In her long-ago book on English medieval gardens, historian Teresa McLean brings down to earth through study of plants, flowers, herbs, orchards and fruit the rich abundance of life in the Middle Ages.

“It is not so much a history book as much as a book set in a period of history…which was in fact a brilliantly coloured era,” McLean writes in her introduction. “In that sense, it is historical, though it is also timeless….”

Through chapters on monastic gardens, herb gardens, vineyards, and “love gardens” both religious and secular, her Medieval English Gardens recoups the centuries between the fall of Rome and outbreak of the Renaissance from stereotypes of mud, blood, disease and angelic pinheads.

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And as Canadian medieval scholar Jaqueline Murray points out, that same intellectual and even spiritual re-mapping of the Middle Ages is available across a vast array of fields beyond cultivation and harvesting of gardens.

It can extend to the very maps of the period itself when cartographers filled in details between the borders of the known world and indulged their fancies for what might exist at the edges and beyond.

“They’re not just outlines of geographic areas,” Murray says. “They’ve got images of people and animals. They include the Garden of Eden. They include an area of the Old Testament. They know about Asia, about Africa, though no one’s ever been there. There’s an almost joke line among medievalists about the edges of a map having written on it ‘there be dragons,’ which tells you so much about the medieval imagination.”

That evocation of knowledge and imagination will be at the centre of a day long symposium Murray is hosting April 11 through the University of St. Michael’s College Institute of Medieval Studies. Mappa Mundi: Mapping the Mediaeval World is part of a series of such symposia that began in 1984, ceased temporarily, and was resurrected recently. 

Murray, now a fellow at St. Michael’s and a Professor Emerita at the University of Guelph, stresses the public, accessible nature of the day that will offer five lectures but equally importantly time to chat over coffee – and a medieval lunch.

“Each speaker will talk about their particular area of expertise, but they’ll do so to pull in a general audience and say, ‘Hey, look at this. Isn't this interesting? Isn't this amazing? Let me share with you the kind of work I do so you can understand the Middle Ages a bit more,’” she says. 

“People might not go and read any of the speakers’ scholarly work. But they will get a look inside the door at different topics. It’s important people know how welcome they are, and how enthusiastic we are about sharing knowledge with them.”

Each of the five speakers will look at mapping the Middle Ages from a different perspective. Renée Trilling, for example, will speak on medieval medical texts. The tomes she’ll address included both directives on “reciting charms for protection against dwarves and elves” as well as sound advice on use of herbal remedies. Yet they connected medieval cultures across Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa and India. 

Emily Hutchinson, from Mount Royal University in Alberta, will address medieval climate crises, specifically the onset of the Little Ice Age and the effect on Paris and the Île de France. She argues proper mapping allows it to be understood as part of “lived reality” rather than an abstract meteorological event.

Vanessa McCarthy will discuss the “Mapping of Sex Workers in Mediaeval Bologna” to dispel clichés about them being outcasts in the cities of the Middle Ages.

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Murray, whose own medieval research has long set a feminist context for the place and roles of women in the era, cites McCarthy’s work as typifying what all the talks at the symposium aim toward.

“What’s so interesting about Vanessa’s work is that she looks at different neighbourhoods in Bologna and finds that sex workers were integrated in neighbourhoods among their neighbours. They were treated as members of the community. They weren’t in brothels, nor were they outcasts. They were integrated members of society, which I don’t think any of us would have expected.”

The unexpected will be a regular part of the day, for instance in James Ginther’s presentation of “An Unnoticed Marine Map of the Mediaeval World” to bring attention to the lives and contributions of sailors and merchants. Kelly DeVries will look at how the emerging portability of maps fueled a desire to “portray the entire world” and so prepared the way for long-distance navigation and exploration.

Murray compares that evolution in mapping to our so-called modern age’s shift to GPS from folding paper maps that someone’s father or grandmother bought at a gas station and left bunched up in the glove compartment of the car.

“Nowadays that won't mean a thing to younger people with GPS, but I can remember careening down the highway with a map in one hand, turning it this way and that trying to tell the driver which way to turn next to go here and there,” she laughs.

It’s maintaining that bridge between memory and understanding that is a driving intention for the public nature of the medieval mapping symposium, as it was for last year’s event on the lives of women in cities such as Edinburgh, Siena and Paris. Somewhat paradoxically, Murray notes, younger people enrolled as students in the Institute of Medieval Studies have a clearer path to gain detailed, scholarly knowledge of the realities of 5th Century to 15th Century life than those outside the academic environment. Entertainments such as Game of Thrones and the plethora of websites devoted to the era can whet the appetite. Publicly-accessible academic research, however, can go beyond popularizing to arrive at profound appreciation.

“The students get the access all the time. It’s what draws them to pursue their undergraduate degrees in medieval studies at St. Michael's. What the symposiums are trying to do is to share with people who aren't in university, who don't have that access, (knowledge) that brings them understanding not only of the Middle Ages themselves, but why they matter and why humanities are so important even in this digital age. The more people who are not connected formally with the university that we can bring in, and share our wealth of knowledge with, the better,” Murray says.

The critical connection comes from what the poet T.S. Eliot described as being able to perceive “not (only) the pastness of the past, but its presence.” 

Or as Murray puts it. “We see the vestiges of the Middle Ages everywhere. They were the foundation of Western society, whether we look at Parliament, or whether we look at the Church, or popular views that endure from there. We can see a lot of the Middle Ages in 21st century North America, 21st century Toronto.”

Among the medieval things we can see as Catholics, without perhaps even realizing it, are the rosaries we use. In Teresa McLean’s chapter on medieval love gardens, she contends that the Rosary emerged from the signification of Mary with the rose and the creating of rose gardens – rosarium – as places of prayer, especially the Hail Mary. 

“The Hail Mary first appeared in about 1050 and was already popular by the 12th century,” Medieval English Gardens informs its readers. “It was only a short time before the collection of Hail Marys recited on the beads was also called a rosary, and soon after the beads themselves. They were first called a rosary by Thomas of Cantipre in the 13th century. Inside this garden of prayer is the mystical rose, enclosed by five decades of prayers to Mary.”

Which opened up a whole new world, not just for the Church but for medieval cartographers and modern scholars of all sorts to map. 

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Registration for Mappa Mundi ends March 27. For more information visit stmikes.utoronto.ca.