The Making of a Medieval Monastic ‘Garden’ - Zoe Zimmer
Talk to any avid gardener, and you’ll often hear that the time spent tending to their plants brings a sense of grounding and mindfulness. Even those who do not possess a green thumb can find peace and calm simply by wandering through a garden. Many of my peers seek the sense of tranquillity that can be found in nature as a break from the stresses of university life, retreating to places like the St Andrews Botanic Garden or the Heritage Museum & Gardens to briefly escape their deadlines (I know I have). The meditative qualities of gardens and gardening are no new phenomenon, and in the Middle Ages sometimes played a meaningful part in monastic spirituality.
Last term while a StARIS intern I was responsible for compiling a bibliography of relevant sources for a new Honours Art History module, ‘The Medieval Garden’. As an undergraduate student completing a joint degree in both Art History and Medieval History, I naturally jumped at the opportunity to work on a project that combined these two interests, as well as my appreciation for gardening. In my research I primarily focused on medieval monastic gardening, looking at the ways in which religious communities in the Middle Ages sustained themselves and practiced spirituality through their horticultural practices. One common theme in this research is the hortus conclusus, a type of garden found in monastic settings and depicted in medieval art.
Concepts of the enclosed garden, or hortus conclusus, can be traced back to biblical sources. In the biblical poem the Song of Songs, the bride is symbolized as a garden: ‘A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a garden locked, a fountain sealed’ (4:12). Commentators on the Song of Songs in the Middle Ages interpreted this passage as referring to the virginity of Mary, with the sealed spring and enclosed garden becoming iconographic symbols of her purity and chastity.[i] In medieval art, the Virgin Mary herself became emblematic of an enclosed garden. Annunciation scenes of the fifteenth century, in particular, depicted Mary located in a walled garden often in proximity to a sealed fountain.
Zanobi Strozzi (1412-1468), The Annunciation, 1440-5, egg tempera on wood, 104.5 x 142 cm, The National Gallery London.
Beyond iconographic symbolism in art and literature, walled gardens or yards were physical spaces often featured in medieval monasteries and hospitals. The enclosure of many medieval monastic gardens reiterated the larger separation of monastic life from the general, uncloistered public.[ii] In a closed monastic community isolated from the outside world and its green spaces, gardens would have been an important connection to nature for medieval cloistered monks and nuns.[iii] As physical reconstructions that mimicked the paradise of the Garden of Eden, bounded garden spaces offered a contemplative location for the sick and religious. Several healing plants cultivated in medieval gardens were named after the Virgin Mary as well as other saints, encouraging meditation for visitors as they reflected on their namesakes.[iv]
One of the most interesting and unique manifestations of the hortus conclusus that I came across in my research were the ‘Enclosed Garden’ mixed media cabinet sculptures produced at female monasteries in the low countries in the Late Middle Ages. These works are a fascinating intersection of art, spirituality, and nature. Seven surviving sixteenth-century Enclosed Gardens from the Augustinian Monastery at Mechelen take the virtuous themes that permeate physical hortus conclusus spaces and ennoble them through artistic representation. Like other hortus conclusus examples, the Mechelen ‘Gardens’ represent purity, virginity, and paradise.[v] Now permanently exhibited in the Court of Busleyden in Mechelen, these works were previously kept in their original location and context at the monastery—typically in the nuns’ cells—until the late-twentieth century.[vi]
Enclosed Garden 2: Saint Elisabeth, Saint Ursula, and Saint Catherine Mechelen, c. 1524-1530, 134 x 188.5 x 22.2 cm, Museum Hof van Busleyden – Collection Our Lady Hospital Sisters, inv. GHZ BH002.
The sisters of Mechelen actively engaged with nature and gardening in the creation of the Enclosed Garden cabinets, both through their choice of materials and in their artistic interpretation of natural elements for decorative effect. The sculptures incorporate a variety of objects, between 200-400 in each, set in a highly decorated wooden box much like a retable.[vii] These objects included central polychrome saintly figures known as Poupées de Malines (‘Dolls of Mechelen’), smaller pipe-clay figures, relics, and meticulously rendered silk-fabric depictions of flowers and fruit.[viii] Roses and lilies, both Marian symbols, are some of the most common flowers portrayed.[ix] The monastery at Mechelen itself contained two actual gardens inside of its walls where fruits, flowers, herbs, and more were cultivated by the sisters. In their mixed-media art the nuns utilised raw materials such as seeds, fruit stones, and wood taken from the natural world around them, while the bases of the sculptures were created from peat.[x] Horticulture therefore played a key role in feminine spirituality at Mechelen, central to religious art-making, as these domestic altars served as meditations on the spiritual significance of the hortus conclusus.
