How the Garden Grew
Verrall, F. M.
October 20, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 583 have escaped a realization of the universal ugliness tween the...
...Soon after, the promoters of the than a living wage which is, without any question, a sin of Reformation discouraged the lavish use of flowers in church, injustice...
...a necessary industry to pay living wages to the workers is by The prices do not seem to have been exorbitant, but in London, that very fact convicted of inadequacy and incompetence...
...pels employers, as a necessary condition of existence, to pay less With the suppression of the monasteries, the monks' gardens were destroyed wholesale...
...Is it not because the world is crushed by the And passionate baring of all our intense beliefs, Golden Calf...
...Indeed, Mammon is the most cruel tyrant...
...GOD AND MAMMON Denton, Texas...
...In criminology, The earliest records of gardens-after the days of imperial the relegation of the moral responsibility to group or Rome-are of those belonging to ninth-century monasteries in individual interpretation logically ultimates in lynch what is now France or Switzerland-Saint-Maurice, Saintlaw...
...RAYMOND VERNIMONT...
...Roses, lilies, poppies and a few life-it concerns itself with phases and aspects, and other flowers crept into the herb gardens, but only because the relations of individuals, rarely with life itself, and of their supposed medicinal qualities...
...What is the main cause of the discontent Nor snatch at the moment's power, lest a dearth befall...
...When will the world believe the words of Christ, "You cannot -I shall try to pretend . . . but all the while I shall know serve God and Mammon...
...He has quite unsurplus cider or verjuice (raw grape juice) and kept accounts...
...Every serious student of these and statues...
...Sharing of hopes and fears and of joys and griefs...
...It will In one breath, it clamors for the separation of never do the latter, and so, humanly speaking, there church and state-in the next, deifies the state by is no solution...
...Du Brul insists upon defending the present centor, the infirmarian, and the sacristan, all had separate gar- economic system as he has done so eloquently and forcefully Jens, for which they paid a small rent to the gardinarius...
...J. W. R. MAGUIRE, C.S.V...
...The abbot or prior, the treasurer, the pre- ditions...
...Is he a fool...
...Instinctively, naturally and necessarily, burying-ground and orchard in one...
...The case he instances is not or Abingdon Abbey, show that within the monastery walls an indictment of the critics of the existing economic order, there were other small gardens besides those for the cloister but it is a very serious indictment of prevailing economic conand the visitors...
...I Shall Try to Pretend T O the Editor:-A Catholic missionary in Alaska uttered these ponderous words : "I guess the Lord loved me too I shall try to pretend there are thousands of years ahead much to give me the trouble of caring for gold...
...Almost to a group by reason of social conditions, but it caninvariably, those follies and tragedies have been not tell what created the conditions, or how they are proudly proclaimed as great progressive movements...
...Yet, upon Mr...
...toward a contempt of courts and the origin of their the physic garden with its beds of sixteen kinds of medicinal herbs...
...the conclusions of life...
...O the Editor:-Mr...
...What are the consequences...
...In the administration of law, the sectarian pro- Germain des Pres, Saint-Amande, and Saint-Gall...
...Du of Corpus Christi (in 1524 they cost six pence at St...
...Why, then, should Catholic employers defend such and a new sort of garden, the "garden of pleasure"-the a system...
...any other crime, all right opinion would oppose it, and Catholic while as early as 1300, there was so much produce raised in opinion would be unanimous...
...of those of sacristan and infirmarian which had been humbler REV...
...consciously put into concrete terms the arguments that they The accounts of a large monastery, such as Norwich Priory have been using for many years...
...everything savoring of the supernatural and the sac- In England, there is another ancient chart -a perspective ramental-reducing it, as it is rapidly reducing every plan of Canterbury monastery gardens...
...The monaslearning...
...and less decorative, yet dedicated for centuries to the glory of God and the service of man...
...If sectarianism ever has the courage to confront That is perhaps one of the most destructive phases itself with its own colossal and tragic failures and adof the sectarian outlook-that it chloroforms the sensi- mit that they involve the annihilation of existing civilibilities, destroys the sense of values, blunts the percep- zation, only two courses are open...
...or to garland the clerics who were to walk in the problems recognizes, of course, that the average employer is processions, so that flowers often had to be bought...
...REV...
...sadly in need of reform...
...fifteen fruit trees, of which even the names are given...
...It is so ignorant of its idea is to dominate and be carried to its last anarchic own operations that, in spite of most recent history conclusion, then society is indubitably doomed...
...It must either tions, and lowers the standards, not merely of the maintain the sufficiency of churchlessness and creedmass, but of those who in other respects might be lessness when properly administered for the salvation called cultured...
...As in the conthe individual...
...Stephen Du Brul, in the issue of As to the actual management of the grounds, all the gardens, The Commonweal of September 22, evidently thinks vineyards, orchards, moats, and fish-ponds, were under the care he has issued a challenge to Catholic thinkers on economic of an officer-the gardinarius or hortulanus-who arranged and social problems, who are not satisfied with the existing for labor, bought any necessary cuttings or seeds, sold the economic order, which they cannot meet...
...in England and Germany, it interprets the divine right of kings as a mediaeval philosophy...
...Actually, he tends more and more cloister garden for the use of the community in the centre...
...commit an act of injustice by paying less than living wages, But for a great feast day, sacristans were not always able and frequently opposes legislative measures for the ameliorato grow enough flowers to adorn the altars, shrines, candles, tion of the working-classes...
...A peaceful God's Acre he is "against" authority, whether it be in the courts, it must have been, with graves separated by shrubs, and its in his executives, in his home, or in himself...
