HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 327 



monks alone preserved the arts of culture as of horticulture ; in 

 the fourth century St Jerome describes St Anthony's mountain 

 garden ; and Castell points out how several early monasteries and 

 abbeys follow the lines and distribution of Roman villas — courts 

 surrounded with porticoes, and containing basins with fountains — 

 terraces upon arcades and garden oratories. 



The Abbey of Icolmhill was founded in the Hebrides between 

 500 and 600 A.D., and from works like the ' Polypticon ' of the 

 Abbot Irminon, written between 800 and 900 a.d., we know that 

 gardens, orchards and arboreta were attached to the monasteries 

 of St Remy, St Bertin and Corbie, and consisted of a plot of 

 ground enclosed by a wall, a hedge or trellis, and devoted to the 

 cultivation of vegetables, fruits, herbs and roots. 



Miss Amherst also recites the garden accounts of Norwich Priory 

 and Abingdon Abbey, and gives a plan of Bicester Priory.^ 



In the ' Ordinatio Hortorum ' of the Abbey of Corbie, the 

 garden is divided into four parts, and directions are given for 

 its weeding, by the Hortulan friar sending in the ' Sarculatores ' 

 or hoers, to cleanse the arecc and plantationesP' 



The plan of the kitchen and fruit garden of the Abbey of St 

 Gall (on the Lake of Constance) by a monk of the ninth 

 century, bald and uninteresting as it looks, contains much of the 

 garden and other history of its time, bringing us into touch with 

 Charlemagne, who himself was a constant and popular visitor 

 here, and known as ' Noster Carolus ' amongst the monks. 



The plan is supposed to be by Abbot Eginhardus, Prefect of 

 the Royal Buildings under Charlemagne, whose daughter Imma 

 he had married, and after her death adopted a monastic life. 



The kitchen garden is a parallelogram of eighteen beds, on 

 each of which is written in Latin the name of the vegetable it 

 contains, all of which (with the exception of carrots) are enumer- 



^ * History of English Gardening.' 



^ The word Hortus, derived perhaps from x^pTos, as it were * Cortis ' or 

 * Curtis,' means a garden in the Middle Ages as well as with the Latins. In 

 the grounds of the Abbey of Prum^ the gardens were divided into Arece and 

 Agri^ and into Lecti. (M. B. Gu^rard, 'Commentary on the Polyptikon.') 



