Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden


Book Description

This title looks at the important and ever-shifting role of medicinal plants in medieval science, art, culture, and thought, both in the Latin Western medical tradition and in Byzantine and medieval Arabic medicine.




Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden


Book Description

Fresh examinations of the role of medicinal plants in medieval thought and practice and how they contributed to broader ideas concerning the body, religion and identity. The important and ever-shifting role of medicinal plants in medieval science, art, culture, and thought, both in the Latin Western medical tradition and in Byzantine and medieval Arabic medicine, is the focus of this new collection. Following a general introduction and a background chapter on Late Antique and medieval theories of wellness and therapy, in-depth essays treat such wide-ranging topics as medicine and astrology, charms and magical remedies, herbal glossaries, illuminated medical manuscripts, women's reproductive medicine, dietary cooking, gardens in social and political context, and recreated medieval gardens. They make a significant contribution to our understanding ofthe place of medicinal plants in medieval thought and practice, and thus lead to a greater appreciation of how medieval theories and therapies from diverse places developed in continuously evolving and cross-pollinating strands, and, in turn, how they contributed to broader ideas concerning the body, religion, identity, and the human relationship with the natural world. Contributors: MARIA AMALIA D'ARONCO, PETER DENDLE, EXPIRACION GARCIA SANCHEZ, PETER MURRAY JONES, GEORGE R. KEISER, DEIRDRE LARKIN, MARIJANE OSBORN, PHILIP G. RUSCHE, TERENCE SCULLY, ALAIN TOUWAIDE, LINDA EHRSAM VOIGTS




Medieval Gardens


Book Description

From the medieval period through to the outbreak of the First World War. Beautifully illustrated in full colour, these attractive volumes provide an insight into the garden fashions of different periods and how garden design was influenced by the social and economic developments of the time. The focus is on the outdoor spaces of the common people as well as those of the well-to-do, and an informative section covers popular plants, new botanical introductions, developments in garden equipment and furniture, and influential gardeners of each period. This is followed by a simple guide to recreating particular features for yourself, to evoke the feel of a particular period. Medieval Gardens charts the evolution of our earliest gardens, from the rows of culinary and medicinal herbs tended by monks, to the earliest secular pleasure gardens, enclosed within castle walls. These were spaces for private conversations and outdoor games, often with raised beds and turf seats and perhaps a mound for surveying the countryside beyond. Still enclosed within wall were the 'pleasure parks' that covered many acres of land.




Brother Cadfael's Herb Garden


Book Description

More than 140 color illustrations accompany this one-year visit with a fictional twelfth-century monk, following him on his rounds as Shrewsbury's apothecary and healer, and teach readers about hundreds of herbs and their remedial powers.




Hildegard's Healing Plants


Book Description

Medieval saint, mystic, healer, and visionary-Hildegard von Bingen has made a comeback. She is now popular in natural healing circles, in medieval and women's studies, and among those interested in investing the everyday with the spiritual. Hildegard's Healing Plants is a gift version and new translation of the 'Plant' section of Physica, Hildegard's classic work on health and healing. Hildegard comments on 230 plants and grains-most of which are still grown in home gardens and sold at local health food stores. In one of many entries on women's health, Hildegard writes, 'Also if a pregnant woman labors much in childbirth, let someone cook pleasant herbs, such as fennel and assurum, in water with fear and great moderation, squeeze out the water, and place them while they are warm around her thighs and back, tied gently with a piece of cloth, so that her pain and her closed womb is opened more pleasantly and easily.' Whether read for the sheer enjoyment of Hildegard's earthy, intelligent voice ("Let a man who has an overabundance of lust in his loins cook wild lettuce in water and pour it over himself in a sauna") or for her encyclopedic and often still relevant understanding of natural health, Hildegard's Healing Plants is a treasure for gardeners, natural healing enthusiasts, and Hildegard fans everywhere. Hildegard's Healing Plants includes 230 plants and grains-most of which are still grown in home gardens and sold at local health food stores.




The Medieval and Early Modern Garden in Britain


Book Description

What was a "garden" in medieval and early modern British culture and how was it imagined? How did it change as Europe opened up to the wider world from the 16th century onwards? In a series of fresh approaches to these questions, the contributors offer chapters that identify and discuss newly-discovered pre-modern garden spaces in archaeology and archival sources, recognize a gendered language of the garden in fictional descriptions ("fictional" here being taken to mean any written text, regardless of its purpose), and offer new analysis of the uses to which gardens - real and imagined - might be put. Chapters investigate the definitions, forms and functions of physical gardens; explore how the material space of the garden was gendered as a secluded space for women, and as a place of recreation; examine the centrality of garden imagery in medieval Christian culture; and trace the development of garden motifs in the literary and artistic imagination to convey the sense of enclosure, transformation and release. The book uniquely underlines the current environmental "turn" in the humanities, and increasingly recognizes the value of exploring human interaction with the landscapes of the past as a route to health and well-being in the present.




Therapeutic Landscapes


Book Description

This comprehensive and authoritative guide offers an evidence-based overview of healing gardens and therapeutic landscapes from planning to post-occupancy evaluation. It provides general guidelines for designers and other stakeholders in a variety of projects, as well as patient-specific guidelines covering twelve categories ranging from burn patients, psychiatric patients, to hospice and Alzheimer's patients, among others. Sections on participatory design and funding offer valuable guidance to the entire team, not just designers, while a planting and maintenance chapter gives critical information to ensure that safety, longevity, and budgetary concerns are addressed.




A Cultural History of Gardens in the Medieval Age


Book Description

The Middle Ages was a time of great upheaval - the period between the seventh and fourteenth centuries saw great social, political and economic change. The radically distinct cultures of the Christian West, Byzantium, Persian-influenced Islam, and al-Andalus resulted in different responses to the garden arts of antiquity and different attitudes to the natural world and its artful manipulation. Yet these cultures interacted and communicated, trading plants, myths and texts. By the fifteenth century the garden as a cultural phenomenon was immensely sophisticated and a vital element in the way society saw itself and its relation to nature. A Cultural History of Gardens in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period with essays on issues of design, types of gardens, planting, use and reception, issues of meaning, verbal and visual representation of gardens, and the relationship of gardens to the larger landscape.




The Medieval Garden


Book Description

Combining her historical knowledge with practical experience of recreating medieval gardens in various sites in England, Landsberg explains how she designed Queen Eleanor's garden at Winchester and Brother Cadfael's physic garden at Shrewsbury.




Hildegard's Healing Plants


Book Description

This is a completely new translation of the PlantÓ section of Physica,Ó Hildegard of Bingen's classic 12th-century work on health & healing. Saint Hildegard writes on 230 plants & grains -- most of which are still grown in home gardens & sold at local health food stores. Her understanding of the balancing of hot & cold humorsÓ reflects a strong affinity with Asian medical approaches, now in the mainstream. Anyone interested in natural healing will be intrigued by the deep practical sense behind her theories, grounded in the natural world, many of which prove effective today. A treasure for gardeners, natural healing enthusiasts, & Hildegard fans everywhere. Bruce Hozeski, founder of Hildegard studies in the U.S., has translated her work.