Door to The Monastery Garden

Door to The Monastery Garden

St Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine monastic order, more than any man, inspired the cloister life of the sixth century in Western Europe. He at once ordered that “ all the necessaries “ for the support of monks should be supplied within the walls, and among these “necessaries” water and gardens stood in the first rank: of course these gardens were for herbs and vegetables. We can only guess how far the establishments founded by St. Benedict himself, and especially the mother-cloister, were able to comply with his demands. The mention of a tower, and a portico, where St. Benedict lived with his pupils, makes us think of pictures of a Roman villa; but in any case the Benedictines, whose rule enjoined work in the garden, were the men who handed down the practice of horticulture right through the Middle Ages.

Those Orders which were not influenced by the Benedictine Rule, and forbade the monks to do farm work, still seem to have thought a garden indispensable. The Spaniard Isidorus in his Rule makes a special point of having a garden within the cloister, attached to the wall and entered by the back door, so that the monks should be able to work there and not have occasion to go outside. There was a certain tradition in the old Roman provinces about the cultivation of the choicer kinds of fruit, and it is hard to say how long it survived the storms of the Middle Ages, whether the monks are to be connected with this tradition, or if they started afresh on their own account, as is doubtless what did actually happen in the case of the German nations farther east. It is well worth noting that in Norway even to this day none but the finest and choicest fruit-trees are found on the site of an old monastery.