Pachomius was born about 292 in southern Egypt. He was converted at about age 20 while serving in a Roman army, when he experienced Christian charity. Released at the end of the war, he returned to the village of Cheno-boskion in Upper Egypt to be baptized. He took up an ascetic life as a hermit and practicing forms of penance under a spiritual father and fellow anchorite.
In 323, while gathering wood in an abandoned village, Tabennesi, he had a VISION that instructed him to build a monastery there for the good of himself and others. Previously, early monasticism had been dominated by hermit monks, such as Anthony (ca. 251-356). He and others had withdrawn from the world in solitude as anchorites. Pachomius’s new experiment grew so that within six years, the number of monks had increased, requiring the establishment of a second monastery nearby. Pachomius also devised the first monastic rule for efficiently governing monks as they live in a common economic and spiritual life of shared meals, work, and prayer with a walled complex.
When Pachomius died in 346 of a plague that swept his communities, as many as nine monasteries and two affiliated nunneries were under his control. They varied in size and structure, all to the central house in a loose federation. By about 420, supposedly some 3,000 monks belonged to this movement. The community continued to grow after Pachomius’s death. They built a five-aisle basilica, the largest in Egypt, at the main house at Pbow in the fifth century. The Pachomian movement, however, disappeared in the latter part of the fifth century, probably a casualty of the christological controversies at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
See also asceticism; hermits and hermeticism. Further reading: Pachomius, Instructions, Letters, and Other Writings of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples, trans. Armand Veilleux (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian, 1982); Armand Veilleux, trans., The Life of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian, 1980); Philip Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Susanna Elm, “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
Padua (Patavium, Padoua) Medieval Padua, the Roman Patavium, was a town 22 miles from Venice in northeastern Italy. It had a bishop by 350. Although captured by the Ostrogoths in 493 and the Byzantines in 540, it escaped conquest by the Lombards in 568. The town reverted to Byzantine control until 602, when the Lombard king, Agilulf (r. 590-615), captured it and erased what was left of its Roman past. its territory was then dismembered between the neighboring cities of Treviso and Vicenza. Charlemagne made it a seat for one of his counties in 774, after he conquered the Lombard Kingdom.
From the 11th century, Padua revived and grew. The investiture struggles weakened the once-dominant episcopal power, so Padua’s first colleges of consuls appeared in 1138, forming a commune, which tended to be dominated by the Guelf faction. The 13th century included cultural and religious change marked by the birth in 1226 of the university. The Dominicans settled at Padua in about 1226 and the Portuguese Franciscan preacher Anthony was enthusiastically received until his death in 1231. A major basilica built in his honor drew a large number of pilgrims.
In the 12th century Padua was part of the Lombard League and became an important member of the Guelf party aligned against the emperor Frederick II. In 1237, without outside Guelf help, however, it had to surrender to the head of the imperial party, the Ghibelline feudal lord Ezzelino da Romano (1194-1259), who set up an authoritarian regime in Padua, Verona, and Vicenza. At first the town’s economy derived some benefit as part of this territorial unity, especially for a regional textile industry But in 1256 Ezzelino was expelled. This led to a new communal regime between 1256 and 1318. During this period merchants, such as the Scrovegni family, for whom Giotto painted in the Arena Chapel, flourished. As a prosperous town it had perhaps 30,000 inhabitants on the eve of the plague of 1348. Internal division, however, led to a lordship by the carrara family (1337-1405), clients of the powerful Della Scala in nearby Verona. The Carrara were patrons of humanists such as Petrarch and the university. The history of medieval Padua ended with the brutal Venetian conquest in 1405. From then on it was part of the Venetian territorial state.
See also Marsilius of Padua.
Further reading: J. K. Hyde, Padua in the Age of Dante: A Social History of an Italian City-State (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1966); Benjamin G. Kohl, Padua under the Carrara, 1318-1405 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Diana Norman, ed., Siena, Florence, and Padua: Art, Society, and Religion 1280-1400 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press in association with the open university, 1995); Nancy G. Siraisi, Arts and Sciences at Padua: The Studium of Padua before 1350 (Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973).
Paganism and Christianization As with any of a number of polytheistic religions, medieval and late antique paganism involved the ritualistic worship of more than one god, unlike monotheistic Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
In Christian antiquity the term pagan usually designated those who lived in the countryside and had resisted conversion to Christianity In the early Middle Ages such pagans venerated ancient or traditional gods associated with the forces of nature. In the Roman Empire there had been an official cult of the emperor to whom sacrifices had to be made. This was used as a test to expose Christians who sometimes succumbed to martyrdom rather than offer a sacrifice to the emperor. In the third century Egyptian, eastern, and Persian cults of Isis, Cybele, and Mithras became popular. In northern Europe some of the gods of the Germans and Scandinavians were Wotan and Thor. For the Celts, there were Taranis, Nerthus, and a group of female deities. These northern pagans apparently met around sacred springs and trees to indulge in sacrifices and ritualistic drinking. To use these natural forces for human benefit or harm, the Celts and Germans practiced magic in various forms, including incantations and rituals for the healing of beasts, the fertility of the fields, and military victory People wore charms and perhaps used secret formulaic writing such as runes or ogham. The Celts believed in the immortality of the soul; the Germanic tradition believed in Valhalla where honorable dead warriors went after death. Many of these practices and beliefs were, however, susceptible to assimilation into orthodox Christianity
Even after Christianization, prayer to such deities for intervention in worldly matters remained popular at springs, certain trees, rocks, and sacred caves, especially during agrarian festivals at the June and December solstices. Funerals and burial continued to include banquets and “diabolical” chants that had little relation to Christianity. Pagan or superstitious practices clearly continued, even designating certain days as preferable for certain activities, such as Fridays or Venus’s day for weddings. To these social practices were added divination to foretell the future and magical acts to guarantee protection against the forces of evil or to harm others. Incantations promoted feelings of love between people, and there were formulas for healing the sick. others were employed for casting evil spells.
