Dal lignum vitae all’arbor scientiarum. Note per una simbolica vegetale nel pensiero medievale protesa all’enciclopedismo moderno

Abstract

If the mysticism of the Lignum Vitae relates the heart of Christian faith to the vegetal world in the salient fact of the Cross experience, the early life of the religious orders leads to modulate the relationship to the natural environment in the double register of active (cultivation and care) and passive-receptive (contemplation in letting-be) forms. The metaphorical vegetal elaboration of the inner life proceeds in parallel with the experiments in conceptual systematisation, where plant physiology itself in its capacity for structural (arbor) and associative (hortus) organisation is spent as a theoretical locus for rethinking experience as a vitally dynamic organism and for the elaboration of the great encyclopaedic taxonomies of the modern age.