Hortus Conclusus at Le Grand Seminaire

Years ago, I visited Le Grand Seminaire, it is where my great great uncles, Fr. Martin Callaghan and his brother Fr. James Callaghan are buried. It is also where both men were educated in the late 1800s and I've always felt that attending this school was a great opportunity for both men; they were born into the working class, they became priests, educated men, and they served their community. A few years after this first visit I went on a tour of the seminary; it is located on Sherbrooke Street West near Atwater. From the street you can see the twin towers, built in the late 1600s, they were a place of safety when Indigenous people might attack the compound; it was where they would hide in the towers.

Note the image of Christ at the top left
of this image; this hortus conclusus corresponds
better to the garden at Le Petite Seminaire
in Old Montreal

 

On my first visit to Le Grand Seminaire  I walked around the grounds; there is a kind of enclosed garden or green space; you can see the stone walls that surround the place below. There is a rectangular pool, see below, that had been neglected. I suspect that access to the grounds is now more difficult as the old seminary has become quite a prestigious private high school. 

Le Grand Seminaire from Sherbrooke Street West






These twin towers can be seen from Sherbrooke Street West

Drawing of Le Grand Seminaire from 1600s

Front entrance; these photographs were taken in the 1990s

The grounds and parking lot

Historical photograph from 1905, the pond or basin in better days

Historical photograph from 1913



This is is the man-made pond on the grounds of the Grand Seminaire

Hortus conclusus, the enclosed garden

From the street

From the street

From the street

When my son, who is a Medievalist, saw the fences around my garden he mentioned "hortus conclusus", the concept of the enclosed garden from the Middle Ages; this garden design has its origin and attribution to the Virgin Mary but gardens are also a part of our spiritual history, beginning with the Garden of Eden and the fall of Man. The hortus conclusus is an archetypal garden, it has that special quality of spiritual authenticity that gives the garden a greater significance, as a place that resonates in both our Christian spirituality and the spirituality of other religions. So, this is no happenstance that I have these walls enclosing the garden; this is a way of finding spirituality, or God, in the physical and material world, and it is the reason I find such happiness in having the garden enclosed with these walls. 

And so, the hortus conclusus is a place of peace, and one wants to be there because it is a place of quiet, an entrance to the spiritual, and a place of temenos. All of this is foreign to our contemporary life, but people in the past, especially the Middle Ages, understood the meaning of the enclosed garden.