PUNISHMENT AND REPRESSION
The emperor Theodosios I (r. 379-395) in the late fourth century had banned classical and oriental paganism. He particularly targeted sacrificial rituals, the funding of civic rituals, and the financial support of temples. However, many aspects of these religions lingered on in local forms and cults. The arrival of barbarians introduced a new form of paganism. In the sixth century the sermons of Saint Caesarius of Arles (ca. 470-542), a work entitled The Correction of Rustics by Martin of Braga (d. 580), several letters of Pope Gregory I the Great, and the canons of councils demonstrated a strong concern that paganism was not being eliminated. Slightly later seventh-century penitentials defined and discussed penalties for such sin. Around 1000, in his canonistic writings Burchard of Worms expressed a clear pastoral interest in the necessity for the suppression of pagan rituals and beliefs.
Much of these pagan practices or beliefs, well recognized as contrary to Christian belief, were punishable by death. At times they were suppressed by force. Numerous kings and rulers destroyed sanctuaries and forbade idolatrous cults and magic. Despite this violent suppression, there were other clerics, and even a few rulers, who fostered more gentle attempts to convert people from such beliefs and practices by assimilation, persuasion, and example.
See also Augustine of Canterbury, Saint; Boni face, Saint; missions and missionaries; preaching and preachers.
Further reading: J. N. Hillgarth, ed., Christianity and Paganism, 350-750: The Conversion of Western Europe, rev. ed. (1969; reprint, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986); Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, trans. B. A. Archer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); John R. Curran, Pagan City and Christian Capital: Rome in the Fourth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); H. R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964); Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art, trans. Barbara F Sessions (1940; reprint, New York: Pantheon Books, 1953); Ronald Sheridan and Anne Ross, Gargoyles and Grotesques: Paganism in the Medieval Church (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975).
Painting In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, painting employed several media, including various forms of fresco on walls, on parchment in manuscripts, and from easels onto wooden panels and altarpieces. These formats survived from late antiquity to continue in the Middle Ages. The overwhelming majority of painting was religious, but by the 14th and 15th centuries there was a considerable increase in secular and civic art in palaces and in public buildings. With the revival of classical learning and education in the 15th century, pagan and classical themes appeared, especially in the painting produced for the laity. From the mid-14th century, true portraits of individuals and saints appeared on smaller panels, wooden containers, or disks.
Techniques changed, especially from egg tempera to oil bases. Painting on stretched canvas also become more common from the 15th century Besides being ornamental and complementary to architecture, the iconography of religious painting was used to instruct Christians in their faith and to illustrate liturgical rites. There are numerous examples of preaches’ using images in just that way in the later Middle Ages. Secular themes reminded viewers of the power of the patron, whether an individual or a corporate body such as a town. Although little of that has survived from the Carolingian period, there still exist excellent examples in the town hall of Siena, the ducal fortress in Mantua, and the Papal Palace in Avignon, as well as fragments in the imperial palaces of Constantinople.
BYZANTINE AND ISLAMIC
Painting decorated the apses, ceilings, and naves of Orthodox churches, wherever they might be, to complement the complex liturgy and to display iconic representations of Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints. The early caliphs of Islam also decorated their palaces and hunting lodges with secular paintings, including human and animal figures. mosques tended to be very simply decorated. Islamic manuscripts were illuminated with complex patterns and quotations from the Quran for the edification of the reader and as mnemonic aids.
See also individual artists; altars and altarpieces; art and architecture, Byzantine; art and architecture, Islamic; art and architecture, Jewish; fresco; Gothic art and architecture; Iconoclasm and Iconoclastic controversy; icons, history and theology of; illumi nation; Ottonian art; Renaissance and revivals in art; Romanesque art and architecture.
Further reading: Cennino Cennini, The Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini: A Contemporary Practical Treatise on Quattrocento Painting, trans. Christiana J. Herringham (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1922); Ferdinando Bologna, Early Italian Painting: Romanesque and Early Medieval Art (Princeton, N. J.: Van Nostrand, 1964); Bruce Cole, Italian Art, 1250-1550: The Relation of Renaissance Art to Life and Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1987); Richard Fremantle, Florentine Gothic Painters from Giotto to Masaccio: A Guide to Painting in and Near Florence, 1300 to 1450 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1975); Andre Grabar, Early Medieval Painting from the Fourth to the Eleventh Century: Mosaics and Mutual Painting, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Skira, 1957); Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Art and Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999); Andrew Martin-dale, Painting the Palace: Studies in the History of Medieval Secular Painting (London: Pindar Press, 1995); Thomas F Mathews, Byzantium: From Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998); John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
Palaiologos imperial dynasty The Palaiologoi were the Byzantine family dynasty who recaptured Con stantinople from the Latins, provided the last Byzantine emperors, and held the throne between 1261 and 1453.
MICHAEL VIII
At the death of Emperor Theodore II Laskaris (r. 1254-58) of Nicaea in 1258, Michael Palaiologos VIII (r. 1261-82), a general, had himself proclaimed
Emperor. Three years later, he retook Constantinople from the Latins and restored the empire. To help the Greeks resist the aggression of Western princes, he sought help from the papacy. In 1274, he concluded a union of the Byzantine and Roman churches at the first Council of Lyon. Such a union alienated the Greek clergy and monks, despite the pleas of the patriarch, John XI Bekkos (r. 1275-82). On March 30, 1282, the Sicilian Vespers, a massacre of the French subjects and soldiers by the population of Palermo, diverted a planned Western expedition by Charles I of Anjou against him. He also died in 1282.
