The Person and the Place—V: Herrad and Her Garden of Delights

Extract

Commenting on two famous medieval encyclopedias, the Liber Floridus of Lambert of Saint Omer, and the Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, Carl Nordenfalk observes how these authors ‘combine a broad universal vision with a special interest in their home surroundings’. In Herrad's case this is certainly most striking. Her vision could hardly be broader (it is even comparable to Saint Hildegard's), yet the picture which she paints of Hohenburg, the shrine of St Odile where she was abbess, leaves no doubt about the central point of her vast twelth-century universe. The monastery stands on a green mound, without perspective, decorated by three enlarged sprigs of clubmoss for trees. The nuns are grouped in a harmonious ensemble of purple, green, blue and black gowns, with brown cloaks. The congregatio religiosa ... in dei servido in Hohenburc caritative adunata, is Herrad's first preoccupation, and if, for caritative, we are meant to read cantative, as one authority suggests, the picture is even more charming.