PARADISE. – In the New Testament, P. is the place of blessedness in heaven, the glorious and resplendent dwelling of God, where the just will enjoy eternal happiness (Lc. 23, 43; II Cor. 12, 4; Apoc. 2, 7); there they will share, as their reward, in the divine « joy » and « kingdom » (Mt. 25, 21. 23.34; II Tim. 4, 8).
The evangelical expression « Kingdom of
heaven » presupposes that God dwells in heaven and
that believers set out towards it (Mt. 3, 2;
4, 17; 5, 10. 19 sqq.; 8, 11; 11, 11-12; 13, 24-
47; etc.). The apocrypha and rabbinic literature
make P., which after the Fall is said to have
been transported to heaven, the dwelling of the just
after death or after the supreme judgment.
The Epistle to the Hebrews depicts eternal joy
in the Promised Land (cf. Mt. 5, 4),
transformed into a « heavenly calling » (Hebr. 3,
1), which is a « rest » identical with the « rest
of God » (ibid. 3, 1-4, 11). The faithful are journeying towards the « City of the living God » (ibid.
12, 22; 13, 14), the « higher »
Jerusalem (Gal. 4, 26), or the « new » or « heavenly » bride
of the Lamb (Apoc. 21, 1-22, 5), overflowing
with the radiant glory of God, a synthesis of every
« ineffable joy » (Dante, Par., XXVII,
7). In Purgat., XXXII, 102, Dante shifts the allegory to heavenly Rome (v. VISIONE BEATIFICA).
The Fathers aspire to the « true life » of
heaven through death (s. Ignatius, Ad
Rom., 2-7). Saturus (Passio ss. Perpetuoe
et Felicitatis, 11-13) beholds in a vision
P. as a marvelous garden. Prudentius (Hamartigenia, 839-58: PL 59, 1070
sqq.) describes « the various rewards in the regions of
P. », and s. Augustine concludes the De civitate Dei
(XXII, 30: PL 41, 801-804) by treating « de
aeterna felicitate civitatis Dei sabbatoque
perpetuo ». S. Ephrem, unifying earthly p.
and heavenly P., the beginning and the end of the
human drama, describes the 3 parts of p.: the
summit, the sides, and the vestibule or pro-P., itself eternal,
also reserved for those who have sinned through ignorance or
whose expiation on earth has remained incomplete. Most identified P. with the « third heaven » (II Cor. 12, 4), the dwelling place of God and the elect. The return to P., from which sin had excluded man, was the great hope of Christians. S. Gregory of Nyssa (PG 46, 417.600) presents Baptism as entry into P. and the Jordan as a river of P. Holiness, the mystical life, is the rediscovery of P. (A. Weiss, A. Stolz). The spiritual itinerary of s. Ambrose is summed up in the eschatological, ontological, ascetic, and mystical return to P. S. Jerome exhorted Eustochium: « Ad paradisum mente transgredere: esse incipe quod futura es » (PL 22, 425; he alludes to earthly P.: ibid., 400, 405).
46; J. Danielou, Le
symbolisme des rites baptismaux, in Dieu vivant,
no. 1 (1946), pp. 20-
28; id., Sacramentum
futuri, Paris 1930, pp.
13-20; F. Pasquero, Il
buon ladrone e la promessa di Gesù, Rome
1947, pp. 112-64, 189-
195; J. Alonso, Descripción de los tiempos mesiánicos en la literatura
profética como una vuelta al Paraíso, in Estudios eclesiásticos, 24
(1950), nos. 459-77; E.
Beck, Ephraems Hymnen über das Paradies
(Studia Anselmiana,
26), Rome 1951; C. Morino, Ritorno al p. di
Adamo in s. Ambrogio.
Itinerario spirituale,
Vatican City 1952.
Antonino Romeo
ARCHEOLOGY. -
A significant
representation of the
concept of P. is
expressed in the apse
(from P. P. von Weiner, *Meisterwerke
der Gemäldesammlung in der Ermitage
eu Pietrograf.*, Munich 1913, p. 193)
PARADISO - P., detail from the Last Judgment by J. van Eyck
(c. 1430) - Leningrad, Hermitage Gallery.
