Mapping Paradise
A History of Heaven on Earth
400 pages
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16 color plates, 175 halftones
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8-1/2 x 11
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© 2006
Throughout history, humans have searched for paradise. When early Christians adopted the Hebrew Bible, and with it the story of Genesis, the Garden of Eden became an idyllic habitat for all mankind. Medieval Christians believed this paradise was a place on earth, different from this world and yet part of it, situated in real geography and indicated on maps. From the Renaissance through the Enlightenment, the mapping of paradise validated the authority of holy scripture and supported Christian faith. But from the early nineteenth century onwards, the question of the exact location of paradise was left not to theologians but to the layman. And at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there is still no end to the stream of theories on the location of the former Garden of Eden.
Mapping Paradise is a history of the cartography of paradise that journeys from the beginning of Christianity to the present day. Instead of dismissing the medieval belief in a paradise on earth as a picturesque legend and the cartography of paradise as an example of the period’s many superstitions, Alessandro Scafi explores the intellectual conditions that made the medieval mapping of paradise possible. The challenge for mapmakers, Scafi argues, was to make visible a place that was geographically inaccessible and yet real, remote in time and yet still the scene of an essential episode of the history of salvation. Mapping Paradise also accounts for the transformations, in both theological doctrine and cartographical practice, that brought about the decline of the belief in a terrestrial paradise and the emergence of the new historical and regional mapping of the Garden of Eden that began at the time of the Reformation and still continues today.
The first book to show how paradise has been expressed in cartographic form throughout two millennia, Mapping Paradise reveals how the most deeply reflective thoughts about the ultimate destiny of all human life have been molded and remolded, generation by generation.
Mapping Paradise is a history of the cartography of paradise that journeys from the beginning of Christianity to the present day. Instead of dismissing the medieval belief in a paradise on earth as a picturesque legend and the cartography of paradise as an example of the period’s many superstitions, Alessandro Scafi explores the intellectual conditions that made the medieval mapping of paradise possible. The challenge for mapmakers, Scafi argues, was to make visible a place that was geographically inaccessible and yet real, remote in time and yet still the scene of an essential episode of the history of salvation. Mapping Paradise also accounts for the transformations, in both theological doctrine and cartographical practice, that brought about the decline of the belief in a terrestrial paradise and the emergence of the new historical and regional mapping of the Garden of Eden that began at the time of the Reformation and still continues today.
The first book to show how paradise has been expressed in cartographic form throughout two millennia, Mapping Paradise reveals how the most deeply reflective thoughts about the ultimate destiny of all human life have been molded and remolded, generation by generation.
Choice Magazine: CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Awards
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Association of American Publishers: PROSE Book Award
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The Economist
"Where do you find paradise on a map?...As Alessandro Scafi shows in his erudite history of the Christian effort to map paradise, pre-modern mapmakers focused on spiritual navigation, not the secular kind. They tried to portray time and space in a way that is still beautiful, but can seem baffling. Their maps showed God, history, and human woes and joys, often biblical ones. The Garden of Eden was a real place, just as Adam was a real man.... Mr Scafi tells this story well from the sublime start to the ridiculous end, with spectacular flourishes of art history and confident quotes from Latin, Greek and Hebrew."
David Ulin | Los Angeles Times
"Mapping Paradise aspires to be nothing less than a history of earthly paradise, starting with the early Christian era and continuing to the present day. Extensively illustrated, it is an atlas of the imagination, a guide to a landscape that remains just the slightest bit out of reach....Juxtaposing medieval illuminated manuscripts with satellite imagery and cartographic treasures—one map of the world, drawn in 1086, uses portraits of the Apostles to signify the territories they evangelized—Mapping Paradise is, in the end, a record not of place but of desire. Or, as Scafi puts it: 'Whether the approach is openly religious or not, mankind still longs for a paradise on earth.'"
