The Paradise of Fools is a literary and historical topic and theme found in many Christian works.
[2] Milton's satirical allegory in turn was inspired by Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516); Samuel Johnson, in Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, stated that the allegory "disgraced" Milton's epic.
[3] The ancestry of Milton's Paradise of Fools includes Canto XXXIV of Orlando and Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
As John Wooten argued, that canto in Orlando contains a summarizing critique of Dante's entire Comedy—a descent into Hell, followed by an ascent to a mountain top (Dante's Earthly Paradise) and a flight to the Moon: "with the greatest ironic debunking, the moon ... is Ariosto's allegorical substitute for the complex theology and metaphysics of Dante's Paradiso".
[4] In turn, Milton's Paradise of Fools builds on Ariosto's mock version of Dante's Comedy, but adds a specifically anti-Catholic aspect by making fun of hermits, friars, Dominicans, Franciscans—those equipped with "Reliques, Beads, / Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls".