The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century

Introduction

Introduction During the last quarter of the twelfth century, Herrad (d. after 1196), abbess of the Augustinian monastery at Hohenbourg in Alsace, oversaw the production of what was to become one of the most famous of illuminated manuscripts: the Hortus deliciarum or Garden of Delights. A work of compilation, the Hortus comprised a rich selection of texts and images, skillfully woven together into a coherent and carefully structured presentation of salvation history. More than eleven hundred textual extracts, drawn from Christian authors from the early Fathers through the late twelfth century, appeared within an organizational framework defined by the manuscript’s ambitious visual cycle. The result, a grand synthesis of word and image, is an extraordinary monument to the spiritual and intellectual culture of a female monastic community at the close of the twelfth century . This magnificent manuscript, along with all the treasures of the Strasbourg library, was destroyed in the Prussian siege of August 1870. ‘‘One of the most ambitious and splendid manuscripts of the middle ages is irretrievably destroyed,’’ lamented Rosalie Green of the Princeton Index of Christian Art.1 Despite this loss, knowledge of the manuscript was preserved by some of the many scholars and antiquarians who had studied it before 1870.2 Their notes conjure up parchment resplendent with images, texts written in a neat and regular hand yet crowded with marginal and interlinear notations, and folios of every shape and size, their irregularity a reflection of the many long years and cycles of revision that work on the manuscript involved. While the dramatic circumstances of the Hortus destruction have ensured that it continues to be widely remembered, these notes and the tracings that survived the manuscript permit its continued, although obviously imperfect examination; gathered together by a team of scholars under the direction of Rosalie Green, they form the basis for a reconstruction of the Hortus, published by the Warburg Institute in 1979.3 This reconstruction has succeeded in presenting the essential structure and contents of the Hortus in such a way as to enable an integrated examina- 2 Introduction tion of the whole—for the first time since the manuscript was destroyed over a century ago. The reconstructed Hortus provides a valuable witness to the culture of an otherwise little-known and little-celebrated monastic community during the last decades of the twelfth century. That this community was a women’s community and the Hortus uniquely a women’s book only adds to its intrigue: the Hortus was the product of a female mastermind and likely also the work of female scribes and artists. The purpose of the manuscript enhances its significance. Since it was never copied during the medieval period and seems not to have been known beyond Hohenbourg until the Renaissance, the Hortus was most likely intended primarily or even exclusively for domestic use: the education of the women of the community . Herrad herself confirms her authorship of the manuscript and intentions for it in her prologue. Describing herself as ‘‘a bee inspired by God’’ as she gathered the texts of the Hortus from ‘‘the various flowers of sacred Scripture and philosophic writings,’’ Herrad dedicated the work to the women of her community with the hope that they would find ‘‘pleasing food’’ and spiritual refreshment in its ‘‘honeyed dewdrops’’ (HD no. 2). ‘‘May this book be useful and delightful to you,’’ she wrote to them, ‘‘May you never cease to study it in your thoughts and memory’’ (HD no. 1).4 The particular circumstances of the production and reception of the Hortus at Hohenbourg make it especially useful as a witness to the religious life for women in a period of tremendous spiritual enthusiasm. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, growing numbers of men and women converted to the religious life, abandoning the world and all its temptations for the rigors of the monastery. Inspired by the rhetoric of church reform, as well as the teaching of itinerant preachers, these women and men sought a life of greater faithfulness to the apostolic example than was thought possible within the secular sphere. Their conversions prompted a surge in monastic foundations: throughout the period new communities were established and old ones revived in order to house the crowds of new converts. The spiritual enthusiasm that inspired them is further reflected in the proliferation of new orders as the traditional Benedictine way of life gave way to include Cistercians, Carthusians, Augustinians , Premonstratensians, Gilbertines, Grandmontines, and others. The period was...