ANDRONIKOS II AND ANDRONIKOS III
Michael’s Son, Andronikos II (r. 1282-1328), succeeded him as emperor and ruled from 1282 to 1328, a long and unsuccessful reign. He was an intellectual who patronized intellectual and artistic endeavors. He also ended the union of churches that had been worked out at Lyon. Combined attacks by Westerners, Serbs, mercenary Catalans, and Turks produced an influx of refugees into Constantinople. In 1320 civil war broke out between Andronikos II and his grandson, Andronikos III (r. 1328-41). Andronikos III took power in 1328 after overthrowing his grandfather. Andronikos III battled ethical problems such as government corruption and usury and the external threats of the serbs and the Ottoman Turks. Anatolia was lost to the Turks in 1330s. His reign saw the inception of a serious ecclesiastical controversy between Barlaam the Calabrian (d. 1350) and Gregory Palamas over monastic practices concerning bodily function.
JOHN V
The death of Andronikos III in 1341 led to a confrontation between the supporters of the young John VI Kan-takouzenos (r. 1347-54) and those of the regent, the grand domestic John Kantakouzenos. The regent upheld the supporters of Palamas and sought a religious settlement with the West. In 1354, after three years of civil war, John V Palaiologos took back the throne, which he periodically held with difficulty from 1341 to 1354, from 1355 to 1376, and from 1379 to 1391. Faced with the progress of the Turkish conquest and outbreaks of the plague, he desperately sought a Western alliance. He even became a Roman Catholic himself in 1369. Despite these efforts, in 1373 he became a vassal of Sultan Murad I. The Ottomans profited from the rebellion of his son, Andronikos IV (r. 1376-79), between 1376 to 1379, by consolidating their conquests around Constantinople.
MANUEL II, JOHN VIII, CONSTANTINE XI DRAGASES
Manuel II (r. 1391-1425) became emperor in 1391. He followed his father’s accommodating Western policy. For four years, he left the government the empire to his nephew, John VII (1399-1408), the son of Andronikos IV He traveled throughout Europe, vainly seeking alliances against the Ottomans. The defeat of Bayazid I IN 1402 by Tamerlane provided the empire more time. During the rule of John VIII (r. 1425-48), Byzantium had no alternative to defeat than a Western political and religious alliance. In 1438 the emperor and many of his clergy attended the Council of Florence, where this ecumenical council proclaimed a union of the two churches with a vague promise of military assistance. This union was disavowed by the Byzantine Church back in Constantinople. A crusading army assembled to save Byzantium was annihilated by the ottomans at the Battle of Varna in 1444. Constantine XI Dragases (r. 1448-53), the despot of Morea, succeeded his brother in 1449. He assumed the throne at Constantinople in time to fall in the final siege of the town by the ottomans. He died fighting in 1453.
Further reading: Manuel II Palaeologus (13501425), The Letters of Manuel II Palaeologus: Text, Translation, and Notes, ed. George T. Dennis (Washington, D. C.: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1977); John W Barker, Manuel II Palaeologus (1391-1425): A Study in Late Byzantine Statesmanship (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1969); Deno John Geanakoplos, Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West, 1258-1282 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959); Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Donald M. Nicol, The Immortal Emperor: The Life and Legend of Constantine Palaiologos, Last Emperor of the Romans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall (New York: Knopf, 1996).
Palamas, Gregory, Saint (ca. 1296-1359) Byzantine monk, theologian
Born in Constantinople of a noble Anatolian family, Gregory Palamas became a monk at Mount Athos in about 1314 and was ordained a priest in about 1326 at Thessaloniki, where he had fled to escape the Ottomans. He lived as a hermit for a while and then returned in 1331 to Mount Athos, where he became familiar with the Hesychast tradition of mystical prayer. He persuaded his brothers, sisters, and mother to enter the religious life. Between 1335 and 1341 he engaged in a polemical debate with Barlaam the Calabrian (d. 1350). During this Palamas wrote his first major work, the Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts. He defended Christianity as a true experience of God. The doctrine developed by Palamas in these debates became known as Palamism. A council at Constantinople in 1341 condemned Barlaam.
SECOND CONTROVERSY
This debate was followed by a second period of controversy over divine substance and uncreated energies. Palamas was subjected to a period of excommunication, condemnation, and imprisonment between 1342 and 1347. Councils in 1347 and 1351 then confirmed his doctrines. From 1347 to his death, he was metropolitan of Thessaloniki. Captured by the Turks in 1354, he remained imprisoned for more than a year. During the calm of the intervening years between 1349 and 1350, Palamas wrote a summary of his theological teaching in The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters. In 1351, a third synod was summoned, which affirmed the theological themes and ideas proposed by Palamas as the official teaching of Orthodoxy These involved a doctrine of creation of the natural world and of the human person, specific discussions of natural human faculties, spiritual knowledge, rational nature, the divine nature, and its image in the human person.
THIRD CONTROVERSY
A third period of controversy on creation and the human person occupied the years 1351-58. Palamas was canonized and given the title doctor of the church by the Greek Orthodox Church in 1368 after his death in 1359. His feast day in the Eastern Church is celebrated November 14 and the second Sunday of Lent.
Further reading: Gregory Palamas, The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, ed. and trans. Robert E. Sinkewicz (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988); John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, trans. George Lawrence, 2d ed. (London: Faith Press, 1974); George C. Papademetriou, Maimonides and Palamas on God (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994).
Paleography (palaeography) For the study of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, paleography, a word coined in the 18th century, in the strict sense is the study and deciphering of old handwriting on manuscripts. In more general terms it can amount to a study of the institutions and culture that produced this written material. Paleography had its modern roots in the 17th century, long after the invention of printing, in the works of monks editing, criticizing, and evaluating written documents involving their own contemporary disputes over the accuracy and authenticity of medieval monastic charters or deeds.
As a discipline in the 19th century, it embraced the study of writing and its media and instruments, such as ink, PAPYRUS, PARCHMENT, and PAPER. Founded to study the documents of the Western Middle Ages, it now forms the basis for the study of the manuscripts and manuscript cultures of all medieval peoples who wrote. According to the modern understanding of the value of the discipline of paleography, medieval texts, either in print or in manuscript, have to be interpreted within the context of the ways in which they were produced and the needs of the institutions and ideologies that produced them. Modern paleographers have extended paleography to include all the aspects of a written monument or artifact, both internal and external material qualities and the cultural and social implications affecting writing and the people who produced it.
