Space Evocated, Space Represented: The Biblical Topic of Paradise in the Middle Ages

Abstract

When Adam and Eve, grieved, left Paradise after transgressing the divine mandate, they carried in their souls the memory of that place to which they would never return. This then onwards imagined and long-awaited place, the Garden of Delights, is not a topic inherent only to the religions that are based on the Bible, but it crosses all the cultures of Antiquity.  In the Christian Middle Ages, however, it became a repeatedly evoked space, both in philosophical-theological comments and in iconic representations. The present paper seeks to approach the images of Paradise by using the methodology proposed by Warburg, revalued in recent years by Georges Didi-Huberman and others, insofar as the Garden of Delights topic is built up with borrowings of transmitted knowledge and non-knowledge, cultural transformations and dislocations, etc. In short, images of the Paradise open to a plurality of senses, here analyzed.