Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Gardens

290

Not all vegetables fell neatly into these main categories. In recipes and

garden plans, we also read of cucumbers, celery, and melons. There were

many edible weeds that could grow around the vegetables, and they were

picked to go into stews and pottages: dandelion, borage, purslane, chick-

weed, and plantain. Mallow was considered a vegetable, and some edible

ﬂ owers like columbine found their way into salads and stews.

Perennial herbs and ﬂ owers were a large part of kitchen and herb gar-

dens. Mint is a perennial, as are savory, sage, fennel, and pennyroyal. Herbs

grown for aroma and seasoning included basil, dill, marjoram, anise, and

savory. Hyssop and tansy were bitter ﬂ avors used in pickles, meat pies, and

omelets. Horseradish provided very strong ﬂ avor, and thyme, a cooking

herb, was also a symbol of courage that could go into bouquets. Chives

provided strong ﬂ avoring and also had pretty purple ﬂ owers. Violets, valued

for their sweet smell, could go into salads and desserts. Primroses and pinks

were also edible and used for ﬂ avor. Anise and caraway seeds were used as

ﬂ avoring in simple candies with honey. Coriander seeds were another spice

that could be homegrown and used to ﬂ avor wine and heal fever.

Medieval gardens did not distinguish clearly between decorative ﬂ ow-

ers and practical herbs. In fact, nearly all ﬂ owers had practical purposes.

Iris roots made ink, and the iris ﬂ ower’s juice could either remove spots

from cloth or create blue dyes. Crocus pollen was saffron, a bright yel-

low food coloring. Violets, roses, and gillyﬂ owers (similar to carnations)

were all used for ﬂ avoring. Marigold, named for the Virgin Mary, could be

steeped in hot water for a drink, as could chamomile and horehound. Roses

provided oil and rose sugar (roses boiled in sugar water), but their fruit,

the rose hip, was considered an edible fruit. Rose oil helped headaches. Not

only did decorative ﬂ owers have uses, but useful herbs often had beautiful

ﬂ owers. Although an inﬁ rmary garden specialized in the most useful herbs,

every garden had a display of colorful ﬂ owers at all seasons, and every gar-

den contained useful herbs.

The queen of ﬂ owers was the rose, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Red

roses symbolized the blood of Jesus and of other martyrs, while white roses

symbolized Mary’s purity. Whole gardens of roses, dedicated to Mary, were

called rosaries. Prayer beads could be made from compressed rose petals,

and these beads were known as rosary beads. Although the direct link be-

tween roses and beads was lost after coral rosary beads became more com-

mon, they began as a simple product of the ﬂ ower garden. Lilies honored

Mary, too, and were always part of a monastic garden for decorating the

church on holidays. The white Madonna Lily was believed to help with

snake bite and leprosy.

Lavender, another near-universal ﬂ ower, was used in scenting drying

clothes, strewing on ﬂ oors, and making medicinal oil. Chamomile was a

groundcover plant that could be used for soothing teas or to scent clothes.

Gardens

291

Periwinkle, another groundcover ﬂ ower, helped with toothache. Wild

strawberries made a juice to help with throat ulcers. Marjoram and elecam-

pane, two other medicinal ﬂ owers, were used to promote sleep and heal

wounds. Elecampane’s roots could be boiled and mashed to make a sweet

dessert, and they also made an effective medicine against whooping cough

and asthma (it is still used in modern times). Feverfew was a perennial with

small white ﬂ owers that could be used as a painkiller. Lily of the valley’s

delicate white bells, soaked in wine, made a remedy against stroke.

Foxglove’s pink and white ﬂ owers on a tall stem were beautiful in a gar-

den. It also made a cleansing emetic (later, its best use in regulating heart

rate was discovered). Saint John’s Wort, which bears pretty yellow ﬂ owers,

could be used in a salve of oil, wine, and turpentine. It aided in the healing

of serious wounds and infections. The ﬂ owers also were thought to drive

away evil spirits, and they were more potent if picked on the eve of Saint

John’s Day in midsummer. Peony was another colorful ﬂ ower whose seeds

could ﬂ avor food or help a woman go into labor. Its root was believed to

help with palsy and epilepsy. Celandine’s mass of yellow ﬂ owers yields a

medicine similar to opium, and the opium poppy itself was also grown in

gardens. Betony produced a cluster of purple blossoms and was considered

a good herb for nearly every complaint.

