Saints and simples - Medicinal plants between earth and heaven

The Bible is dotted with herbs, fruits, spices, flowers, sprouts, seeds, branches, shoots, trees, greenery, sowing, harvesting and reaping.

Many images are often borrowed from nature and the plant kingdom in particular.

Many saints make reference to Creation. Think of St. Francis of Assisi, for whom God is reflected in each of his creatures. To Saint Hildegard of Bingen, who spoke so much about Creation and revealed some of its secrets. To Saint Bernard, when he wrote: "You will find something more in the forests than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what no master will tell you."

From the priest's garden to the garden of the monasteries, through the garden of the Olives; from St. Albert to St. Zachariah the author allows us to discover medicinal plants through the biblical, spiritual and religious world.

Easter flower, tree of paradise, Virgin's herb, Judas tree, thorn of Christ... so many plants to measure how close botany, medicine and spirituality are.

Yves Vanopdenbosch is the director of the Lessines School of Plants (EPL), where he teaches Traditional European Phytotherapy. His love for plants and people is contagious. His talents as a teacher and his spirit of synthesis are at the service of an energetic vision of health, of Man and of Life. Contact with nature and silent prayer are his baths of youth. In this work, he brings together his two passions: medicinal plants and spirituality. He is guided by a permanent search for the path of the golden mean which, avoiding extremes, brings us back to our point of balance.