286 gardens
the most common and popular adult medieval game.
Other games were imported during the Middle Ages.
Chess was introduced from Asia to Europe around the
year 1000. Card games developed in the later 14th cen-
tury, as well as team games linked to feast days such as
“Shrove Tuesday football,” which was a cross between
rugby and soccer and was popular in Italy. The rules of
these games can sometimes be surmised from the scant
surviving evidence.
Most adult games were played for stakes, from a few
coins to enormous sums. The nobility played them as an
element of prestige and distinction. Displays of wealth
played primary roles in their popularity and practice. In
courtly literature playing chess was often an attribute of a
noble life.
Games could become social problems that drained
the wealth and ruined the reputation of unsuccessful
players. Faced with this social problem, the authorities
did not respond clearly or consistently in their regula-
tion. Anxious to maintain order, civil powers tried to pro-
hibit certain ludic activities. Eventually they gave up and
chose to profit from them by regulating their conduct and
taxing games. The church confined its prohibitions to
clerics alone, tempering its prohibitions, and authorized
athletic games, tolerated intellectual ones, and forbade
games of chance or fortune.
Further reading:John Marshall Carter, Sports and
Pastimes of the Middle Ages (Lanham, Md.: University
Press of America, 1988); John Marshall Carter, Medieval
Games: Sports and Recreations in Feudal Society (New
York: Greenwood Press, 1992); Sally Wilkins, Sports and
Games of Medieval Cultures(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 2002).
gardens(Rauda) Real and imaginary gardens played
essential roles in medieval literature, religious thought,
and iconography. There were two aspects of the visions of
gardens in the Middle Ages: an earthly Paradise and
enclosed garden described in the Song of Songs, often
used to symbolize the chastity of the Virgin MARY. The
earthly Paradise and hortus conclusus(the enclosed garden)
were often confused in medieval iconography, both
shown as fortified gardens. The gardens of the Islamic
world shared the late classical Roman ideal of a place
graced with water to provide a space for meditation and
serenity. They were presented as such in the HEAVENor
PARADISEof the QURAN. The gardens of Islamic Spain
became influential in evolving ideas of gardens in the rest
of Europe.
Gardens were commonly portrayed in literature,
especially in courtly prose and poetry. The most famous,
scandalous, and controversial of all literary gardens was
that in the ROMANCEof the Rose.It involved the sexual
symbolism of an enclosed garden or space linked with
profane love.
MONASTIC, ARISTOCRATIC,
AND MARKET GARDENS
Gardens were important in the lives of monastic estab-
lishments as spiritual areas of retreat and contemplation.
The plans of the abbeys usually provided for three types
of gardens, a kitchen vegetable garden, a medicinal herb
garden, and a fruit orchard also doubling as the abbey’s
cemetery. These medieval monastic and aristocratic gar-
dens, just like those described in literature or portrayed
in art, often had a geometrical pattern of flower beds and
mixtures of vegetables, aromatic plants, and flowers.
They might include fortified enclosures, elaborate foun-
tains, trees, trick hydraulic devices to spray the unwary,
and places intended for pleasure and relaxation. Market
gardens cultivated by citizens abounded outside towns in
the later Middle Ages and played important roles in sup-
plying food and industrial plants, producing flax, hemp,
dye plants, or SAFFRON.
See alsoALHAMBRA;GRANADA;AL-MADINA ALZAHIRA.
Further reading:David R. Coffin, The Villa in the Life
of Renaissance Rome(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1979); John Harvey, Medieval Gardens(Beaver-
ton, Ore.: Timber, 1981); Elisabeth B. MacDougall and
Richard Ettinghausen, eds., The Islamic Garden(Washing-
ton, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard Univer-
sity, 1976); Attilio Petruccioli, ed., Gardens in the Time of
the Great Muslim Empires: Theory and Design(Leiden: E.
J. Brill, 1997); D. Fairchild Ruggles, Gardens, Landscape,
and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain(University Park:
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); Norah
M. Titley and Frances Wood, Oriental Gardens: An Illus-
trated History(San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992).Gascony (Wasconia) SeeAQUITAINE.Gawain and the Gawain romances According to
Arthurian literature and myth, Gawain was the eldest son
of King Lot of Orkney, King ARTHUR’S nephew. With
Lancelot he was one of the most important knights of the
ROUNDTABLE. He also appeared in medieval literature
with several names: Yvain, Gauvain, Gawein, Gawan,
Walwanus, Walewein, and Gwalchmai.
The poets initially saw Gawain as a hero without par-
allel for courtesy and valor. In Old French Arthurian lit-
erature, the character of Gawain was progressively
devalued and made more human. He was surpassed by
LANCELOT. However, nowhere in the romance tradition
was any doubt cast on Gawain’s virtuous qualities.
See also CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES;MALORY,THOMAS;
PERCEVAL;WOLFFRAM VONESCHENBACH.
Further reading:J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon,
eds., revised by Norman Davis, Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967); Ross
Gilbert Arthur, Medieval Sign Theory and Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight(Toronto: University of Toronto Press,