Some herbs were grown primarily for their use as medicine but did not

produce showy ﬂ owers. Comfrey was used as a salve for wounds, and it has

been shown to contain allantoin, which promotes the growth of new tis-

sue below the skin. It was sometimes called boneset or knitbone. Fennel’s

leaves were chewed to help with digestive problems; agrimony made tea.

Mint was not only a good seasoning, but it also helped heal dog bites. Yar-

row helped stop bleeding, and rue was a disinfectant for cleaning. Penny-

royal tea helped with colds and nausea; sage improved the nerves. One of

the greatest health problems in the Middle Ages was the parasite; people

used wormwood and hops to kill intestinal worms. Wormwood must have

been used cautiously, in small amounts, because it can produce hallucina-

tions. Finally, aconite, known as monk’s hood or wolfbane, was a poisonous

herb used as a painkilling salve.

Black hellebore ﬂ owered in the winter, which was considered lucky; it

was known also as the Christmas rose. Peasants thought it warded off evil

spirits and often grew it outside cottages; it also was a purgative since it was

mildly poisonous. Mistletoe, holly, and ivy had fall berries that remained on

the plant through the winter. Their unusually hardy fruitfulness suggested

a strong power of natural magic, and their splash of color made them tra-

ditional Christmas decorations. It was considered unlucky to cut them at

other times.

Some ﬂ owers were from the woodlands and were grown in wildﬂ ower

meadows. One of the most famous depictions of medieval wildﬂ owers is

Gardens

292

the last of the Unicorn Tapestries. The tapestry is called a milleﬂ eurs type

because the background is densely covered with more than 100 kinds of

wildﬂ owers. These wildﬂ owers were not rigidly divided from garden ﬂ ow-

ers, and they were included in some gardens. In the spring, primroses, daf-

fodils, violets, and cowslips are among the ﬁ rst to bloom. The Jerusalem

cowslip was also called lungwort and was dedicated to Mary, symbolizing

her tears. Its broad spotted leaves looked like diseased lungs, so it was used

as medicine for lung disease. Ordinary cowslip ﬂ owers could be used to

make wine. Woodruff was a spring wildﬂ ower used for scenting mattresses

and strewing on ﬂ oors. In spring, people could gather ﬂ owers for posies to

ward off the bad air of disease or for garlands for May Day. Wallﬂ owers,

violets, lilies of the valley, and rosemary were popular for posies, as were

daisies, lavender, cow parsley, and rocket. Daisies were used for the easiest

kind of ﬂ ower garland, the daisy chain.

Gardening Methods

Medieval gardeners knew the value of manure and vegetable waste. Sheep,

cattle, and horses provided valuable dung to enrich tired soil. Household-

ers who owned doves used dove dung on their gardens. Those who could

afford latrines with cesspits had them dug out every few years, and the ma-

nure was aged and used as fertilizer.

Gardens used raised beds when the soil was not deep enough or when it

needed to be well drained. In these cases, the sides of the raised bed were

outlined with stones or wattle and daub. Other gardens used beds that

were ﬂ ush with the surrounding grass and path. The size of a raised bed

depended on the gardener’s reaching distance; beds tended to be long and

only a few feet wide. Paths between planting beds were sand, gravel, turf,

or just trampled dirt. Gardeners may have kept furrows between plant beds

for easy irrigation. If the garden site were by a small stream, miniature dams

of earth, wood, or stone could let water into each furrow in turn.

Farmers used crop rotation, and gardeners knew that plants had to be

moved into different beds while some beds were left fallow. Some plants,

such as beets, required a full year to mature, while others, such as onions,

were ready to harvest within a few months. One easy way to rotate crops

in a garden was to leave the beet bed fallow for the summer while planting

beets in the former onion bed, and then spading the prior season’s fallow

beet bed for onions.

Some plants could be transplanted into containers and moved indoors

for the winter. Rosemary could be grown in a pot, as could bulb ﬂ owers

such as lilies. Some other ﬂ owers, like violets and gillyﬂ owers, could move

indoors. Aristocrats may have kept small citrus shrubs in pots as novelties,

even in the north.

Gardens

293

Nuisance insects were just as problematic then. Some herbs, like worm-

wood and rosemary, were used as mothballs for stored clothes, and penny-

royal was thought to repel ﬂ eas. There also may have been herbs thought

to keep insects out of gardens. To kill ants, sawdust was sprinkled on the

anthills. Cinders and ashes killed caterpillars.