Detail of Enclosed Garden 2 Flowers (Photo: Lieve Watteeuw).
The complex sculptures produced at the Augustinian Monastery at Mechelen in the sixteenth century embodied the spiritual experience of entering an enclosed garden, serving as a tool in pious reflection for the sisters as they prayed. The intense labour involved in the meticulous crafting of the cabinets would have also provided a conduit for religious contemplation, exemplifying material culture as a form of devotional practice.[xi] The acts of both creating and gazing upon the Enclosed Gardens brought the viewer into an experience of righteous viewing rooted in the tradition of monastic gardening. The Enclosed Gardens of Mechelen are just one example of the rich history of the confluence of medieval artistic, religious, and gardening practices—a history I thoroughly enjoyed exploring during my internship.
Bibliography
Anaf, Willemien, Marina Van Bos, Marjolijn Debulpaep, William Wei, Luc
Schillemans, and Tom Carton. "The Impact of Vibrations on Fragile
Historical Mixed-Media Objects." Estudos de Conservação e Restauro, no. 9
(2018): 64-75.
Baert, Barbara. "Art and Mysticism as Horticulture: Late Medieval Enclosed Gardens of
the Low Countries in an Interdisciplinary Perspective." In Art and
Mysticism: Interfaces in the Medieval and Modern Periods, edited by Helen
Appleton and Louise Nelstrop, 104-27. New York: Routledge, 2018.
Bayard, Tania. Sweet Herbs and Dry Flowers: Medieval Gardens and the Gardens of
the Cloisters. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985.
Kiser, Lisa J. "The Garden of St. Francis: Plants, Landscape, and Economy in
Thirteenth-Century Italy." Environmental History 8, no. 2 (2003): 229-45.
McAvoy, Liz Herbert. The Enclosed Garden and the Medieval Religious Imaginary.
N.p.: Boydell & Brewer, 2021.
Ruymann, Mallory A. "Nuns as Gardeners: Using and Making Enclosed Gardens."
Athanor 35 (2017): 42-47.
Watteeuw, Lieve. "Materials and Materiality: Unravelling the Enclosed Gardens of
Mechelen." In Enclosed Gardens of Mechelen: Late Medieval Paradise Gardens
Revealed, edited by Lieve Watteeuw and Hannah Iterbeke, 93-115.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018.
Winston-Allen, Anne. "Gardens of Heavenly and Earthly Delight: Medieval Gardens
of the Imagination." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 99, no. 1 (1998): 83-92.
[i] Anne Winston-Allen, "Gardens of Heavenly and Earthly Delight: Medieval Gardens of the Imagination," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 99, no. 1 (1998): 84.
[ii] Lisa J. Kiser, "The Garden of St. Francis: Plants, Landscape, and Economy in Thirteenth-Century Italy," Environmental History 8, no. 2 (2003): 235.
[iii] Tania Bayard, Sweet Herbs and Dry Flowers: Medieval Gardens and the Gardens of the Cloisters (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985), 40.
[iv] Liz Herbert McAvoy, "The Medieval Hortus conclusus: Revisiting the Pleasure Garden," Medieval Feminist Forum 50, no. 1 (2014): 8.
[v] Barbara Baert, "Art and Mysticism as Horticulture: Late Medieval Enclosed Gardens of the Low Countries in an Interdisciplinary Perspective," in Art and Mysticism: Interfaces in the Medieval and Modern Periods, ed. Helen Appleton and Louise Nelstrop (New York: Routledge, 2018), 106.
[vi] Willemien Anaf et al., "The Impact of Vibrations on Fragile Historical Mixed-Media Objects," Estudos de Conservação e Restauro, no. 9 (2018): 64; Lieve Watteeuw, "Materials and Materiality: Unravelling the Enclosed Gardens of Mechelen," in Enclosed Gardens of Mechelen: Late Medieval Paradise Gardens Revealed, ed. Lieve Watteeuw and Hannah Iterbeke (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 93.
[vii] Watteeuw, "Materials and Materiality," 93.
[viii] Baert, "Art and Mysticism," 104.
[ix] Baert, "Art and Mysticism," 104; Ruymann, "Nuns as Gardeners," 35.
[x] Watteeuw, "Materials and Materiality," 93, 102.
[xi] Ruymann, "Nuns as Gardeners," 43.
