The truth is, the dishes associated with Provence’s Thirteen Desserts abound with religious symbolism. Take the Four Beggars, or Les Quatre Mendiants, which symbolize something that we in the secular West have basically lost, a sense of awe and fear about the natural world and all that is in it. The Thirteen Desserts likely represented…
Tag: Monks
Weihenstephan, the Oldest Brewery in the World (?)
Make that the oldest brewery still standing (and producing) in the world, never mind that the oldest brewery is actually a smashed clay pot [no pun intended] someplace yet to be dug up by an intrepid and curious archaeologist. Given my deep interest in fermentation, as well as the impact of monks and monasteries on…
The Random Herbalist: The Church as Farmer
The Catholic Church influenced many things, even (especially?) agriculture, as this passage from History of the English Landed Interest: Its Customs, Laws, and Agriculture, by Russell Montague Garnier (1908) 2nd. ed, vol. 1, implies. The monastery libraries also held much treasure, opening up the monks to the wonders of old knowledge and enabling them to…
The Random Herbalist: Charlemagne, St. Gall, and the History of Medicine
The history of medicine, a fascinating subject, shows how people began to understand more and more about the corporeal body. Herbs played a big role in the evolution of this understanding, and medieval monasteries encapsulated this knowledge: The curriculum of these cathedral schools embraced originally the Trivium, (arithmetic, grammar, music), and the Quadrivium (dialectics, rhetoric,…
Idylls of Cuisine #24
[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]
The Random Herbalist: Libraries and Monastic Gardens
Another reason why the Internet is so fantastic — here is a catalog of the manuscripts available in the monastery at St. Gall in Switzerland. (You need to be able to read German, or at least have a good dictionary at hand!) In 1875, the Catholic Administration (Katholische Konfessionsteil) of the Canton of St. Gall…
The Random Herbalist: Monks and Plant Migration
Along with dill, which we’ve briefly brushed by, other plants also traveled with the monks as they made their way across Europe: To the monks, who in their way were great gardeners, we are indebted for the introduction of several plants ; and since in many cases the ancient monastery has disappeared, the flowers which…
The Random Herbalist: The Roman Influence on Monastic Gardens
With this post, I celebrate a year of writing “Gherkins & Tomatoes!” Thank you so much to everyone who visits the blog. I look forward to the coming year! The Romans wielded profound influence on the architecture and organization of monasteries … and, hence, on us … centuries later. According to Viollet-le-Duc : —* ”…
The Random Herbalist: St. Gall, A Model Garden Plan?
[NOTE: I’d like to thank the readers of Gherkins & Tomatoes for their patience this summer — in the last few weeks I’ve moved from a house where I’ve lived for fourteen years, my favorite cat died, and I’ve been writing under deadline for an article for an encyclopedia as well as for a local…