Gardeners used nursery methods of starting seedlings in a sheltered place,

or rooting cuttings in water, and transplanting the young plants to larger

beds. They staked plants that needed shelter and support. Pruning vines

and grafting fruit trees were both skilled crafts. The most skilled gardeners

created new plant hybrids; during the Middle Ages, some fruits changed

appearance and size. Fruit trees and vines offered the greatest opportuni-

ties, but skilled gardeners also may have improved vegetables. Roses could

be grafted.

Gardening tools were simple, but they did exist. Spades were wooden

but had iron along the cutting edges. Mattocks and hoes chopped soil into

smaller pieces or dug trenches. Sickles and scythes cut grass. Gardeners also

used knives (particularly for grafting), axes and sharpened hooks for trim-

ming branches and weed roots. The medieval watering can was a pottery

jug with a set of holes in the bottom. Having ﬁ lled the top, the gardener

could walk along the planting beds and wave his jug to shower water on

the plants. To stop watering, he could tip the jug up with his thumb cover-

ing the ﬁ lling hole.

See also: Food, Medicine, Poison, Tapestry, Water.

A garden’s green lawn and smooth hedges did not happen by accident. Large

gardens required full-time gardeners, while smaller ones needed servants to include

weeding, watering, and trimming in their roster of duties. (The British Library/

StockphotoPro)

Glass

294

Further Reading

Bayard, Tania. Sweet Herbs and Sundry Flowers: Medieval Gardens and the Gardens

of the Cloisters. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997.

Dendle, Peter, and Alain Touwaide. Health and Healing from the Medieval Gar-

den. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2008.

Freeman, Margaret B. Herbs for the Medieval Household. New York: Metropolitan

Museum of Art, 1997.

Hopwood, Rosalind. Fountains and Water Features. Princes Risborough, UK:

Shire Publications, 2004.

Innes, Miranda, and Clay Perry. Medieval Flowers: The History of Medieval Flowers

and How to Grow Them Today. London: Kyle Cathie, 2002.

Jennings, Anne. Medieval Gardens. London: English Heritage, 2005.

Landsberg, Sylvia. The Medieval Garden. New York: Thames and Hudson,

1996.

McLean, Teresa. Medieval English Gardens. New York: Viking, 1981.

McLeod, Judith. In a Unicorn’s Garden: Recreating the Magic and Mystery of Me-

dieval Gardens. Sydney, Australia: Murdoch Books, 2008.

Reeves, Compton. Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1998.

Whiteman, Robin. Brother Cadfael’s Herb Garden: An Illustrated Companion to

Medieval Plants and Their Uses. New York: Bulﬁ nch, 1997.

Gems. See Jewelry

Glass

Glassmaking technique has been known since ancient times. There are cu-

neiform tablets discussing how to make glass, and glass artifacts in Egypt

date back to 1500

B.C. Glass is primarily made from melted sand, but the

silica in sand melts at a high temperature, higher than ordinary ﬁ re can

reach. The key secret of making glass is that soda lowers the melting point,

allowing glass to form. Lime or lead must also be added to make the glass

water-resistant. Early glass used naturally occurring natron, found in the

deserts of Egypt, as the source of soda. Much later, glassmakers discovered

that some ashes could also provide soda. Beech, a common tree in Western

Europe, made good soda ashes. Because the twigs were turned to ash in an

earthenware pot, it was called potash.

Glass blowing has also been known since ancient times. A chunk of mol-

ten glass is picked up at the end of a long metal pipe, and the craftsman

blows air into it to make it into a bubble. By heating it, spinning it, and

manipulating it with tools, he can shape it into a vessel. He can blow it in-

side a mold, removing the mold so that the ﬁ nished vessel has the molded

design on it. He can stretch or twist it and add pieces of hot glass, shaping

Glass

295

them into decorations or handles. The work must be done while the glass

is hot, so the glass blower works quickly next to a kiln.

Glass Vessels

Glassmaking technique during the Roman Empire had been sophisti-

cated, and, in the Mediterranean, the craft was uninterrupted by the fall of

the empire. Vessels found from northern Italy, Syria, and Constantinople

include both blown and cut-glass techniques, in a range of colors, both

clear and opaque. Wine goblets, perfume vials with glass stoppers, and vases

with handles continued to be made in Jerusalem, Cairo, and Constanti-

nople. Corinth may have been another glassmaking center for turning out

utilitarian cups, lamps, and bottles. Glass cubes of many colors, called tes-

serae, were used to make wall mosaics in Byzantine cities. Glassmakers also

made brightly colored glass beads that found their way to outposts of civi-

lization like England.

