IIIF Color HighRes
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
BIOGRAPHICAL AND INTRODUCTORY NOTICES. 327
again, considered it to lie with the antediluvian world beyond the ocean which encompasses the oblong plateau of the earth that we inhabit. Father Filippo the Carmelite thinks it lay probably in the bosom of Ararat, whilst Ariosto seems to identify it with Kenia or Kilimanjaro,-
" Il monte ond' esce it gran flume d' Egitto
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Ch' oltre alle nubi e presso al ciel si leva; Era quel Paradiso the terrestre
Si dice, ove abit6 già Adamo ed Eva."—(xxxiii, 109, 110.)
The map of Andrea Bianchi, at Venice, agrees with Marignolli, for it shows Paradiso Terrestre adjoining Cape Comorin, whilst the four rivers are exhibited as flowing up the centre of India,—one into the north of the Caspian, near Agrican (Astracan, viz., the Wolga) ; a second into the south of the Caspian, near Jilan (Araxes ?) ; a third into the Gulf of Scanderoon (Orontes ?); and the fourth, Euphrates.
Some other old maps and fictitious voyagers, such as John of Hese, assign a terrestrial position also to Purgatory. Dante, it will be remembered, has combined the sites of Purgatory and of the earthly Paradise, making the latter the delightful summit of the mountain whose steep sides are girt with the successive circles of purification.
And to conclude this matter in the words of Bishop Huet of
Avranches : " Some have placed the terrestrial Paradise
under the arctic pole ; some in Tartary, on the site occupied now by the Caspian ; some at the extreme south, in Terra del Fuego ; many in the East, as on the banks of the Ganges, in the island of Ceylon, in China, beyond the sun-rising, in a place no longer habitable. Others in America, in Africa, in the equinoctial orient, under the equator, on the Mountains of the Moon. Most have set it in Asia; but of these, some in Armenia Major, some in Mesopotamia, in Assyria, in Pérsia, in Babylonia, in Arabia, in Syria, in Palestine. Some even would stand up for our own Europe ; and some, passing all bounds of nonsense, have placed it at Hesdin in Artois, urging the resemblance to Eden."'
1 F. D. Huetii, Episc. Abrine. Tract. de Situ Paradisi Terrest. in Ugolini, Thesaurus Antiq. Sacr., Venet., 1747, vii, p. dii. Also Cosmas in Montfaucon, Coll. Nova Patrum, ii, 131; Peregrin. Joannis Hesei, etc., Antv., 1565, etc.
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