13-11-2023, 11:00 PM
I have gotten so cautious over the years to entertain any "theories", but if I allow myself to go there, then this is probably it. I've also used the Bestiary before so show how this would make some sense, from a medieval point of view.
A bestiary is a book of real animals, real animals with imagined features and entirely imagined animals. The purpose of the work is to show how the world of beasts reflects the Word of God.
In the VM, we have real, partially imagined and apparently totally imagined plants. If only we had the text that should go with them :)
Two more concepts that could come into play somehow:
* The notion of a collection of "flowers" as a collection of beautiful, virtuous things. (crf "florilegium" and several book titles like the Liber Floridus). This could be reversed again, taking literal flowers as exemplifying these things.
* The thought of Mary as a Hortus Conclusus. I believe it has been pointed out that an abnormal amount of VM flowers have a blue colour, though I'm not certain if this has actually been researched. It would be interesting to compare them to the share of blue flowers in "regular" herbals.
A bestiary is a book of real animals, real animals with imagined features and entirely imagined animals. The purpose of the work is to show how the world of beasts reflects the Word of God.
In the VM, we have real, partially imagined and apparently totally imagined plants. If only we had the text that should go with them :)
Two more concepts that could come into play somehow:
* The notion of a collection of "flowers" as a collection of beautiful, virtuous things. (crf "florilegium" and several book titles like the Liber Floridus). This could be reversed again, taking literal flowers as exemplifying these things.
* The thought of Mary as a Hortus Conclusus. I believe it has been pointed out that an abnormal amount of VM flowers have a blue colour, though I'm not certain if this has actually been researched. It would be interesting to compare them to the share of blue flowers in "regular" herbals.