MEDIEVAL HANDWRITING
Paleography was practiced in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It had to be done for readers then to be able to read, understand, and interpret handwritten sources of knowledge or information. Then as now, in a more informal way than in the past, scripts were classified and evaluated by the forms of their letters. To combat medieval FORGERY, there was to be some attempt to date handwriting by recognizing changes in the writing itself and in textual and literary styles. Charters had to be evaluated as forgeries or as genuine transactions. The accuracy of transcriptions of sacred texts was important for all the religious of the medieval word, such as Christianity, JUDAISM, and Islam. Skillful and accurate scribes were fundamental to these religious cultures.
Handwriting forms used for clarity, beauty, or utility evolved over the course of the Middle Ages as the needs and goals of society changed, especially in terms of bureaucracy, education, law, and commerce. In the 15th century, there was a strong movement for the reform of Western European writing to increase clarity and ease of reading. Crabbed gothic hands, common in the elite and specialized university and Scholastic systems, were to be replaced by a humanist script based on the writing reforms of the CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE. These letter forms and styles were much more clear and words were less abbreviated, so readers and writers could more accurately comprehend and reproduce the classical texts being rediscovered and deemed so important for the betterment of society and a proper education. These reforms laid the basis for the movable type and textual forms used in the PRINTING revolution of the 15th century.
See also archives and archival institutions; codi-
COLOGY; NOTARIES AND THE NOTARIATE; PUNCTUATION;
Scriptorium; scripts.
Further reading: Michelle P Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990); Leonard E. Boyle,
Medieval Latin Paleography: A Bibliographical Introduction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984); Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Paleography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Daibhl oCroini'n and David Ganz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Jacqueline Brown and William P Stoneman, eds., A Distinct Voice: Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard E. Boyle, O. P. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997); Hubert Hall, A Formula Book of English Official Historical Documents, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1908-1909); Walther Bjorkman, “Diplomatic,” Encyclopedia of Islam, 2.301-316.
Palermo Palermo was founded by the Phoenicians, was the Roman Panormus, and became the capital of Sicily under the Muslims. By the 10th century it was one of the major metropolises of the Mediterranean. Its population was at least as large as it was to be in the 18 th century. It consisted of the old Roman and Punic or Carthaginian city and the newer Arabic quarters. It was also a garrison town with some of the fortress and military aspects of Damascus and al-Qayrawan. It had been taken by the Vandals in 440 and then by the forces of the German chieftain Odoacer and the Ostrogoth Theodoric. The Byzantines controlled the city from 535 to 831.
ARRIVAL OF THE NORMANS
The Norman conquest in the 12th century did not change the town significantly. Byzantine, Arabic, and Latin culture coexisted. The new Norman conquerors had a palace and a group of towers, as in Muslim architecture, on the highest point of the old town. These were surrounded by a town enclosed with walls and gates, including a cathedral, the palaces of the feudal aristocracy, and numerous churches. Its population became even more a mixture of Muslims, Arab and Greek Christians, Arabic-speaking JEWs, and Latin immigrants. There was an outlying quarter of gardens around reservoirs of water for suburban palaces in an area called the Conca d’Oro or Horn of Plenty.
This changed in 1161. The Muslims were transported into a northern quarter, and many others deported. The Hohenstaufen dynasty took over in 1194 with the coronation of the emperor Henry VI. His son, the emperor Fredrick II, deported more Muslims, causing harm to trade and economic activity. Some quarters were abandoned to gardens, and by 1277 the population had shrunk to no more than 50,000. Palermo became more culturally unified as the Muslims left and more Christians immigrated from Italy. Charles I of Anjou took control of the city and the island by defeating the Hohenstaufen in the 1260s. In 1282, as a consequence of the Sicilian Vespers, the occupying French were driven out. This led to a long series of wars over Sicily and Palermo between the Aragonese and the Angevins.
Slowly, under the victorious Aragonese, Palermo in the early 14th century recovered its place as a political capital and became a main trading market and clearing house between the island and Pisa, Genoa, and Barcelona. However, the government, from Aragon and Barcelona, preferred to live elsewhere. From 1348 to 1392 Palermo was governed by the vice royal counts of Chiaramonte. After 1412 the union between Sicily and Aragon endured beyond the Middle Ages, until the 17th century.
See also Monreale; Normans in Italy; Roger I; Roger II; William I the Bad of Sicily.
Further reading: Ahmad Aziz, A History of Islamic Sicily (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1975); Giuseppe Bellafiore, The Cathedral of Palermo (Palermo: S. F Flaccovio, 1976); William Tronzo, The Cultures of His Kingdom: Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Palestine The Roman province of Palestine was divided about 400 into three administrative districts. One, centered at Caesarea, included Judea, Samaria, and the coastal regions. The second, with its capital at Scythopolis, was composed of Galilee, Golan, and part of the Decapolis, an older area that included five major towns. The third district encompassed southern Palestine with its metropolis at Petra. These Byzantine administrative divisions lasted until 638 after the Persian invasions (614) and the subsequent Arabs takeover. There was also one of the main patriarchates at Jerusalem.
This region was never totally Christianized. There were Jews, the only dissident group who still preserved their freedom of worship in the Byzantine Empire. They may have formed a majority of the population in some areas such as Galilee, but had been forbidden to live in Jerusalem from the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian (r. 117-38) in the second century The Byzantine emperor Herakleios in 634 ordered that they be baptized under pain of death. For this reason, the Arab conquest a few years later offered them some hope of freedom to practice their religion. Other peoples such as the Samaritans were also considered unauthorized dissidents or heretics. They rose up in revolt in 484 and in 529 and maintained a persistent hostility to Byzantine power.
