Paradise

PARADISE. - In the New Testament, P. is the place of beatitude in heaven, the glorious and radiant seat of God, where the just will enjoy eternal happiness (Lk. 23:43; II Cor. 12:4; Apoc. 2:7); there they will share, as a reward, in the divine "joy" and "kingdom" (Mt. 25:21, 23, 34; II Tim. 4:8).

The Gospel expression "Kingdom of heaven" presupposes that God dwells in heaven and that believers journey there (Mt. 3:2; 4:17; 5:10, 19 ff.; 8:11; 11:11-12; 13:24-47; etc.). The apocrypha and rabbinic literature make P., which after the Fall would have been transported to heaven, the abode 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 to the "rest of God" (ibid. 3:1-4:11). The faithful are journeying toward the "City of the living God" (ibid. 12:22; 13:14), the "higher" Jerusalem (Gal. 4:26) or the "new" or "heavenly" Jerusalem, bride of the Lamb (Apoc. 21:1-22:5), overflowing with the resplendent glory of God, the synthesis of every "ineffable gladness" (Dante, Par., XXVII, 7). In Purgat., XXXII, 102, Dante shifts the allegory to a heavenly Rome (v. VISIONE BEATIFICA).

The Fathers long for the "true life" of heaven through death (St. Ignatius, Ad Rom., 2-7). Saturus (Passio ss. Perpetuae et Felicitatis, 11-13) contemplates in a vision P. as a marvelous garden. Prudentius (Hamartigenia, 839-58: PL 59, 1070 ff.) describes "the various rewards in the regions of P.," and St. Augustine closes the De civitate Dei (XXII, 30: PL 41, 801-804) by treating "de aeterna felicitate civitatis Dei sabbatoque perpetuo." St. Ephrem, unifying the earthly p. and the heavenly P., the beginning and the end of the human drama, describes the 3 parts of the p.: the summit, the sides and the vestibule or pro-P., itself eternal, 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 of God and of the elect. The return to P., from which sin had excluded man, was the great hope of Christians. St. 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 St. Ambrose is summed up in the eschatological, ontological, ascetic, mystical return to P. St. Jerome exhorted Eustochium: "Ad paradisum mente transgredere: esse incipe quod futura es" (PL 22, 425; he alludes to the earthly P.: ibid., 400, 405).

Antonino Romeo
ARCHAEOLOGY. -
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)
PARADISE - P., detail from the Last Judgment by J. van Eyck
(c. 1430) - Leningrad, Hermitage Gallery.

of S. Apollinare in Classe, where the holy bishop is in beatitude in the heavenly garden.

The deceased are often represented in beatitude among their patron saints, especially Peter and Paul; in Domitilla, the deceased Veneranda is welcomed into P. by the martyr Petronilla, deposited there (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 231). In the cemeteries the heavenly garden is indicated by trees and plants with birds, flowers and fruit; a typical example is the wall of a cubiculum of the late 3rd or early 4th century in Callisto with the representation of five deceased in beatitude (Wilpert, Pitture, p. 425 ff., pl. 110). In summary, the garden painted on a tomb in the cemetery known as that of Novatian on the Via Tiburtina (E. Josi, Cimitero alla sinistra della Via Tiburtina al Viale Regina Margherita, in Riv. arch. crist., 11 [1934], p. 19). Damasus indicates P. with the expressions regia caeli, caelestia regna, regna piorum, aetherias domos, o sinus, aeternam domum, aetheris... atria celsa, in the elogium of Proiecta, d. in 383, with the expression aetheriam... caeli consendere lucem (A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, Città del Vaticano 1942, p. 302, and fig. 51). In the sepulchral poem of the deacon Redentus, of Damasan flavor, it is said that the regia caeli snatched him away and now paradisus habet (A. Ferrua, op. cit., pp. 233-35). The term is found 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 from the Almighty ut paradisum lucis possit videre (CIL, V, 6218). In S. Agnese a certain Aphrodite, 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, n. 1703); in another 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 epitaph of a Felix in Bassilla in 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 the 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

The depictions of P. developed in the figurative arts into those of the Last Judgment, where the elect are as a rule seen placed at the right hand of Christ the judge and the damned at his left. Thus in all medieval depictions and also in those handed down from the early Renaissance, where the image of P. is accompanied by that of hell.

The following may be cited as the more notable medieval depictions of P.: 1) a fresco in the Byzantine-Benedictine style, around 1060, in the church of S. Angelo in Formis near Capua; 2) Byzantine-Venetian mosaics of the 12th century in the cathedral of Torcello; 3) Byzantinizing mosaics of the 13th century on the ceiling of the Florentine Baptistery; 4) a fresco by Giotto, datable to around 1305, in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua; 5) the fresco by Nardo di Cione, executed around 1357 in the Strozzi Chapel in S. Maria Novella in Florence; 6) the fresco by Turone, executed around 1362 in the presbytery of S. Anastasia in Verona; 7) the late 14th-century fresco in S. Maria Maggiore in Tuscania. Mention should also be made of the grandiose fresco of the Camposanto in Pisa, attributed to Francesco Traini, and damaged by wartime operations in 1944. The Last Judgment, carved in marble by Lorenzo Maitani around 1320 and adorning the fourth pier of the facade of the cathedral of Orvieto, presents a different iconographic arrangement. Christ the judge is seen at the top of the bas-relief in the midst of a mandorla of cherubim; the elect occupy the upper part of the bas-relief, closest to Christ, and the damned of hell the lower part, farther away. The same vertical arrangement is followed by Jan van Eyck in the magnificent panel (c. 1430) owned by the Hermitage of Leningrad. Among the most beautiful depictions of P. are those in two panels of the early Italian Renaissance. One of these panels, painted around 1430, is the Last Judgment of Fra Angelico, which is preserved in the Museum of S. Marco in Florence. The other is the predella, later by about ten years, the work of the Sienese Giovanni di Paolo, in the Pinacoteca of Siena.

Conceived in the form of triptychs are certain Flemish Judgments of the 15th century; one shutter, the left one, that is, to the right of Christ the judge, depicts P. in these triptychs. The best known of them with the Last Judgment 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 along with the ship by the corsair Paul Beneke, who took it to Danzig. There, until 1945, the triptych of Memling was to be found in the church of S. Maria Vergine. Another Flemish triptych, where one shutter depicts P., is that of Hieronymus Bosch in the Doge's Palace in Venice. Amid the famous frescoes with scenes of the Last Judgment, painted by Luca Signorelli between 1499 and 1502 in the chapel of S. Brizio in the cathedral of Orvieto, is a compartment of the left wall that depicts precisely P. In the Last Judgment 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 used in the 14th century by Lorenzo Maitani and in the 15th century by Jan van Eyck. Rare are the subsequent depictions of P. alone, that is, without hell making an accompanying depiction in it companion. Among them the best known is certainly the grandiose P. by Jacopo Tintoretto, painted between 1588 and 1590 for the hall of the Maggior Consiglio in the Doge's Palace in Venice and which is reputed to be the largest oil painting in the world. A magnificent sketch for this grandiose painting by Tintoretto is preserved in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Also noteworthy is the P. in mosaics of the basilica of St. Mark in Venice, made after a cartoon by the same Tintoretto. A very beautiful 17th-century depiction of P. is offered by Bernardo Strozzi in a canvas owned by the Academy of Genoa.

Witold Wehr