This post is coming a little later than I hoped, but I did still want to wrap up my travels and this blog before I finish the summer and dive into working on my thesis.
First of all, a few statistics from the trip:
-Weeks of travel: Eight
-Countries visited: Four (France, Spain, Italy, the Vatican)
-Cities and towns visited: 37
-Cloisters surveyed: 55
-Cloister-like monastic gardens: 10
-Other monastic gardens: probably 5-ish
Statistics aside, it was an amazing trip. I learned so much, and not only about cloister gardens, although I learned a lot about those, too. I've gotten to the point where when people ask me a question about cloister gardens, I can usually answer it at least in part, although I know there is still so much that I don't know, but that I can't wait to learn this semester when I start working on my thesis.
And with that, I've gotten a few questions after my last post that I'm going to answer!
What defines a cloister garden?
I would generally define a cloister garden as any garden in a cloister, i.e. an inner courtyard of a monastery, convent, or Dominican House which is surrounded by a portico (cloister walk). However, cloister gardens are traditionally (and mostly still) planted and designed in a four-square formation, and sometimes four-square gardens like that are present in scenarios that only fit one of my two criteria for 'cloister' (i.e. either they're in an inner cloister, OR they're surrounded by a portico, but still within a religious context) and I would count those as cloister gardens as well.
How has the usage of cloister gardens changed over time?
This is a question that I could answer at great length, and I probably will do some of that in my thesis! But to give you the one-minute version, rather than the fifteen minute version...
-The cloister and cloister garden have always been a place for recreation and socializing. Oftentimes that was the only place in a Benedictine monastery where the Silence was relaxed, so the monks would be able to talk to each other there and nowhere else. This has continued to the present, with many communities (Benedictine and Dominican) using the cloister for recreation times, and in the words of one Benedictine monk "sometimes it's so loud, with everyone talking, that you can't hear yourself think".
-In a Benedictine abbey, the cloister was an intensely useful place--the cloister walk was the only way to get between buildings (and that remains true in many Benedictine monasteries and some Dominican convents and monasteries, as well), but also, the cloister garden area, which would have been mostly grass at that point, early in the history of the Benedictine Order, was used for many, many activities including: teaching novices, illumination (on sunny days, monks would bring their illumination desks out into the cloister), reading, spreading out laundry, &c. There was even a specific corner of the cloister that was dedicated to cutting hair--presumably so that hair clippings wouldn't get everywhere (very practical!). It was the only outdoor place that most of the monks would have had access to, most of the time.
-The Dominicans are interesting, then, because they are not actually a cloistered order--they can go outside of their convents and move about the city, preaching. So, the cloister becomes less of a place of utility (besides the obvious basic need for light and air to penetrate a large building) and more a place of contemplation, which (I am theorizing--more research needed!) also coincides with the gardens within them becoming slightly more complex. However, this isn't to say that Dominicans didn't still use the cloister for practical purposes--I'm sure the cloister was still used for laundry spreading! But because the rosary becomes very much a Dominican tradition, the cloister becomes a place for the recitation of the rosary, and other contemplative purposes. (I think. Again, I need to do more background research to verify, although this is most certainly true of the purpose of the cloister in Dominican Houses in the present day.)
-The Dominicans also tend to invite people into their cloister gardens more often than the Benedictines do (although that's not saying much--the Benedictines never do). This, it seems to me, speaks to the Dominican mission of "contemplating, and sharing with others the fruits of [their] contemplation"...bringing people into the cloister is one way of helping them enter into the Dominicans' contemplation.
I'd be interested to hear if you have ideas for applications for cloister gardens in places other than an actual cloister. I imagine there are plenty of places that could benefit from some of the ways cloister gardens are designed and used.
This is a very insightful question! A landscape architect who confined him- or herself to the design of cloister gardens only would be out of work a lot...new cloister gardens aren't designed (and even the old ones aren't redesigned) very often. So, while in a sense my research is driven just by a desire to know, it would be good if it was able to be applied to other things as well, right?
Of course right. I think there are two pertinent applications for my research besides designing actual cloister gardens, and those are meditation gardens and healing gardens. Both meditation gardens and healing gardens often feel (to me) as if the designers were grasping for some kind of design guidelines to help with meditation/healing, and the design ends up becoming a bit of a mishmash. However, if they were able to tap into a thousand-year tradition of designing coherent gardens used for meditation and contemplation (cloister gardens) and gardens used for the facilitation of healing (infirmary cloister gardens), it might result in more coherent meditation and healing garden designs, and an easier design process for meditation and healing gardens.
What is your thesis actually going to be about?
Great question! My thesis is going to about the History, Use and Typology of the Cloister Gardens of the Dominican Order, With Guidelines For The Future. Basically, my plan is to look briefly at the history, use, and typology (i.e. symbolic nature) of monastic cloister gardens in general, look more at length at the history, use, and typology of Dominican cloister gardens, write up case studies of some of the cloisters I saw with insights from the above two sections, and then write a design language for the future design of Dominican (and other) cloister gardens. It should be a good time!
And with that, I'm finished with this blog! Thank you all so very much for following along--I appreciate it! :)
Comments
Post a Comment