PILGRIMAGE SITES
Despite the presence of a hostile locals, Palestine became one of the goals of Christian pilgrimage. From the early fourth century, Christians traveled to Palestine to view and worship at the sites of the New Testament and of the old Testament, also considered part of the history of salvation. These sites were listed, enriched with sanctuaries and churches, and, loaded with relics. They were more and more often visited by pilgrims. Jerusalem was the most important site, but others such as Bethlehem with the basilica of the Nativity, Hebron, where the tomb of the patriarchs was venerated, the Jordan Valley, site of Christ’s baptism, temptation, and miracles, the Dead Sea with the salt statue of Lot’s wife, and Samaria, with Jacob’s well and the tombs of the patriarch Joseph, John the Baptist, and Eliza. In the north in Galilee were the places significant in the life of Christ, including Cana, Tabor, Nazareth, the mount of the Beatitudes, and Capernaum. In the region south west of Jerusalem were tombs of old Testament prophets and martyrs of the Roman persecutions. Finally there was a pilgrimage circuit south in the Sinai Peninsula. The emperors Constantine and Justinian in particular oversaw the construction of numerous churches and sanctuaries. In the fourth and fifth centuries coenobitic and anchorite monasteries were founded.
ISLAMIC CONQUEST
After 638, when the Arabs took possession of the whole country, and its non-Muslim inhabitants were subjected to taxes on persons and on land. The laws of the Umayyads, and Abbasids, were fairly tolerant. Christians were able to buy back their churches, but monasteries were pillaged, and taxes were periodically raised. Many Christians converted to Islam whether out of convenience or belief. Pilgrimage continued after the Islamic conquest, although pilgrims, too, were periodically harassed and taxed.
THE CHRISTIAN PRESENCE AND CONFLICT
By the time of Charlemagne, tensions had eased. In 801, the emperor, whom the patriarch of Jerusalem had asked to defend the Christians of Palestine, sent an embassy The Abassid caliph, Harun al-Rashid, granted Charlemagne ownership of the Latin establishments and a right of protection over the holy places. Charlemagne sent numerous subsidies and built monasteries. All this produced an atmosphere considerably more favorable to pilgrimage and local Christianity. something like a Frankish protectorate lasted until the 10th century. In 974, the Byzantines under the emperor John I Tzimiskes (r. 969-976) seized Tiberias, Nazareth, Acre, and Caesarea; the conquest led to a Byzantine protectorate over Palestine. In the 11th century Seljuk Turks took possession of it and were less accommodating of Christians. This new perceived abuse combined with the collapse of Byzantine power in Anatolia and Syria, were two factors that led to the Crusades.
In 1099, the crusaders took Jerusalem and created the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. The next 200 years was occupied with the building of Christian fortresses, churches, monasteries, and charitable establishments. At the same time hostilities between the Latins and the Byzantines, and the Christians and the Muslims, increased. In 1187, Saladin won an overwhelming victory over the Latin forces at the battle of Hattin and retook Jerusalem. In 1192 Richard I Lionheart negotiated a treaty that protected the remaining possessions of the Latins, a small band of territory between Jaffa and Tyre. The emperor Frederick II obtained, via the treaty of Jaffa in 1229, safe access for pilgrims to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the roads along the way In 1244 access to Jerusalem was reduced. Nazareth was taken in 1264, and then in 1291, Acre, the last possession of the Latins in Palestine, fell.
INTEGRATION AND THE MAMLUKS
The 13th century saw a great migration of Jews back to Palestine from Western Europe. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Palestine was under the rule of the Mamluks of Egypt. They treated Palestine merely as a corridor between their main interests, Egypt and Syria, and devastated the regions along the coast to prevent the return of the crusaders. Jerusalem was once again the main city of the region and numerous Arab families moved there. Jewish and Islamic schools were founded in the city In the later Middle Ages, pilgrimages from outside became much less common, although many Eastern and Orthodox Christians moved into Jerusalem. The Ottoman Turks controlled the region from 1516.
Further reading: Michael Avi-Yonah, A History of the Holy Land, trans. Charles Weiss and Pamela Fitton (New York: Macmillan, 1969); Alex Carmel, Peter Schafer, and Yossi Ben-Artzi, eds., The Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 634-1881 (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1990); Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, 634-1099, trans. Ethel Broido (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Joshua
Prawer, The crusaders’ Kingdom: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (New York: Praeger, 1972); Robert Schick, The Christian Communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule: A Historical and Archaeological Study (Princeton, N. J.: Darwin Press, 1995); Robert L. Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992).
Pallium The pallium, a papal and imperial insignia known from the late fifth century, was a long scarf of white wool, draped around the shoulders, whose two extremities fell, in front and behind the wearer. The popes conceded the right to wear the prestigious pallium to only certain bishops to signify their jurisdictional authority over other bishops. It appeared in mosaics in Rome and in Ravenna in the fifth and sixth centuries. By the eighth century, it had evolved into a large ring of cloth around the neck of the wearer with two vertical bands. It was requested by secular rulers for prominent ecclesiastical dignitaries of interest to them to signify a special relationship with the papacy It was reserved for special occasions except for the pope, who wore it daily, in his case to signify the plenitude of papal power and the union and allegiance of the Roman Church with its head, the pope. The pope required an oath of loyalty and a fee for the right of another to wear it. It went out of use during the 16th century.
See also Investiture Controversy or Disputes; papacy.
Further reading: John Albert Eidenschink, The Election of Bishops in the Letters of Gregory the Great: With an Appendix on the Pallium. . . (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1945); Janet Mayo, A History of Ecclesiastical Dress (New York: Holmes & Meier,
1984); Herbert Norris, Church Vestments, Their Origin and Development (New York: Dutton, 1950).
Palm Sunday In the medieval Roman liturgy, Palm Sunday occurred on the Sunday before Easter. It marked the beginning of Christ’s Passion when he entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and was greeted with joy by the inhabitants who saluted him with palms. It was commemorated by a procession into a church and the blessing of palms. The Passion according to the gospel of Saint Matthew was read at Mass on that day. The blessed palms were kept in houses after the ceremony to commemorate the passion.
See also Holy Week.
Further reading: Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (New York: Pueblo, 1986).