The dead are often represented in blessedness among their saintly advocates, especially Pietro and Paolo; in Domitilla, the deceased Veneranda is received into P. by the martyr Petronilla, buried there (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 231). In the cemeteries, the celestial garden is indicated by trees and plants with birds, flowers, and fruit; a typical example is the wall of a cubiculum dating from the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 4th century in Callisto, with the representation of five deceased persons in blessedness (Wilpert, Pitture, p. 425 ff., pl. 110). The garden is summarily depicted on a tomb in the cemetery known as that of Novaziano on the Via Tiburtina (E. Josi, Cimitero alla sinistra della Via Tiburtina al Viale Regina Margherita, in Riv. arch. crist., 11 [1934], p. 19). Damaso indicates P. with the expressions regia caeli, caelestia regna, regna piorum, aetherias domos, o sinus, aeternam domum, aetheris... atria celsa; in the eulogy of Proiecta, d. in 383, with the expression aetheriam... caeli consendere lucem (A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, Vatican City 1942, p. 302, and fig. 51). In the sepulchral poem of the deacon Redento, in the manner of Damaso, it is said that the regia caeli snatched him away and that now paradisus habet him (A. Ferrua, op. cit., pp. 233-35). The term occurs in an epitaph from Goudorf on the Moselle (CIL, XIII, 7642). At Carthage there is the expression in pace et paradisu (CIL, VIII, 13603); near Milevi it is said of the deceased that paradiso lucis videre postulavit (CIL, VIII, 9271); at Milan the deceased implores the Almighty ut paradisum lucis possit videre (CIL, V, 6218). In S. Agnese, a certain Afrodite, d. in 382, was optima servatrix legis fideique magistra and therefore per eximios paradisi regnat odores, tempore continuo verunt ubi gramina riviis (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. chr. Supplemen., Rome 1915, no. 1703); in another inscription in the Agro Verano one reads: inter felices animis et amoena piorum prata (id., in Bull. arch. crist., 4th series, 1 [1882], p. 95). In the inscription of a Felice in Bassilla: regno caelesti perque amoena virenta (id., La cripta dei SS. Proto e Giacinto nel cimitero di S. Ermete presso la Via Salaria Vetere, in Bull. arch. crist., 5th series, 4 [1894], p. 24).
P. was also the name given to the area enclosed by porticoes in front of cemetery basilicas, where burials took place (G. B. De Rossi, Roma sotter., III, Rome 1877, p. 430). Thus, for example, the area in front of the basilica of S. Pietro, surrounded by the quadriportico, is called p. (Lib. Pont., II, p. 80).
Enrico Josi
ART. — Representations of P. developed in the visual arts in those of the Last Judgment, where the elect are generally seen placed at the right hand of Christ the Judge and the damned at his left. Thus in all medieval representations, and also in those surviving from the early Renaissance, where the image of P. is accompanied by that of hell.
The following may be cited as the most notable medieval representations of P.: 1) a Byzantine-Benedictine fresco, dating from around 1060, in the church of S. Angelo in Formis near Capua; 2) Byzantine-Venetian mosaics of the twelfth century in the cathedral of Torcello; 3) Byzantine-style mosaics of the thirteenth century on the ceiling of the Florentine Baptistery; 4) a fresco by Giotto, datable to around 1305, in the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua; 5) the fresco by Nardo di Cione, executed around 1357 in the Strozzi Chapel in S. Maria Novella at Florence; 6) the fresco by Turone, executed around 1362 in the presbytery of S. Anastasia at Verona; 7) the late-fourteenth-century fresco in S. Maria Maggiore at Tuscania. The grandiose fresco in the Camposanto of Pisa, attributed to Francesco Traini and damaged by military operations in 1944, should also be recalled. The Giudizio Universale, carved in marble by Lorenzo Maitani around 1320 and adorning the fourth pillar of the façade of Orvieto Cathedral, presents a different iconographic arrangement. Christ the Judge is seen at the top of the bas-relief amid an almond-shaped aureole of cherubim; the elect occupy the upper part of the bas-relief, nearer to Christ, while the damned of hell occupy the lower, more distant part. Giovanni van Eyck follows the same vertical arrangement in the magnificent panel (c. 1430) owned by the Hermitage in Leningrad. Among the finest representations of P. are those in two panels of the early Italian Renaissance. One of these panels, painted around 1430, is the Giudizio Universale by Beato Angelico, preserved in the Museum of S. Marco in Florence. The other is the predella, dating from about ten years later, by the Sienese Giovanni di Paolo, in the Pinacoteca of Siena.
Some fifteenth-century Flemish Judgments were conceived in the form of triptychs; in these triptychs, one wing, the left one—that is, Christ the Judge’s right—depicts P. The best known of them, with the Giudizio Universale, is that of Hans Memling, painted around 1470 for Angelo Trani, a Medici agent in Flanders. Sent to Italy by sea, the work was captured together with the ship by the privateer Paul Beneke, who took it to Danzig. There, until 1945, Memling’s triptych was housed in the church of S. Maria Vergine. Another Flemish triptych in which one wing depicts P. is that by Hieronimus Bosch in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Among the famous frescoes with scenes from the Giudizio Finale, painted by Luca Signorelli between 1499 and 1502 in the Chapel of S. Brizio in Orvieto Cathedral, one section of the left wall depicts P. precisely. In the Giudizio Universale frescoed between 1534 and 1541 in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo depicted the elect of P. in the upper part of the grandiose scene, thus following the vertical arrangement already employed in the fourteenth century by Lorenzo Maitani and in the fifteenth by Giovanni van Eyck. Subsequent representations of P. alone—that is, without hell being given a representation accom-
