Hortus Deliciarum

So what’s all this Hortus Deliciarum nonsense, anyway?

It’s a long story. Here goes.

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As a child, some of my favourite books were about secret places, especially secret gardens. I could have wanted nothing more than to be Mary, in The Secret Garden, discovering a hidden door that led into a world that I could make all my own, yet with a tang of wildness about it. An undercurrent of the unknown, the unseen, the unexpected. Imagine the Wood between the Worlds and beautiful walled garden from C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew or Emily’s little bower in Emily of New Moon. I wanted wild places, magical places, places where things grew and thrived. I wanted to create beauty but never completely own it.

I caught the gardening bug early. I remember, as a child of four or five, plucking seeds from some four o’clock plants in someone else’s garden (with permission!) and planting them in a little space my father set aside in his vegetable patch. They grew and flourished but more than that, they were mine. I cared for them. I had chosen them and I decided where to put them. It was my job to keep them alive and, thankfully, I did. When we moved to California a few years later, I got another little garden patch and filled it with Shasta daisies, irises and California poppies. No rhyme or reason, just plants in all of their glory, creating my own little heaven in a meter square. I kept window boxes and grew houseplants, even as a teenager. Even now my apartment balcony is half-filled with enough plants that I have trouble getting into it, although the demands of mother- and wife-hood, as well as my other commitments, mean that I’ve done a pretty shabby job this summer of caring for them.

Yes, so? You ask me why this all matters. Why the Hortus Deliciarum of all things? What is it?

Simply translated, it means “The Garden of Delights” – more specifically, though, it is a late twelfth-century manuscript planned and compiled by Herrad, abbess of St Odile at Hohenbourg. While the layperson will probably more readily recognise the name of Hildegard of Bingen, Herrad arguably deserves a place next to that esteemed and learned lady. Herrad was an intelligent and extraordinarily well-educated woman; her manuscript is a broad compilation of texts and images that covered a range of topics, including both older sources and works from contemporary spiritual thinkers. Her goal, it would seem, was to provide the most advanced theological education possible to the sisters of St Odile.

I had no idea the manuscript even existed until I took a class on the imagery of medieval genealogies during my time at UT Austin but was blown away by the images that we were shown in the seminar. Although the manuscript now only exists in fragmentary form through reproductions made before the original was destroyed in a library fire, the copies that we are still able to see are stunning. I have a few images drawn from Wikipedia Commons in my Flickr folder and hope to eventually devote a page here to them. At one point I even considered doing my thesis on the manuscript but later decided against it, to my chagrin! I’m no longer up-to-date on current research on the document but the message I took away from my very brief study of it was that it was a font of knowledge: that rarest of items that is both functional and absolutely beautiful. Its use was not just to educate but to enjoy; it was meant to instruct but I’m also sure that Herrad wanted it to be a springboard for further independent thought and reflection.

I don’t claim to be as brilliant or creative as Herrad but I do love the idea of a creative place that is both beautiful and functional. I certainly don’t intend to be some kind of cosmic force for internet education, heaven forbid, but I would like this to be a place where I can be introspective AND extroverted as and when I like. Creative and inquisitive, orderly or chaotic, serious or funny.

A lot to ask of a journal and, I suspect, far too much for me ever to accomplish in one lifetime on one tiny website. But I can hope.

So, this is my garden of delights and horrors. My Hortus Deliciarum.

My theme is MistyLook, by Sadish Bala.

My header is by another Heidi, of Daisybones, a wonderfully innovative and unique artist/mommy/blogger/Goddess!

This page has the following sub pages.

• My other delightful places online