Among the many changes to life in late antique Italy was the rise in
town houses which included productive food gardens. Letters of Pope
Gregory I describe several properties which were endowed with food
gardens in order to the support the religious households located in the
middle of Rome, where they were unable -- or chose not -- to buy onions
and lettuces at market. These houses that Gregory’s letters describe
find echoes in other cities of Italy in the sixth century. Urban
gardening in late antiquity was not simply a by-product of a breakdown
in urban density and the disappearance of markets for everyday foods,
the widely recognised phenomenon of 'ruralisation' of the city. Two
intellectual elements also played roles in the phenomenon, lending it a
conceptual justification: the legacy of estate management and the value
of self-sufficiency for religious communities especially monastic ones
and — to a lesser degree — the value of the garden for medicinal
purposes and the developing role of religious households as places of
curing and sustenance. This paper will discuss the evidence for clerical
and monastic fruit and vegetable production in the cities of Italy,
evaluating the change in functions of the cities against other cases of
episcopal or monastic sponsorship of urban production.
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