Glassmaking under the Merovingian Franks was simpler. Fewer colors

appear; the glass was mostly green. They did not make a wide range of ves-

sels but mostly turned out drinking glasses, known as beakers. One distinc-

tive sort had pieces of hot glass added to the outside and then pulled into

claw shapes. The claws were hollow and pointed downward, like bear claws

or cow horns. The beakers were round on the bottom and stood on a ﬂ at

foot. The Franks also made glasses that imitated their traditional drink-

ing horns. The glass was blown into a cone and then twisted and curled

to resemble a cow’s horn. Frankish glass technique was able to apply thin

trails of glass as decoration: wavy lines, lattices, or spirals. Anglo-Saxon glass

technique was similar, perhaps imported from the Franks. By the 9th and

10th centuries, some glass bowls made in France and England used two

colors streaked together. Usually red glass was blurred and streaked into

blue or green glass. Cups and bowls were simple. The period of Viking at-

tacks did not encourage technical innovation.

In Persia and Egypt, Islamic territories after the Muslim conquest in the

seventh century, glass technique continued to progress. They blew intri-

cate vase shapes and used molds, as they had in Roman times. They carved

glass, creating a cameo effect when two colors were blown in layers. From

pottery technique, they borrowed luster painting, in which silver and gold

were enameled onto the surface by ﬁ ring in a kiln. When Venice and Genoa

began to dominate Mediterranean trade, they brought ﬁ nely made Per-

sian and Egyptian glass to Western Europe. In 1204, the Fourth Crusade

sacked and looted Constantinople, and the Venetians brought back many

ﬁ ne pieces of glassware to their churches and palaces.

Following the sack of Constantinople, Venice controlled many former

Byzantine regions and had ﬁ rm control of trade in the Adriatic Sea. Inspired

Glass

296

by the ﬁ ne pieces brought back as loot and taught by imported Byzan-

tine glassmakers, Venetian glassmakers developed a large and sophisticated

glass trade. The island of Murano became Venice’s factory, supplied daily

with boatloads of ﬁ rewood from the mainland. Its isolation meant that its

trade could be carefully controlled and also that the city itself was not at

risk from the hot ﬁ res required for glass. They used local sand—crushed

pebbles from the Ticino River—but imported barilla, a soda ash made from

plants that grew in a salty area, from Syria. Barilla ash had lime in it, and

it made superior glass. All Venetian glass had to be made from this recipe,

and they were not permitted to export barilla to any other cities. They also

imported broken glass shards, called cullet, for recycling.

Venice developed enamel techniques so they could paint bright, clear

colors onto glass vessels. Enameled Venetian glass competed with the

Syrian and Egyptian glass the Crusaders were now bringing home. The

brightly painted beakers, signed by individual artists, were exported to all

the aristocrats of Europe. By the end of the Middle Ages, Venice could

make perfectly transparent glass from their highly protected formula by

adding manganese dioxide. During the 15th century, they began adding

crushed quartz pebbles to make opaque white glass. They developed bright

colors and made opaque, colored glass religious medals with molds. Ven-

ice controlled its factory carefully, since a favorite trick of European rulers

was to lure trained workers to their cities with promises of patronage and

prestige. Because the glass was made on an island, Venice was better able to

retain its craftsmen than most other cities.

In spite of Venice’s efforts, the secret of making ﬁ ner glass by adding

lime to the mixture of sand and soda spread to the West. By the 14th cen-

tury, prosperous regions like Bohemia, rich from its silver mines, were col-

lecting and making clear, beautiful glassware. One type, the Keulengläser,

was very tall and thin, perhaps 18 inches tall, and was decorated by small

beads of glass applied in rows or spirals. The Gothic period in France en-

couraged its glass blowers to make tall, thin wine glasses that stood on nar-

row stems, like modern wine glasses.

However, perhaps as an effect of the mid-century plague, glass quality

went down again in Northern Europe. In the 15th century, Germany’s

glassworks made thick, greenish glassware, nicknamed “forest glass.” It was

blown in a mold and decorated with trails of glass or with dots that were

pulled into sharp points or small claws. The Middle Ages in Europe closed

with no ﬁ ne glass made outside of Venice.

