What is the garden? Is it the soul? Is it some other source of nourishment? What are the lilies? Traditional exegesis of the Song of Songs – from Gregory of Nyssa in the late fourth century through to the Cistercian John of Ford in the early thirteenth – has seen the garden as the soul in which the Lord delights, the lilies being the virtues, the bed of aromatics being the fruitful repose of contemplation (Gregory, Sermon 15; John, Sermons 44-5). And yet Ivan Illich’s masterful book In the Vineyard of the Text (1993) shows, scripture itself, in this period, was increasingly seen as a garden.