John J. Miller | Wall Street Journal
"'A map of the world that does not include utopia is not even worth glancing at," quipped Oscar Wilde. Even so, scholars who study the medieval habit of charting the Garden of Eden as if it were an actual place have traditionally approached their subject with 'a condescending smirk,' writes Alessandro Scafi, who promises a 'fresh look' at the matter. His book is richer in text than images, though the images are the highlight, and they are well presented. An ancient map rendered on faded parchment—labeled in a cramped script and written in a dead language—can be as incomprehensible to modern viewers as Mapquest directions would be to a Crusader seeking the Holy Land. Mr. Scafi displays originals and, where appropriate, offers close ups and diagrams to help decipher their content. Over the years, cartographers have mapped paradise just about everywhere: most commonly near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers but also in the Far East, sub-Saharan Africa, Armenia, close to the Seychelles and beneath the waves of the Pacific Ocean. Those who depicted it as a kind of walled-off fortress, to signify its inaccessibility, were on to something: The quest to locate heaven on earth has always been doomed."
Jerry Brotton | BBC History
"[A] stunning book...LAvishly illustrated with more than 200 maps, this is a map connoisseur's dream—paradise, perhaps, on the page."
Lawrence S. Cunningham | Commonweal
"[This] is one of those works one hates to see come to a conclusion, rich as it is in content and lavish in illustration. I consider it a tour de force of intellectual history."
Veronica della Dora | H-Net Book Review
"Mapping Paradise brings an important theoretical and empirical contribution to contemporary scholarship in the history of cartography, but it is also particularly timely within broader contemporary debates fuelled by a revived interest in the geography of beliefs and the sacred. Besides geographers and historians of cartography, Scafi's book . . . will interest a broader audience of theologians, art historians, and medievalists. . . . An enjoyable book and a great scholarly achievement deserving special interdisciplinary attention."
Thomas O'Loughlin | Imago Mundi
"A valuable book that deserves a warm welcome for anyone engaged with medieval maps, and, more generally, in the dialogue between cartography and culture."
Jessica Andruss | Comitatus
"Mapping Paradise is an achievement worth celebrating. Scafi has identified a fascinating area of Christian intellectual history. . . . A provocative and productive contribution to scholarship on Christian thought and material culture in all periods."
A. H. Merrills | American Historical Review
"Scafi's stimulating overview of these varied mappings or Paradise provides a striking and invaluable contribution to the history of cartography. Ranging from the earliest maps of late antiquity to the biblical geographies of the present day, Scafi provides an exhaustive study of a fascinating phenomenon. . . . Much of Scafi's discussion is stimulating and thought provoking, and by setting all of this mapmaking within its theological context, the author has done the scholarly community a tremendous service."
Michael Livingston | Speculum
"A must-have for those medievalists who view our collective scholastic endeavour as historically grounded."
Camille Serchuk | Medieval Review
"It is hard to find fault with this book--the scholarship is impeccable, the argument both elegant and resourceful. The book is richly illustrated."
Contents
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Prologue: Journeying to Paradise
1. Changing Views on Paradise on Maps
2. Paradise in the Bible
3. Locating Paradise in Space
4. Locating Paradise in Time
5. Mapping Paradise in Space and Time
6. The Heyday of Paradise on Maps
7. Where is Nowhere?
8. The Twilight of Paradise on Maps
9. Paradise Lost and Found
10. The Afterlife of Paradise on Maps
11. The Eclipse of the Theological Eden
Epilogue: Paradise Then and Now
Bibliography
Index
List of Abbreviations
Prologue: Journeying to Paradise
1. Changing Views on Paradise on Maps
2. Paradise in the Bible
3. Locating Paradise in Space
4. Locating Paradise in Time
5. Mapping Paradise in Space and Time
6. The Heyday of Paradise on Maps
7. Where is Nowhere?
8. The Twilight of Paradise on Maps
9. Paradise Lost and Found
10. The Afterlife of Paradise on Maps
11. The Eclipse of the Theological Eden
Epilogue: Paradise Then and Now
Bibliography
Index
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Geography: Cartography | Cultural and Historical Geography
History: History of Ideas
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