Abstract
This article explores three facets of green space within a medieval monastic context: its origin, its effects and properties and the way it was shaped into an expression of power. We learn a great deal about the history of green space through the nuances of monastic thought and vice versa. The term ‘green space’ in a medieval context may initially seem anachronistic and an artefact of twenty-first century health policy and neuroscience and yet, as this article argues, the use of medieval knowledge for moral and institutional power as well as medicine and spiritual contemplation tells us as much about monastic thought as its equivalent reveals of our urban and rural landscapes today. The term ‘green space’ is an insight into the medieval brain, an artefact of monastic self-fashioning and power. Medieval and modern perspectives should share the spotlight. In outlining properties and exploring political ecology, this article deploys a collection of rhetorical landscape descriptions, primarily from the Cistercian literature of the twelfth century, placing them in a wider context. In doing so, we understand another facet of monastic authority established and over landscape and articulated through the power structures of medicine, natural philosophy and other aspects of monastic learned discourse. Knowledge makes green, green promotes health, health valorises monasticism, monasticism shapes knowledge: a green circle of power.
Highlights
The sick man sits on the green turf, and, when the merciless heat of the dog days bakes the fields and dries up the streams, he in his sanctuary, shaded from the day’s heat, filters the heavenly fire through a screen of leaves, his discomfort further eased by the drifting scent of grasses
There is value in the comparison, for it tells us about monastic philosophy, landscapes and medicine in equal measure, and their deployment for the formation and assertion of power, influence and spiritual authority. It hints at a broader political ecology, using the moral rectitude and healing properties of green space to shape authority
The healing powers of green space as a medical and spiritual entity were greatly augmented by the presence of an atmosphere in which the appropriate experience of subjectivity, space, place and time were encouraged by greenery
Summary
The sick man sits on the green turf, and, when the merciless heat of the dog days bakes the fields and dries up the streams, he in his sanctuary, shaded from the day’s heat, filters the heavenly fire through a screen of leaves, his discomfort further eased by the drifting scent of grasses. It hints at a broader political ecology, using the moral rectitude and healing properties of green space to shape authority. It will explore the interrelation of how a medieval monastic green space was positioned with its powers within the context of medicinal and humoral theory and how it came into being as political.
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