Palmyra (Tadmor) This ruined city was at an oasis in the Syrian desert, northeast of Damascus. It contained monumental ruins of a great city and was one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world. It united the art and architecture of Greece and Rome with that of Persia or Iran.
During the third century, wars between Rome and Persia intensified. In 260 the emperor Valerian (r. 253-260) himself was captured by a Sassanian king. Palmyra was caught in between, as an import stop on the trade routes between the two great empires. It tried to be independent of both, changing for this purpose from a merchant republic into a kingdom under Odenathus (d. 267), who allied with Rome and had considerable military success against the Persians by 267. But at the end of 267, Odenathus and his heir to the throne, were mysteriously assassinated. Zenobia (d. ca. 275), the king’s second wife and mother of a very young son, was probably involved in the murder.
Zenobia quickly showed herself to be an able monarch, who was boundlessly ambitious for herself, for her son, and for her people. Within six years she had affected the whole life of Palmyra. In 270, claiming descent from Cleopatra, she took possession of Syria and Lower Egypt, even sending her armies into Anatolia. All this was in defiance of Rome and the emperor Aurelian (r. 270-275), who left the northern front, raised a new army, crossed Anatolia, and captured Palmyra after a short siege. Zenobia fled east to seek help from the Sassanians. However, Romans recaptured her as she was crossing the Euphrates in 272 and took her back to Rome, where she was forced to ride in Aurelian’s triumph in 274. She died soon afterward in comfortable exile at Tivoli.
The once splendid and wealthy city was pillaged and destroyed in 273. The emperor Diocletian established a military camp to the west of the city Palmyra never recovered its position, now replaced in trading networks by Aleppo and Damascus. The temples of Palmyra were converted first into churches and then into mosques after the Arab conquest, with the ruins of the city sheltering only a few peasants. It was rediscovered by Western adventurers in the 18th century.
Further reading: Malcolm A. R. Colledge, The Art of Palmyra (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976); Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam (New York: Routledge, 2001).
Pannonia From the second century to its occupation by the Magyars in 895, the name Pannonia was applied to a region in the carpathian basin on the north bank of the Danube in central Europe, now modern Hungary. Many migrating peoples passed through it on their way into the Roman Empire. It was ideal for nomadic steppe peoples with its large grassy plains.
Its initial native population was made up of Thracians, Illyrians, and Celts. From the midsecond century, christianity entered southern Pannonia. From the first barbarian incursions of the late third century, the Van dals, the Sarmatians, the Goths, the Alans, and the Huns all moved in it. In 433, it passed officially to the rule of the Huns. These events led to a depopulation of the region, as insecurity and chaotic changes in political control prevailed.
The Ostrogoths profited from the collapse of the Hunnic federation after Attila’s death in 453. They occupied Pannonia until the early 470s, when they moved into Italy. The Lombards followed them into Pannonia and then into Italy between 527 and 568. The Avars then extended their rule over the whole of the Carpathian basin, intermingling with Slavs who had recently arrived in the region. Charlemagne conquered the Avars in 791 and 797, and Frankish and German colonists were settled among the Avar and Slav populations. The internal disputes of the Carolingian family led them to appeal for aid from the Magyars in the second half of the ninth century. In 894 the chief of these Hungarian tribes, ArpAd, attacked Carolingian Pannonia, beginning the Magyar conquest of the Carpathian basin. The region then became the medieval kingdom of Hungary.
Further reading: A. Lengyel and G. T. B. Radan, eds., The Archaeology of Roman Pannonia (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1980); Jeno Fitz, The Great Age of Pannonia: (a. d. 193-284), trans. Ildiko Varga (Budapest: Corvina, 1982); Andras Mocsy, Pannonia and Upper Moe-sia: A History of the Middle Danube Provinces of the Roman Empire, trans. and ed. Sheppard Frere (London: Rout-ledge and K. Paul, 1974).
Papacy The medieval pope was the bishop of Rome and patriarch of the West. He claimed succession from Saint Peter, whom Christ named as head of the apostles. During the Middle Ages, the separate evolution of the Western and Eastern Churches, doctrinal and political differences, and the efforts of the popes themselves to give their primacy a practical reality divided the Byzantine, or Greek Orthodox, Church and the Latin Church. Mutual excommunication and anathema occurred in 1054. The papally launched Crusade of 1204 that sacked Constantinople soured relations even more. Unsuccessful attempts at reconciliation followed at the councils of Lyon in 1274 and Florence in 1439. The supreme authority of the medieval popes rarely extended beyond the limits of western and central Europe and was often contested there.
PAPAL POLITICS
Until the mid-11th century, the ambitions and actions of the popes were primarily confined to Italy, where they had to maneuver among the Lombards, the Muslims, the Byzantines, and the noble families of Rome. They had the prestige of the apostolic see, but effective legal and political interventions were difficult and not always successful. They supported missions to England under Gregory I THE Great, to Germany in the eighth century, and to central Europe in the ninth. In the eighth century, they formed an alliance with the Franks, which accentuated a split with a rival imperial government and the Byzantine Church but permitted a temporal papal state in central Italy, creatively legitimized by the false Donation of Con stantine. The papal coronation of Charlemagne as emperor by Leo III in 800 drew the pope even closer to the secular powers. The spiritual and temporal powers of both were accepted as legitimate but were never easy to keep separate or even complementary.
PAPAL REFORMS
From the mid-11th century, in the papacy of Gregory VII, the Gregorian reform began the gradual establishment of a true papal monarchy. As part of the papal plan to control more closely the institutions of the church, this reform attacked what it perceived to be abuses: the purchase of clerical office, the appointment to ecclesiastical office by the laity, and the celibacy of the priesthood. over time the papacy accomplished a great deal in all of these matters, but at the cost of sometimes open warfare with secular rulers. To accomplish these aims, the papacy recognized the need for and completed the establishment of a papal state in central Italy It devised a system of election to the see of Saint Peter through the College of Car dinals, promoted the growth of a legal system that had the pope as its authority (canon law), and embarked on a large increase in all taxation paid to the Holy See. These were in effect the organs of government that any secular ruler would need to carry out his aims. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the pope developed the Apostolic Camera to collect and account for its growing tax or fiscal system and a chancery and system of legates to facilitate communication and convey papal intentions to the rest of the church and to the secular powers. It established the Penitentiary and the Inquisition to control the ecclesiastical legal system and promoted new orders, such as the men dicants, who were responsible only to the Holy See, not to the local bishops.
