The understanding and symbolism of plants and flowers in Christian and pagan art, life and thinking, including the idea of ‘paradise’ and erotic and virginal perceptions of gardens, concluding with the gardening of monks and desert Fathers in natural adversity. Lecture 2: Flowers and the Vegetal World (October 19th) Pagan and Christian views of Creation, man’s dominance over the beasts and the vegetal world and on modern theories of a shift from a horizontal view of the relation of the natural world and the divine to a vertical view of it, endorsed by Christianity. Lecture 1: Cosmos and Landscape in Pagan and Christian Views of Creation (October 17th) It brings out differing emphases in their respective writings and art and also asks what practical effects such different ways of seeing had. The series explores the differing approaches to the natural word by pagans and the early Christians from Paul and the Gospels to c AD 500.
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