Le livre des prouffitz champestres et ruraulx de Pierre de Crescens. Vol. I: Introduction et texte (livres I–VIII), ed. Fleur Vigneron. Les Classiques Français du Moyen Âge, 199. Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2023, 805 pp.

For many medievalists, it is a bit hard to remember that life in the pre-modern world was just a little more than only the Arthurian court, the crusades, the discourse on love, the Gothic cathedral, and the like. In reality, people had to eat, to get clothing, and to find shelter. Those mundane aspects tend to be forgotten easily, but they were really the essentials, and we would do a grave disservice if we ignored them in all our well-intended studies in the field of literature, history, art history, or philosophy. No monastery could exist without a garden; all peasants ran their own gardens; the courts had gardens, and the urban dwellers certainly also needed fresh vegetables and fruit, just as today. But a garden requires care, expertise, labor, and resources. Hence, already in antiquity and then throughout the Middle Ages, treatises were written addressing gardening, such as the one by Pierre de Crescens, or rather Pietro de’ Crescenzi (ca. 1230/33–ca. 1320), a highly regarded Bolognese jurist, now most famous for his horticultural discussions recorded in his