Nature in Ambrose of Milan’s The Paradise: Antecedents in Antiquity and Projections in Hispanic Context

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to run over some literary expressions showing the perception and signification of nature and its elements in a very scattered topic from Antiquity and Middle Ages: Paradise. The analysis focuses on Paradise, first exegetical treatise composed by Ambrose of Milan in the 4th century, but with a wide perspective which allows connecting that work with its antecedents in Hebrew and Judaeo-Hellenistic scopes and its projections in Christian medieval Spanish production, specifically the Milagros de Nuestra Señora. Undoubtedly, the motive and the thematic linked with it are not given out in this work, but the examination enlightens the tracks of continuity from the Ancient to the Medieval world on certain matrices of thought and sense.