who have occupied themselves about the question. Some have placed it in the third heaven, some in the fourth, in the heaven of the moon, in the moon itself, on a mountain near the lunar heaven, in the middle region of the air, out of the earth, upon the earth, beneath the earth, in a place that is hidden and separated from man. It has been placed under the North Pole, in Tartary, or in the place now occupied by the Caspian Sea. Others placed it in the extreme south, in the land of fire. Others in the Levant, or on the borders of the Ganges, or in the Island of Ceylon, making the name India to be derived from Eden, the land where the paradise was situated. It has been placed in China, or in an inaccessible place beyond the Black Sea; by others in America, in Africa, beneath the equator, in the East, &c. &c."
Notwithstanding this formidable array, the good bishop was bold enough to make his choice between them all. His opinion was that the dwelling-place of the first man was situated between the Tigris and Euphrates, above the place where they separate before falling into the Persian Gulf; and, founding this opinion on very extensive reading, he declared that of all his predecessors, Calvin had come nearest to the truth.
Among the other authors of greater or less celebrity that have occupied themselves in this question, we may instance the following:—
Raban Maur (ninth century) believed that the terrestrial paradise was at the eastern extremity of the earth. He described the tree of life, and added that there was neither heat nor cold in that garden; that immense rivers of water nourished all the forest; and that the paradise was surrounded by a wall of fire, and its four rivers watered the earth.
James of Vitry supposed Pison to come out of the terrestrial paradise. He describes also the garden of Eden; and, like all the cosmographers of the middle ages, he placed it in the most easterly portion of the world in an inaccessible place, and surrounded by a wall of fire, which rose up to heaven.
Dati placed also the terrestrial paradise in Asia, like the cosmographers that preceded him, and made the Nile come from the east. Stenchus, the librarian of St. Siége, who lived in the sixteenth century, devoted several years to the problem, but discovered nothing. The celebrated orientalist and missionary Bochart wrote a treatise on this subject in 1650. Thévenot published also in the seventeenth century a map representing the country of the Lybians, and adds that "several great doctors place the terrestrial paradise there."
An Armenian writer who translated and borrowed from St. Epiphanius (eighth century) produced a Memorial on the Four Rivers of the Terrestrial Paradise. He supposes they rise in the unknown land of the Amazons, whence also arise the Danube and the Hellespont, and they deliver their waters into that great sea that is the source of all seas, and which surrounds the four quarters of the globe. He afterwards says, following up the same theory, that the rivers of paradise surround the world and enter again into the sea, which is the universal ocean."
Gervais and Robert of St. Marien d'Auxerre taught that the terrestrial paradise was on the eastern border of the square which formed the world. Alain de Lille, who lived in the thirteenth century, maintained in his Anticlaudianus that the earth is circular, and the garden of Eden is in the east of Asia. Joinville, the friend of St. Louis, gives us a curious notion of his geographical ideas, since, with regard to paradise, he assures us that the four great rivers of the south come out of it, as do the spices. "Here," he says, referring to the Nile, "it is advisable to speak of the river which passes by the countries of Egypt, and comes from the terrestrial paradise. Where this river enters Egypt there are people very expert and experienced, as thieves are here, at stealing from the river, who in the evening throw their nets on the streams and rivers, and in the morning they often find and carry off the spices which are sold here in Europe as coming from Egypt at a good rate, and by weight, such as cinnamon, ginger, rhubarb, cloves, lignum, aloes, and several other good things, and they say that these good things come from the terrestrial paradise, and that the wind blows them off the trees that are growing there." And he says that near the end of the world are the peoples of Gog and Magog, who will come at the end of the world with Antichrist.
We find, however, more than descriptions—we have representations of the terrestrial paradise by cartographers of the middle ages, some of which we have seen in speaking of their general ideas of geography, and we will now introduce others.