Windows

Windows were the most practical use of glass. Glass solved the problem

of letting in light while not letting out as much heat. In Constantinople,

The secret of ﬁ ring enamel on glass was closely guarded in Constantinople

until Crusaders helped Venice to sack the city. The island of Murano, in Venice’s

archipelago, became the next guardian of the secret. A hand-painted goblet like this

was fantastically expensive, since no other glass workshop could come close to such

ﬁ ne work. (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, Italy/Giraudon/ The

Bridgeman Art Library)

Glass

298

glass windows were in the homes of the wealthy by the sixth and seventh

centuries. Glass windows came to Western Europe more slowly, but, in

680, the abbot at the monastery of Monkswearmouth, England, hired

Frankish glaziers to install glass windows (a glazier is a glassmaker who spe-

cializes in windows).

There were two methods of producing sheets of glass for windows. Both

began with a lump of hot glass. A glass blower could produce a long cyl-

inder of blown glass and then slit its side and lay it ﬂ at to cool. This was

called muff glass. He could also transfer the hot glass from the blowpipe

to a pontil iron, which was spun very fast until the lump of glass ﬂ ared out

into a ﬂ at circle. This is how the ﬂ at bottom of a bottle was made; it was

called crown glass. The spun glass keeps a bull’s-eye appearance, with rings

in the glass as it gets thinner toward the edges. Early windows were made

of many hand-sized pieces of glass that had been formed as muff glass or

crown glass. The small pieces were held together by a lattice of lead, either

in squares or diamonds.

By the 12th century, some castles had glass windows, but they remained

a rarity in these residential forts. Fine houses in cities were more likely to

use glass in the 14th and 15th centuries, and some manor homes or palaces

had glass windows.

Since churches were built to be as beautiful as possible, not only glass,

but colored glass, was quickly incorporated. The earliest known colored

glass window in England dates from the 11th century, and it is mostly clear

but has some colored pieces. By the 12th century, cathedral windows had

full scenes. With the advent of the Gothic style, in 1144 at the new Cathe-

dral Basilica of Saint Denis outside Paris, stained glass windows became the

focus of a church. During the 13th century, architects and glaziers devel-

oped ways to make the windows larger and stronger.

Color was added to glass when it was ﬁ rst melted. The glassmaker added

metallic oxides such as cobalt, copper, and manganese. Glass made with

metallic oxides added to the clay pot mix was called pot-metal. The colors

of stained glass were named for jewels, leading some to believe that jewels

were crushed and added to the glass. Red was ruby, green was emerald, and

blue was sapphire. Red would be too opaque for a window if it were used as

a solid sheet of pot-metal glass, so it was usually made as ﬂ ashed glass. Clear

glass was blown, with a thin coating of red glass was blown on the outside.

Both crown glass and muff glass techniques were used to make colored

glass panes. Crown glass had circular ripples that could add good effect in

a pane that represented the drapery of clothing.

Stained glass windows were planned, cut, and painted on large work-

tables that had the design drawn onto the top. As paper became widely

available at the end of the period, the cartoon of a window design could be

drawn onto paper, but, for most of the period, both parchment and paper

Glass

299

The rose window of a great cathedral was a focal point of its art. Since glass could

be made only in small pieces, the window had to be made in sections with dividers.

Elaborate rose-shaped windows with a thousand pieces of colored glass turned

this limitation into ﬁ ne art that still amazes modern viewers. (Lambert Parren/

iStockphoto)

were too small and too expensive. It was much more efﬁ cient to draw di-

rectly onto the worktable.

Colored glass panels of approximately the right size were laid onto the

design so the artisan could see the lines through the glass. Then the speciﬁ c

shape was cut with a hot iron that cracked the glass along the path the iron

traced. The edges were smoothed and trimmed with another hot instru-

ment, the grozing iron. In the 14th century, glaziers in Italy began to use

diamonds to cut glass.

Stained glass panels were often painted. A dark iron-based tint made

shadows or facial features stand out. Glass painting was its own craft, sepa-

rate from glassmaking. The dark tint was applied with a paintbrush, and,

when dry, it could be scratched away for light details. Applied more or less

thickly, it showed on the glass as darker or lighter shades. Dark tint could

give a face ﬁ ner features than glass alone could give; most facial features

and hair were painted. Other details, like shadows in the draping of a robe,