Paradise (?) in Versions of Saint Brendan's Travels

Abstract

Travel accounts were the most popular genre during the Middle Ages. Travelling went in all directions but preferably to the East, where Paradise was believed to be located. Paradise was hidden behind an ocean, a wall of fire or insurmountable mountains and thus inaccessible. Saint Brendan’s voyage went west and the vast majority of scholars have claimed that Saint Brendan arrived in Paradise even if the various texts lack evidence for it, and in several ways. I characterize this apparent Paradise in the Navigatio version as a “fake Paradise,” because it is located to the west in contrast to the long tradition of Paradise descriptions and the mappae mundi where Paradise is always situated to the east. I call the Promised Land in the vernacular Voyage version a “pseudo-Paradise” despite the Christian elements, primarily because of its location and because Saint Brendan claims that he had been there.