Holy Basil and the cross

Those who follow Brother Cadfel are aware of his herb garden, and indeed medieval herb gardens were used not only for medicine but to flavor food and to repel pests.

Dave'sGarden has an article by Gwen Bruno on these herb gardens.

The earliest known garden blueprints are found in a monastery plan intended as a guide for Benedictine abbeys (this document survives today in a Swiss abbey). The plan featured several gardens, including a kitchen garden for vegetables and herbs and an infirmary garden for plants used in medicine. A typical medieval garden, as represented in medieval manuscript paintings, was enclosed by a wall, fence, trellis or hedge, and generally subdivided into neat geometric units with straight paths in between.

The earliest firsthand gardening account comes to us from a 9th-century monk named Walafrid Strabo. His Hortulus or “Little Garden” was a poem dedicated to his garden in which he describes his pleasure at working with the soil and tending plants.

More HERE.

Walahfried Strabo’s poem Hortulus, dating from the first half of the 9th century, is probably the   first  comprehensive   statement   in   Western

Christian civilization concerning garden design....

The medieval herb gardens can be proved to derive from medical pamphlets of late antiquity. Strabo studied the writings of the statesman and scholar Cassiodor (487-583), who had founded a monastery at Scyllaceum near the Messina Straits. There he had also set up a vivarium (fish-breeding pond), an animal enclosure, and a herb garden. In his main work, the Institutiones, he refers to both Roman and Greek culture. His pharmacological studies were based on the herbal of Dioscurides Pedanios, a lst-century Greek doctor. This herbal was re-issued at the beginning of the 6th century, and  provided  with  illustrations  in  a  Byzantian

workshop in Constantinople. Today, the codex is kept in Vienna and is therefore known as the "Vienna Dioscorides." It contains a herbarium with illustrations of 435 plants.

ASpoonfulOfThyme has photos of a medieval herb garden HERE.
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related item: Father Z notes that the herb basil was traditionally associated with the Holy Cross (feastday Sept 14).

According to a pious legend, the Empress Saint Helena found the location of the True Cross by digging for it under a colony of basil. Basil plants were reputed to have sprung up at the foot of the Cross where fell the Precious Blood of Christ and the tears of the Mother of Sorrows.
A sprig of basil was said to have been found growing from the wood of the True Cross.

On the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross it is customary in the East to rest the Holy Cross on a bed of basil before presenting it to the veneration of the faithful.

and Father adds this traditional prayer:

Almighty and merciful God,
deign, we beseech You, to bless
Your creature, this aromatic basil leaf.
Even as it delights our senses,
may it recall for us the triumph of Christ, our Crucified King
and the power of His Precious Blood
to purify and preserve us from evil
so that, planted beneath His Cross,
we may flourish to Your glory
and spread abroad the fragrance of His sacrifice.
Who is Lord forever and ever.

Father Z also has a post with this photo sent to him by an Orthodox priest of using the Basil with the cross for the feast day.


The feast day is pretty well ignored in the western church nowadays, but it is still celebrated by the orthodox churches:

This is a holy day of fasting and repentance. On this day the faithful make dedication to the crucified Lord and pledge their faithfulness to him by making prostrations at the Lords feet on the life creating Cross. For the feast, the Cross is placed on a tray surrounded by flowers or branches of basil, and placed in the center of the Church for veneration. 

 more HERE.

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Basil has many uses as an herb, not just in Europe but in India

  where it is called "holy Basil"...

Factoid: Growing it in a garden is supposed to discourage mosquitoes.

there are all sorts of basil, of course...when I moved here, the only herb that grew well in our garden from the seeds I brought was lemon Basil.
Alas, no one used pesto, so I stopped growing it.

here is an article on the various forms of Basil used in Thailand. 
including holy Basil and Lemon basil.

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In the Philippines, however, the "Santa Cruz" festival is held at the end of May..
In recent years, it has degenerated to a celebration of beautiful girls and lost it's religious character, although villages and barangays named Santa Cruz still have the traditional fiesta with mass and the parades of the saints and statues.
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I'm not sure why they changed the day, but since we are in the midst of a busy rice harvest, the move to May (right before the monsoon season and rice planting time) is more convenient.