This page is referenced by:

• 1 2016-03-27T11:01:23-07:00 Earthly Paradise 7 plain 2016-03-28T17:52:02-07:00 During the Middle Ages, the Earthly or Terrestrial Paradise was generally considered to be a real geographic location found somewhere in a "mysterious" East. 
  
  
  
  Mary Campbell (p. 52) cites 6th century cosmographer Cosmas Indicopleustes, who locates the Earthly Paradise

  in the circle of land... surrounding the impassable Ocean Stream... from which humankind was floated to the orbis terrarum during the Flood of Noah.

  Campbell (p. 52) continues:

  What Cosmas signifies by placing Paradise across the Ocean Stream, other writers and theorists would signify by surrounding it with walls of flame and/ or impenetrable rock, or with the "Vale Perilous," or by situating it on an unscalable height to which even the waters of the Flood had not reached. A surprising number of itineraria and cosmographiae end with the description of one or another "burning hill" (and "burning hills" becomes thus representative of the contents of such books in one Renaissance cosmographer's remarks).