io,
cap. xiii. The work was written about 1211. For John of San Germiniano,
see his Summa de Exemplis, lib. ix, cap. 43. For the Egyptian
Trinitarian views, see Sharpe, History of Egypt, vol. i, pp. 94, 102.

From this old conception of the universe as a sort of house, with heaven
as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor, flowed important
theological ideas into heathen, Jewish, and Christian mythologies.
Common to them all are legends regarding attempts of mortals to invade
the upper apartment from the lower. Of such are the Greek legends of
the Aloidae, who sought to reach heaven by piling up mountains, and were
cast down; the Chaldean and Hebrew legends of the wicked who at Babel
sought to build "a tower whose top may reach heaven," which Jehovah
went down from heaven to see, and which he brought to naught by the
"confusion of tongues"; the Hindu legend of the tree which sought to
grow into heaven and which Brahma blasted; and the Mexican legend of the
giants who sought to reach heaven by building the Pyramid of Cholula,
and who were overthrown by fire from above.

Myths having this geographical idea as their germ developed in
luxuriance through thousands of years. Ascensions to heaven and descents
from it, "translations," "assumptions," "annunciations," mortals "caught
up" into it and returning, angels flying between it and the earth,
thunderbolts hurled down from it, mighty winds issuing from its corners,
voices speaking from the upper floor to men on the lower, temporary
openings of the floor of heaven to reveal the blessedness of the good,
"signs and wonders" hung out from it to warn the wicked, interventions
of every kind--from the heathen gods coming down on every sort of
errand, and Jehovah coming down to walk in Eden in the cool of the day,
to St. Mark swooping down into the market-place of Venice to break the
shackles of a slave--all these are but features in a vast evolution of
myths arising largely from this geographical germ.

Nor did this evolution end here. Naturally, in this view of things, if
heaven was a loft, hell was a cellar; and if there were ascensions
into one, there were descents into the other. Hell being so near,
interferences by its occupants with the dwellers of the earth just above
were constant, and form a vast chapter in medieval literature. Dante
made this conception of the location of hell still more vivid, and we
find some forms of it serious barriers to geographical i