Monastic and folk knowledge

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, monasteries in Europe became the keepers of learned knowledge, medicine included. Monks and nuns copied Latin and Greek medical texts so that they were preserved.

The Rule of Benedict, from the sixth century, states in chapter 36 that care for the sick comes before everything. Monasteries therefore acquired an infirmary, a pharmacy and a herb garden. The famous Plan of Saint Gall, from around 820, shows a herb garden with sixteen beds next to the infirmary and the physician’s house.

Secular rulers took an interest too. In the Capitulare de villis of around 800, Charlemagne laid down which plants were to grow on his estates: almost a hundred species, including many medicinal herbs. From the tenth century a famous medical school was active in Salerno in Italy. In the twelfth century a woman physician, Trota, also worked there; texts on women’s medicine were later named after her.

Monastic medicine joined the classical doctrine of the humours with the Christian faith. Illness could have a natural cause, but could also be a trial. Healing was therefore care for both body and soul: with herbs, but also with prayer.

Caring for the sick was a Christian duty, a work of mercy. Monasteries cared not only for their own members, but also for the poor, pilgrims and travellers.

Folk knowledge outside the monasteries was more practical. What helped was passed on. It mixed with faith and superstition, such as picking herbs on special days.

In the monastery the infirmarius, the carer of the sick, learned his craft from experienced brothers, from books and in the garden. Manuscripts were copied and exchanged between monasteries.

Outside the monasteries there were herb women, midwives, surgeons and barbers. Their knowledge passed orally from parent to child or from master to apprentice.

In the countryside too, almost everyone knew something about herbs. Home remedies for coughs, stomach ache or wounds were part of ordinary life.

The Lorsch Pharmacopoeia, the Lorscher Arzneibuch, was written around 795 in the monastery of Lorsch. It contains almost five hundred recipes and defends medicine as a Christian duty. Since 2013 it has been on UNESCO’s Memory of the World register.

Around 840 the abbot Walahfrid Strabo wrote the Hortulus, a poem about the plants in his monastery garden on the island of Reichenau. From the school of Salerno comes the Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum, a poem full of rules for health. A well-known line asks: why should a man die who has sage in his garden?

The work of Hildegard of Bingen, in the twelfth century, also belongs to this tradition.

Monastery gardens are being laid out again all over Europe, as historic gardens and places of learning. Some monasteries still make herbal liqueurs, teas and ointments.

Many plants from the monastery garden are now in the pharmacy as standardised remedies. Others have mainly become kitchen herbs.

Folk knowledge lives on in home remedies, in plant names and in customs that still exist in the countryside.

The monastery garden was a place of order: rectangular beds of herbs. There grew sage, rosemary, rue, fennel, lavender, betony, mint and lilies.

Walahfrid Strabo’s Hortulus includes sage, fennel, wormwood and chervil, among others.

Outside the monastery walls people gathered wild plants: nettle, plantain, yarrow, chamomile and elder.

Monastic medicine was an important link in the transmission of knowledge. Appreciate it as history.

Some monastery herbs are poisonous, such as rue, which is dangerous in pregnancy.