I88s.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



251 



Literature. Travels and Personal Notes. 



COMMUNICATIONS. 



OUR LADY'S GARDEN. 

 BY R. A. OAKES. 



In his letter to Apollinaris, Pliny the younger 

 gives us a charming description of the garden 

 surrounding his villa in Tuscany. From it we 

 derive nearly all the knowledge we have of the 

 Roman viridarium. We see " the trees topiaried 

 in every conceivable form, the tall planes enjoying 

 a borrowed verdure from the ivies twining around 

 their trunks, and in their inner walks we are 

 greeted with the perfume of roses." For the next 

 fifteen centuries we get unsatisfactory glimpses of 

 rural occupation, either in field or garden. In 

 mediaeval romances the garden is frequently 

 painted — but always as the background for tender 

 lovers, or for social intercourse and out-door re- 

 creations. Birds innumerable flit to and fro in 

 these pleasure grounds, flowers burgeon and scent 

 the air, and fountains throw their sparkling waters 

 in the sunshine. In the " Roman de la Rose" one 

 of the most famous of these gardens is described. 

 Chaucer never tires of dwelling on the " beautt^ of 

 the gardyn." But beyond the songs of birds and 

 the scent of flowers, we know little of these earthly 

 Paradises. 



During the long night following the extinction 

 of Roman civilization, agriculture could success- 

 fully be pursued only on lands belonging to mon- 

 asteries. The husbandman who sowed could 

 never be sure of reaping the harvest, and the con- 

 dition of the adscripti gleboe was one of unmitigated 

 misery. The nobility and the abbots united in 

 laying extreme burdens upon him, though the 

 latter did not disdain to share his burdens. 

 Gervaise tells us that Thomas u Becket, even after 

 he was Archbishop of Canterbury, used to go into 

 the fields with the monks, and assist them in 

 making hay and reaping grain ; and from Bede 

 we learn that Easterwin, abbot of Weremouth, 

 guided the plow, winnowed grain, and forged in- 

 struments of husbandry on the anvil. 



In his monogram on "English Plant Names," 



Professor Earle discovers traces of an old ac- 

 quaintance with latin herb lore, and from it infers 

 that the knowledge of Roman botany and medicine 

 came into England with the Roman missionaries, 

 and formed a natural accompaniment to their 

 religious instruction. During the earlier centuries, 

 the knowledge of the therapeutics was confined 

 almost wholly to the monks ; and in the capacity 

 of surgeons they attended the Crusaders in their 

 attempts to rescue the Holy Land from the hands 

 of the infidels. To prayer, holy water, pilgrim- 

 ages, touching of relics and other faith cures, they 

 added a knowledge of the medicinal properties of 

 plants. But while the flowers of the field entered 

 into the monkish materia medica, the Fathers 

 made strenuous efforts to keep them from en- 

 tering into the religious worship of the Church. 



In the ceremonial worship of the gods, flowers 

 and trees, from remotest times, have played a 

 prominent part. In the epopee of Izdhubar, Ea- 

 bani consulted trees for oracles. From the 

 Bundahis we learn " that every single flower is 

 appropriate to an angel ;" that '• the myrtle and 

 jasmine are .Auharmazd's own." Flowers strew 

 the pages of the Hindu epics ; the Greeks and 

 Romans used ihem profusely as religious offerings, 

 while to the Scandinavian gods whole parterres 

 of bloom were dictated. From their universal use 

 in pagan worship, the Fathers forbade their en- 

 tering into the service of Christ. St. Ambrose, in 

 his funeral oration on Valentinian, says : " I will 

 not sprinkle his grave with flowers, but pour into 

 his spirit the odor of Christ." Tertullian says 

 "that a Christian should rather suffer martyrdom 

 than wear a garland," and in his work " De Idola- 

 tria," he " calls on the name of God to witness 

 that he knew a person who had been grievously 

 chastised in a vision, because a servant, though 

 without his knowledge ; had crowned his door 

 with flowers on a day of pubUc joy." Clement of 

 Alexandria tells us that is " not suitable to fill the 

 wanton hair with rose leaves, or violets, or lilies, 

 or other such blossoms." 



But the instinctive love of flowers was too 

 strong for priestly interdiction, and they soon took 

 their appropriate place in religious observance. 



