Florilegia from Chapter 7
Jul. 2nd, 2020 05:38 pmFlorilegia/Florilegium (I find Latin plurals confusing) is the practice of collecting “sparklets” (or particularly beautiful blossoms for the metaphor in the flori part of Florilegium - our modern idea of a flowery words is a bit different and prolly not a compliment) from the text. Words, phrases and sentences that particularly resonate with us personally and seem particularly important and or beautiful.
Which is obviously something that has been practiced in any time and place where there has been the idea of a Sacred Text! I’m thinking about being a teenager and coping out fragments of song lyrics into a notebook or people choose quotes to make into jewellery or even get tattooed onto their bodies. But this way of practicing Fliorilegia is particularly influenced by medieval Christian Monks copying sparklets from rare and precious handwritten manuscripts and some Jewish approaches to the psalms.
Once we’ve founds our sparklets we can share why they are particularly important to us and then try putting them together to create a new mini Sacred Text. Seeing how they fit together in different orders can be interesting and illuminating.
There’s obviously an overlap with the idea of Marginalia and looking at what people underline and write into there books as a potentially Sacred way of engaging with the text.
As ever there’s a bit more detail over on the HPST Resources page but even though it’s a really common practice I don’t think that historically there’s been as much discussion of and meta-commentary on it as a Sacred Practice as there has been with say Lectio Divina...
On the HPST Podcast each host chooses one sparklet each from the chapter and obviously that way of engaging with each other’s ideas leads to a richer understanding of the text. Here I think it’ll work best if I choose a couple of sparklets to post here and then write more about them (and try flirting them together) in the comments. Hopefully some of you will also share your own sparklets and we can discuss them further in the comments.
So from this chapter I’ve chosen/found resonance with:
And
Which is obviously something that has been practiced in any time and place where there has been the idea of a Sacred Text! I’m thinking about being a teenager and coping out fragments of song lyrics into a notebook or people choose quotes to make into jewellery or even get tattooed onto their bodies. But this way of practicing Fliorilegia is particularly influenced by medieval Christian Monks copying sparklets from rare and precious handwritten manuscripts and some Jewish approaches to the psalms.
Once we’ve founds our sparklets we can share why they are particularly important to us and then try putting them together to create a new mini Sacred Text. Seeing how they fit together in different orders can be interesting and illuminating.
There’s obviously an overlap with the idea of Marginalia and looking at what people underline and write into there books as a potentially Sacred way of engaging with the text.
As ever there’s a bit more detail over on the HPST Resources page but even though it’s a really common practice I don’t think that historically there’s been as much discussion of and meta-commentary on it as a Sacred Practice as there has been with say Lectio Divina...
On the HPST Podcast each host chooses one sparklet each from the chapter and obviously that way of engaging with each other’s ideas leads to a richer understanding of the text. Here I think it’ll work best if I choose a couple of sparklets to post here and then write more about them (and try flirting them together) in the comments. Hopefully some of you will also share your own sparklets and we can discuss them further in the comments.
So from this chapter I’ve chosen/found resonance with:
I suppose the coach can be mended, and the horses seem as fresh as ever
And
please, oh please, kind sir, don’t take us away without our little cat
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}