ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the Judaic-Christian development of the idea of paradise, beginning with the three temples of Jerusalem. Christian theology initially placed little importance on the representational value of architecture, and Augustin, for one, considered the City of God to be far more important than the earthly city. The monastic cloister, which evolved in his lifetime, was generally referred to as a paradise, although its spiritual ideal would not be realized until the Cistercian monasteries at Fontenay and Thoronet. The artistic instincts of Constantine in his new city proved to be the exception, as we find in his grandest monument to Christianity, the Hagia Sophia. Nevertheless, Byzantium would enjoy achieve its greatest heights two centuries later in Visigoth Ravenna, albeit at a smaller scale. It would take another five hundred years for Europe to aspire toward the immaterial “higher world” in building, most expressly with Notre-Dame-de-Chartres.
