Byzantine Garden Culture

Dumbarton Oaks
edited by Antony Littlewood, Henry Maguire, and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn
ISBN: 0884022803
price: $30.00  

Only in the last decade has much serious attention been paid to the Byzantine garden, so indirect is the mass of information, both in literature and the visual arts, that is available for scholars. Byzantine Garden Culture, which comprises the revised versions of papers delivered at a colloquium of the same title held at Dumbarton Oaks in November 1996, is the first book ever devoted to the subject.
Individual chapters deal with Byzantine conceptions of paradise, the textual evidence for monastic horticulture, animal- and game parks, Palaiologan gardens, Theodore Hyrtakenos's literary ekphrasis of a garden, the horticultural sections of the agricultural manual known as the Geoponika, herbs in medicinal pharmacy, and the famous illustrated copy of Dioskorides's herbal manual in Vienna. An opening chapter explores questions and observations from the point of view of a non-Byzantine garden historian, and the closing chapter suggests possible directions for future scholarship in the field.