The short pre-history of parks

The word "park" can refer to various things, but it always suggests a green open space of some kind, with turf and trees (Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 3). Medieval monastery gardens of the 9th and 10th century France can be called as predecessors of public parks, not only chronologically but also in their purpose as they were meant to provide a place for self-restoration and for moral improvement for the monks working there (Sennett 1994, 183-184), those also being the justification arguments of the later public parks.

Cloister sanctuaries were tied symbolically and practically to the veneration of the Nature, specifically to creating and maintaining the garden contained within the cloister's walls. Christian meditation set in the cloister garden drew upon the imagery of the Garden of Eden, which set the scene for thinking about the human self-destructiveness that led to Adam and Eve's expulsion from the garden. For the monks who first dwelt in rural sanctuaries, tending a garden was meant to be a restorative act, a Christian's restitution of Adam and Eve's exile. Nicolas of Clairvaux "divided all creation into five regions: the world, purgatory, hell, heaven, and the paradisus claustralis." The last of the five, the cloister garden, aimed to be paradise regained on earth. To labor here was to regain one's dignity.

The paradisus claustralis of the monastery contrasted in this to the Islamic "paradise gardens", as described in the Koran, and planted in cities like Cordoba. The Islamic gardens sought to provide relief from labor; when William of Malmesbury wrote about the gardens of Thorney Abbey, by contrast, he declared that "not a particle of the soil is left to lie fallow... in this
place cultivation rivals nature; what the latter has forgotten the former brings forth."

The labor of the monks was focused on the garden. Christian monastic reformers thought that the work in the garden not only restored the worker to the original garden, but also created spiritual discipline; the harder the work, the greater its moral value. The monk's labors
in the garden came to be silent labor, as observed in the garden by Fransiscans and the Cistercians, as well as many Benedictines. The elements of garden design were thought in the medieval era to create a place that encouraged introspection. If the urban Christian garden of medieval Paris meant to renew humanity in its state of grace before the Fall, those who worked outside the sanctuary seemed to wander in an urban wilderness. (Sennett 1994, 179-185.)