ASPIRATIONS AND SCHISMS
The popes raised armies and made and funded crusading alliances with princes to carry out their objectives. In the 13th century between the reigns of Pope Innocent III and Boniface VIII, the popes tried to exercise a full plenitude of powers, acting as monarch in spiritual and temporal affairs. Papal iconography associated the popes with imperial themes to demonstrate and assert apostolic and imperial traditions, power, origins, and glory. Papal tombs became much more pretentious. Various popes did succeed in destroying the German emperors but were unable to cow the kings of France. When they were forced to leave Rome and move to Avignon in the early 14th century, they fell much more under the influence of the French monarchy During the Great Schism (1378-1417), when there were two, and then three, popes with competing claims and allegiances, the prestige of the popes fell, too disgraced to compete with the growing power of the developing state systems of Western Europe. This did not slow an ambitious building program in Avignon or the development of papal institutions and bureaucracies, especially those to gather taxes and keep the pope at the center of the pastoral activities of the church.
In the 15th century after much squabbling, the schism ended. In 1417 the papacy was reunified, and in 1420 it returned to Rome under Pope Martin V (r. 1417-31), who sought to restore papal power. The papacy then, had to face conciliarism and the conciliar movement, which sought to center authority in the church in a conciliar system of government. Councils met at Pisa, Constance, Basel, and Florence. But in the end the papacy managed to avoid conceding much authority, and the councils were unable to carry out the reform deemed necessary by many of the clergy and laity alike.
CONCORDATS; FUND-RAISING
The 15th century also saw the appearance of concordats between the Holy See and secular governments. These recognized considerably more influence by kings and princes in their regional or national churches. The popes sought the least unfavorable terms for the Holy see in these agreements. The popes of the 15th century were as incapable of effecting church reform as the councils and they became even more involved in affairs in Italy in their attempt to protect their temporal power in the Papal States. To finance their ambitions of maintaining control of this region in Italy, the popes had to resort to more and more taxation, even to sanctioning more jubilees to draw more pilgrims to Rome to be taxed and to granting indulgences for payments of money
See also Alexander III, Pope; Alexander VI, Pope; Celestine V, Pope and the Celestines; Charles I of Anjou; Church, Eastern Orthodox; Eugenuis IV, Pope; Frederick I Barbarossa Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor; Frederick II, emperor and king of Sicily; Gregory IX, Pope; Holy Year; Innocent IV, Pope; law canon and ecclesiastical; Leo I, the Great, Pope; Leo III, Pope; missions and missionaries, Chris tian; Nicolaitism; papal states; Paschal II, Pope;
Philip IV the Fair; Pius II, Pope; Sylvester II, Pope; Urban II, Pope; Urban VI, Pope.
Further reading: J. T. Shotwell and Louise Ropes Loomis, The See of Peter (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927); Geoffrey Barraclough, The Medieval Papacy (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968); Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997); J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (oxford: oxford University Press, 1986); Walter Ullman, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1972).
Papal States (Patrimonium Sancti Petri, Patrimony of Saint Peter) These were the provinces over which the popes claimed rights in Italy that belonged to the papacy as its domain and were under its temporal sovereignty. They had their origins in the donations of several popes, in the fifth and sixth centuries, of their personal possessions and family properties in and near Rome. Until the end of the sixth century, these estates were considered the private possessions of the popes and were therefore exempt from taxes by imperial privileges.
CAROLINGIAN INTERVENTION
During a Lombard attack on Rome in 590 when the Byzantine governor in Ravenna was unable to defend the city, Pope Gregory I the Great put the Sign of Saint Peter on the walls of the city transferring sovereignty, giving the Holy See or himself public authority over the region and the city The Byzantine duchy of Rome was abolished in the seventh century, and its functions were assumed by the papacy The popes then became the sovereign possessors of the surrounding province of Latium (Lazio). They clashed with the Lombards in the seventh and eighth centuries, because of the latter’s efforts to take over Italy, including Rome. The popes then appealed to the Franks. For confirmation of his title, Pepin III the Short confirmed in 754 papal claims in Italy, including Rome, the Byzantine lands around Ravenna, and the Lombard lands between the city of Rome and the Po River. This area corresponded with a traditional patrimony that lasted through the rest of the Middle Ages. Parts of it remained in papal hands until the 19 th century
In 774 Charlemagne confirmed this but undertook to incorporate this state into his empire. With the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, the patrimony theoretically returned to the papacy, but only Latium was under real papal rule. Control of the rest was divided among local rulers.
THE PATRIMONY AND RETURN TO ROME From the 10th century the feudal aristocracy sought to impose its authority over the various fiefs of the patrimony and even over the popes themselves. In the second
Half of the 13th century, the popes recovered much of their sovereignty by obtaining the allegiance of several of Guelf leaders in Ravenna and Bologna. After the settlement of the papacy at Avignon in 1305, local lords and tyrants gained an effective autonomy Even a republic took over temporarily in Rome. The papacy did gain sovereignty over the area around Avignon itself. In 1350 Pope Clement VI (r. 1342-52) dispatched the Spanish cardinal Albornoz to Rome to restore papal authority in the city and over the Patrimony of Saint Peter. Albornoz restored papal authority in most of the patrimony, defeating many local tyrants and communes. After the end of the Great Schism, the return of the papacy to Rome in 1417, and the conciliar conflicts of the first half of the 15th century, the popes continued to try to maintain their authority over the Papal States, employing many mercenaries and fighting many wars to do so. They succeeded in maintaining control over Latium, Umbria, Ancona, Ravenna, and Bologna.
