[De contemptu mundi]

alive. Nor is this to be wondered at concerning paradise, since we know there is an island in Ireland, in which the bodies of the dead do not rot. And another, in which, as historians say, men cannot die, but it is necessary that at their final old age they be carried out of the island. Concerning paradise and its location, there was an opinion among the gentiles, as Pliny says, where he speaks of the Fortunate Isles, of which Isidore also speaks in book 15. Among which there is one that produces almost all goods, where the soil spontaneously creates all fruits, where on the ridges of the hills trees are always clothed in the greenness of leaves and the sweetness of fruits, where due to the strength of the herbs, the harvest and vegetables grow, where the error of the gentiles and the secular songs of the poets, because of the fertility of the soil, thought those same islands to be paradise. Which is indeed erroneous to posit, since the aforementioned Fortunate Isles are located in the west opposite the coast of Mauritania, placed in the ocean, as Isidore says in book 15. Paradise, however, is in the east on a most high mountain, from whose summit falling waters make a huge lake. In their fall they make so much noise and crashing, that all the inhabitants born near the aforementioned lake are deaf, due to the excessive sound or crash, which destroys the sense of hearing in the young