...If society is dependent for its salvaerecting the principle of the divine right of kings, or tion upon the Christian dispensation and the sectarian the divine right of the people...
...Every incoherent...
...eight feet of land between the wall of the church and the One thing he usually does and that is, defends the existing wall of the cloyster, to sett certain trees and flowers behovable economic order which is forcing him in the supposed case to and convenient for the services of the same church...
...The dollar is god, not only in this country, but Sharing of wind and sun and rain as we walk, the world over...
...Can the world be more chaotic than it is today...
...Du Brul's own London that the gardeners meeting to sell their wares near confession, we have an economic system which at times comSaint Paul's were a nuisance to the churchgoers...
...It has produced millions of lop- to the earth...
...Let the world be disloyal to Mammon and loyal to Godthen all will be well...
...October 20, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 583 have escaped a realization of the universal ugliness tween the sweetly sentimental and the abstruse and which has issued out of religious individualism...
...and the cemetery which was referendum...
...Parish church and private chapel frequently had these sacris- No doubt, the ordinary employer, when he meets attacks...
...Martin Brul and the average employer think it necessary to defend Outwich) broom for Easter (one pence) palm on Palm Sunday such a system...
...Certain just as much a victim of an unsound and irrational economic flowers were popular for certain days-red roses for the feast system as the working-man...
...Would it not be better to advocate industrial purely ornamental plots of Parkinson and Rea-took the place democracy or some other improvement of the existing order...
...Henry VI, founder of Eton College, left "thirty- for not paying living wages, says, "What can I do about it...
...Leaving the unsaid words . . . and the old unrest...
...and of this fesses a pious belief that his courts are sanctioned last a fully detailed ground plan still exists...
...In poetry-it gravitates be- In the twelfth century, both Bishop Grossetete, of Lincoln, S $4 THE COMMONWEAL October 20, 1926 and Alexander Neckham, abbot of Cirencester, wrote about COMMUNICATIONS plants-the first in relation to medicine...
...to the roses and lilies of an earlier day...
...and unhappiness in the world today...
...single social aberration, insanity or inanity which has Like sectarian religion, sectarian literature is in manifested itself in several hundred years has borne deadly fear of conclusions...
...of society, or go over to Rome en masse...
...while Neckham included a list of plants suitable for a "noble garden," still prin- TAN ECONOMIC CHALLENGE cipally herbs, though peonies, daffodils, and violets were added Bourbonnais, Ill...
...tinental gardens, there were not many different varieties of In literature-having no solution for the riddle of small plants and flowers...
...Failing-as it HOW THE GARDEN GREW always fails-to lift the morals of the mass, it invari- By F. M. VERRALL ably turns to the state for aid, and endeavors to enforce virtue by legislation, as in the attempts to pro- IN THE monks' herb gardens of early mediaeval times hibit liquor, and the more recent attempt to prohibit originated the art of present-day gardening...
...The world does not serve God, That the time is shortening fast, that was brief at best, but Mammon today...
...If Mr...
...tans' gardens...
...CharleIn matters of sex, the sectarian spirit has induced magne ordered herbs to be planted in the imperial gardens in the almost universal adoption of condonance of con- the year 812, and it is interesting to note that the plants on traception...
...Are there not And we'll be together every hour of them all, many Americans who will call that self-sacrificing missionary a So I need not fear lest something should go unsaid, fool...
...other tendency in human nature...
...The mystery is why Mr...
...Marriage, it has, of course, stripped of his list correspond closely with those of Saint-Gall...
...the kitchen garden laid out in nine long narrow -beds for power, and may yet refer all of their decisions to a the cultivation of pot herbs...
...An economic system which does not enable (two pence) woodruff and lavender for Saint Barnabas day...
...It shows the from on high...
...varied and varying forms ever since...
...There is also clear other human relation, to the mood and the whim of evidence in English monastery records that corn, vines, and fruit trees were grown in the tenth century...
...It can tell what happened the birthmark of irrational sectarian thinking...
...Mass action is nearly always banal, gro- note of a common doom of humanity when wedded tesque, and unlovely...
...tery had to heal bodies as well as souls in those turbulent days, This manifestation, of course, is not an espousal and the practice of medicine presupposed a good working knowledge of herb-growing...
...Nom B. CUNNINGHAM...
...Why is it so difficult to There will be time for laughter and lazy talk, procure peace...
...Only the occasional master, like ConIndividual sectarian action is frequently simple, sane, rad, has running through all of his works the ominous and sweet...
...In art, the most recent and triumphant sided mentalities, whose social experiments have al- expression is a complete contempt of form and a demost invariably gone awry, because they have laid scent into chaos, which leaves the on-looker bewiltoo much or too little emphasis on this, that or the dered and hopeless of interpretation...
...Open your And the moment will soon arrive when you must go, eyes and see...
...If at any rate, there could have been no difficulty in buying we had a social or political system which, as a necessary condiflowers, for Saint Thomas a Becket's clerk, Fitzstephen, wrote tion of existence, at times compelled men to murder or commit that the citizens of London had fair and pleasant gardens...
...The on so many occasions, it is his business to crack the economic infirmarian grew medicinal herbs in his plot near the hospital, nut he has found, not those who think the present system is while the sacristan raised flowers for the altar...
...to be cured...
...Indeed, an early school of mediof the divine right of kings, but of the divine cine which was started by the Benedictines of Monte Cassion, rights of man, as first proclaimed by Rousseau, and can be looked on as the precursor of our great modern botanic reasserted from protestant pulpits in ten thousand gardens...
Vol. 4 • October 1926 • No. 24