See also Alexander VI, Pope; Charles I of Anjou; donation of Constantine; Frederick II; law, canon AND ecclesiastical; Paschal II, Pope; Rome.
Further reading: Thomas F X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680-825 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984); Peter Partner, The Lands of St. Peter: The Papal State in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance (London: Eyre Methuen,
1972); Walter Ullman, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages: A Study in the Ideological Relation of Clerical to Lay Power (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1955); Daniel P Waley, The Papal State in the Thirteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1961).
Paper, introduction of Paper was supposedly discovered in the year 105 c. e. by an official at the court of the Han emperor in China. It was made from pieces of hemp and cloth. In the eighth century the Arabs acquired the technique from two Chinese prisoners. They created a factory at Samarkand. From there paper spread west and south to the Mediterranean, Syria, Egypt, the Byzantine world, North Africa, and Spain by the 11th century In the 13th century its manufacture and use spread through Spain at Valencia, Italy at Fabriano, France in Provence, and northern Europe in Flanders and Germany by 1390.
THE PROCESS
Medieval paper manufacturing began by mixing cloth rags or hemp cut into pieces. This was then washed with water and soaked in lime and afterward placed in troughs and beaten into pulp. This pulp was heated in a vat, and hung on a wooden frame fitted with a lattice. At the center of this lattice was usually a metal wire forming a letter or figure, the watermark, which showed the source for the paper and was transparently visible.
After the stretched form was drained, it was placed between layers of felt and pressed to remove the water. The resulting sheets were hung from lines for drying. With one side smooth and the other rougher, the sheets were then polished to produce a smooth surface and seal the pores of the paper, making it more receptive to ink.
PROLIFERATION OF USE
Paper was cheaper than parchment to produce and therefore, in the 13th century, quickly supplanted it for administrative and legal documents. Such a light and cheap material led to the increase in archival and bureaucratic collections from the 14th century It thus made the work of bureaucracies easier and capable of utilizing past documents and precedents. It made books marginally less expensive to produce, initially and especially after when printing was developed in the 15th century. The more deluxe manuscripts continued to be written on parchment.
See also archives and archival institutions; codi-cology; printing, origins of.
Further reading: Jonathan M. Bloom, Paper before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002); I. P Leif, An International Sourcebook of Paper History (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1978); E. J. Labarre, Dictionary and Encyclopedia of Paper and Paper-Making: With Equivalents of the Technical Terms in French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish & Swedish (Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1967).
Papyrus and papyrology Papyrus as a writing material was made from Cyperus papyrus, a plant that grew in the lower region of Mesopotamia, in Syria, in eastern Sicily, and especially in the Nile delta of Egypt. Papyrus was the medium for written documents in the ancient world. Because of its fragility, only a handful of rolls survived from the many produced. smaller pieces exist in the thousands. Most of them were preserved in the warm and dry climate of Egypt. For manuscript books, parchment in the form of codices, shaped as our books are, replaced papyrus as early as the fourth century.
MANUFACTURE AND LATER USE
The manufacture of papyrus involved cutting the pith of the plant stem into ribbons, which were impregnated with water on a table. A first layer was set vertically and a second one horizontally. They were stuck together with a paste made of millet and water. This sheet was pressed, lightly beaten, and rinsed to eliminate surplus paste. it was then dried in the sun and its surface was polished.
The resulting sheets were square and limited to 10 inches in width and 11 inches in height. They were joined by a border to one another to form a roll made up of 20 or so of them, measuring 20 to 40 meters long (or 70 to 100 feet). Writing was usually done only on one side, the inner face of the roll, but could also be on the reverse side. Papyrus continued to be used for documents in western Europe even after the banning of the export of papyrus from Egypt by the Arabs in 692. The papal chancellery used it until the 11th century. By the 14th century, except in the case of formal and ornamental documents, paper largely replaced papyrus as a medium for transmitting the written word.
See also codicology; paleography; parliament.
Further reading: Nabia Abbott, Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957-1972); Roger S. Bagnall, Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History (London: Routledge, 1995); Naphtali Lewis, Papyrus in Classical Antiquity (oxford: Claredon Press, 1974); R. B. Parkinson, Papyrus (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995); E. G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977).
Paradise The word paradise was of Persian origin (pairidaeza). It became the Hebrew word for an “orchard, a park, or an enclosed garden,” rather close to the Sumerian concept and word, eden. In the Latin of the Vulgate version of the Bible, it was called Paradisus. This became the Garden of Eden of Adam and Eve, with rich vegetation, watered by four rivers, reflecting the presence of God, and human mastery over animals. death was not present.
FURTHER MEANINGS OF PARADISE
Another paradise was eschatological, or a place or state where the souls of the just enjoyed eternal happiness with God, possibly in the Garden of Eden. There the just would receive the reward promised them and enjoy eternal happiness while contemplating God. There were many disputes and discussions about this Paradise during the Middle Ages. Questions were asked about the nature of Paradise, whether material or spiritual, and its location. Another was about whether souls separated from bodies had access to the beatific vision until the end of time. Theologians at the University of Paris decided that the blessed see the divine essence immediately. This idea was reaffirmed in the 14th century.
Another Paradise was perhaps on earth, even the church on earth. For monks, it might mean the cloister, an anticipation of the heavenly life. There was also a belief in an earthly location for the Garden of Eden somewhere. Such a concept appeared in the writings of Marco Polo, John Mandeville, and Christopher Columbus.
THE MUSLIM CONCEPTION
Paradise, or al-Jannah (Arabic) or firdaws (Persian) for Muslims, was the place or garden of reward for dead Muslims. it included enjoyable food, drink, and companionship. Located under the throne of God, it was different
The Archangel Michael expels Adam and Eve from Paradise from a bas-relief from the fagade of the cathedral of Orvieto, ascribed to Lorenzo Maitani and made about 1325 (Courtesy Edward English)
World History
