On Chervil and Lovage, from Hortulus

judsoncarroll4

The Lovage entry was brief, so I'm posting two today... whatever is lacking in the abbot's writings on Lovage is certainly made up for in Chervil!

MaryRowe

Now the old boy is full tilt showing off both his great learning and love of naughty pagan books for sure! "Come , holy Muse...." I know I've seen those lines somewhere--Virgil maybe? But they weren't about chervil in the original of course. He is having lots of fun with this. I wish we knew when he wrote it. He was kicked out of Reichenau at one point, either because of his writings, other monks' jealousy, or court politics, depending on which story you like. So it must be that either he wrote this while exiled from his monastery and marking time tending the herb garden in another, just to show he was still alive and kicking, or he wrote it after he was restored at Reichenau and secure enough that he could rub their noses in it. It would be fascinating to know for sure!

And isn't it strange that he downplays lovage? I had thought it was a more important plant than that. Didn't know it was thought to cause blindness either.

judsoncarroll4

https://community.thegrownetwork.com/discussion/comment/880279#Comment_880279

I was thinking Virgil, as well. But, your literary knowledge is far better than mine! What I know of the classics was just in undergrad and some re-reading later on. Yes, I quite like lovage!

MaryRowe

Recovering academic here--recently retired history prof....Anglo-Saxon England was my specialty, but strayed far enough among the Carolingians to be aware of Walafrid as abbot/theologian/big political actor. I never got around to the Hortulus though, and just never dreamed the guy had this side to him, or that he would show it off if he did. He dedicated Hortulus to another power player, so he meant it to be read, maybe as a bit of entertainment among the other big-shots of his political faction ("What I did on y summer exile-I-mean-vacation"....). Absolutely fascinating. I swore off academic pursuits for homesteading, when I retired and got the heck out of there, but this is so intriguing I may have to look into it.

If my thinking about this is headed in the right direction, it may be that he doesn't care about lovage because it was more often used as a common green for eating ...i.e. poor folks' food....than as a medicinal in an up-scale monastery apothecary.

judsoncarroll4

https://community.thegrownetwork.com/discussion/comment/880293#Comment_880293

I was very much on a similar path, but a different tack. I always wanted to be a farmer. But, it was the NAFTA era and my grandmother insisted i go to college and get a degree in anything other than agriculture. She said, "Farmers work themselves to death and are always poor." Horticulture, Literature and Music appealed to me... One of my uncles was a university professor and it was assumed I would follow the same path. But, perhaps ironically, my grandmother had a heart attack and I was the only grandson... I ended up returning to the farm to care for her and the property. Although I went back to school a few times, I was mainly an autodidact from that point on. I was fortunate in college to have a class taught by a lovely and passionate Romanian grad student... we became quite close... she opened up to me the fiery intensity of eastern and central Europe.. so much history, art, music and intellectualism... never the polite and quite witty scholarship I had known... her tradition was more a confrontation, of "why are you so ignorant?!" My best friend is Ukrainian - classically trained musician, speaks five languages, degrees in engineering, cooks like a top French chef, dances ballet, paints and draws and makes her living in international real estate.... she is very kind, always praising me. But, the truth is, no school I ever went to ever offered me half what she learned before she ever entered university! So, at 43, I continue to learn what I can but practicality dictates.

MaryRowe

By the time I retired, I was burned out and pretty disillusioned with the way we do formal education in this country, and the higher you go the worse it gets. I used to do living history programs for grade-school kids, and generally came away discouraged that 4th and 5th graders often asked better and more thoughtful questions than my college students did. We need to be continually questioning and learning; we need the life of the mind to live fully as humans. But our educational system does not necessarily steer us in that direction. Often life experience, friendships of the kind you describe, and self-teaching takes you further than a modern classroom ever will.

Completely off topic for Hortulus, but my favorite anecdote about the real-life meaning of a college degree: Somehow, and I'm still not sure how it happened, the students in my freshman class got me sidetracked one day talking about my chickens. A pair of girl friends sitting in the front row --inner city kids--wondered why anybody would have chickens. --Well, for the eggs. --Huh? What kind of eggs? --The kind you eat for breakfast. Huh?!!! Chickens make eggs? How they do that? Don't they just make eggs in a factory like corn flakes and sausage??? A couple farm boys in the back row were only too happy to explain. The girls were horrified. "You mean I been eating things that come out of a chicken's butt???" (The boys were ready to explain sausage too, but I cut them off, or the poor girls might never eat breakfast again...) Now the real kicker: I was in our front office telling this story right after class and laughing about it with our dept. secretary. A colleague, smart guy, several books in print, Harvard PhD no less, was listening in and thoroughly confused. "You mean eggs really come out of a chicken's behind?" When he was a kid, apparently his parents told him that chickens make eggs from a special pouch on their chests. He had never questioned that, and was just about as upset as the two girls to find out the awful truth. So we're historians, not biologists, but still....

The rewards in a modern academic career seem to come for knowing more and more about less and less. I gave up on trying to fit into that kind of world. A guy like Walafrid wouldn't have fit at all--writing incredibly intricate theology one day, an herbal like this one the next. What a range of stuff he must have known--and a good chunk of it self-taught! But I will stop my rant at this point, before it turns into a book itself.....

judsoncarroll4

https://community.thegrownetwork.com/discussion/comment/880303#Comment_880303

Wow, what a depressing way to start Sunday! But yes, you are entirely correct. We have access to more information than anyone has ever enjoyed, with less effort than to just take the time to click a button and read the bullet points... but less real knowledge than any generation since the utilization of fire.

MelissaLynne

I was talking to some country folk that raised chickens and they were shocked to learn that eggs come out of the same place as everything else. It seems they were under the impression that hens have a separate opening that was dedicated to eggs. 🤷🏼‍♀️ It constantly amazes me what people don’t know...