Capitulare de Villis

Remember the other week when I posted about Charlemagne's edict on medieval gardening? I Googled around looking for the list of herbs he'd instructed his subjects to plant, but apart from a few references to the list and maybe a few items cherry-picked (heh) out of it, I couldn't find the actual list anywhere. Maybe in German, but I'm not going to learn German just for this. Sorry, Germans.

In the back of my mind I thought I'd written a paper once that quoted this. So just now I dredged up my "Random Research" folder and flipped through old papers until I found "Medieval Herbal Medicine," which I wrote in 1997 for my "Seminar on Monasticism" class.

And what do I find but a big beautiful paragraph-long quotation, from young-me to older-me. Well, actually from Charlemagne, circa 795 CE. Quotation:

"After the fall of Rome, gardens and vegetables are not mentioned at all in the West until 795, when Charlemagne issued his Capitulare de villis vel curtis imperii, instructions for the administration of towns under his sway. Charlemagne's edict tells his subjects what he expects of them:

We desire that they have in the garden all the herbs namely, the lily, roses, fenugreek, costmary, sage, rue, southernwood, cucumbers, pole beans, cumin, rosemary, caraway, chick pea, squill, iris, arum, anise, coloquinth, chicory, animi, laserwort, lettuce, black cumin, garden rocket, nasturtium, burdock, pennyroyal, alexander, parsley, celery, lovage, sabine tree, dill, fennel, endive, dittany, black mustard, savory, curly mint, water mint, horse mint, tansy, catnip, feverfew, poppy, beet sugar, marshmallows, high mallows, carrots, parsnips, oraches, amaranths, kohlrabis, cabbages, onions, chives, leeks, radishes, shallots, garlics, madder, artichokes or fulling thistles, big beans, field peas, coriander, chervil, capper spurge, clary. (Citation: Helen Morganthau Fox, Gardening with Herbs for Flavor and Fragrance (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933, reprinted Dover Publications, Inc., 1970), p. 45.)"

Whew! Now I know what to plant this weekend, thanks to Helen Morganthau Fox... and Charlemagne!