Chapter XX: THE GIRLHOOD OF MARY, VIRGIN (Dante Gabriel Rossetti) 286 (3)

The olive naturally appears as an attribute in allegorical figures of Peace. One of the earliest and most famous of these figures is in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s great fresco entitled ‘Good Government.’[117] The golden-haired Peace, who wears a white robe, is crowned with olive, and carries an olive branch in her hand. She has a beauty of her own, but compared with the more virile figures in the composition, Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance and Justice, she is a little heavy and inert, a little wanting in interest, as the citizens perhaps would have found their daily life were they condemned to days of peace.

In small, fierce Siena the olive was a very favourite symbol and found more frequently than any other. One of the most curious characteristics of religious art is the inexactitude with which it reflects a people’s mood, for the ideal upon the wall above the altar is often just precisely that to which they do not strive. When the Medici were in power and Florentine social life was at its worldliest, simplicity and purity, almost austerity, were demanded of the artist, and the lily was the favourite symbol. Murillo painted Madonnas to the Church’s order, sweet and forgiving, kind to indulgence, almost voluptuous, at a moment when not only the devotions of Jews and heretics but the private life of every citizen of Seville was under stern control. And in Seville, with inquisitorial fires blazing, the Virgin had as attribute the rose of love and charity. So the turbulent Sienese, who, when no enemy knocked at the gates, fought with one another, loved a still and peaceful art. It was conservative, for they cared for no novelty, no variety of subject, pose or action. And their favourite symbol was the olive branch of peace. The angel Gabriel almost invariably carries olive,[118] Saint John the Evangelist[119] and Saint Ansano,[120] their own saint, both hold branches of it, and it crowns the blonde curls of many a little angel.

In representations of the first and third persons of the Holy Trinity the olive branch is very rare. Upon some ancient crucifixes, however, where a hand holding a wreath represents the Eternal Father, the wreath, though usually of laurel, in some instances is formed of olive. In the Crucifix of the tenth century, known as the Crucifix of Lothair,[121] the wreath is distinctly of olive, but since it encircles the Holy Dove the olive is perhaps equally the attribute of the Holy Ghost. In the Crucifix upon the Manual of Prayer of Charles the Bald,[122] the wreath is of laurel and there is no dove.

Mabillon speaks of a group of the Trinity in human form, sculptured by order of Abelard at the Paraclete. In it the Father wore a closed crown, the Son a crown of thorns, and the Holy Ghost a crown of olive. The group has long since disappeared, and there seems no other instance of the Holy Ghost in human form being represented with the olive. A dove bearing an olive twig could not be an emblem of the Holy Ghost unless the bird’s head were encircled with a halo.

But Christian art uses the ancient symbol of peace repeatedly when illustrating Christ’s life upon earth. First we find the angel Gabriel bringing to the Virgin a branch of olive as token that his message is of peace. Sometimes he is also crowned with olive. He comes crowned with peace, and the branch in his hand foreshadows the reconciliation between God and man which is to come by the Child whose advent he announces.

The olive branch took precedence of the lily as the symbol carried by the announcing angel. Originated probably by Simone Martini, one of its earliest instances is in his Annunciation now in the Uffizi. In the Florentine school the simple stick carried by the herald angel evolved, as we have seen, through the fleur-de-lys to the stem of lilies. In Siena it was the meaning of the wand, rather than the wand itself, which was developed. The wand simply marked that Gabriel was a herald; that it was a message of peace and goodwill which he brought was shown by the grey-green leaves of the olive. As a symbol it was by no means of Simone Martini’s own finding, for it was a very usual political symbol of the day, but he seems to have been the first to have placed it in the angel Gabriel’s hand, and the school of painting in Siena whole-heartedly and faithfully adopted his device. The general trend of Sienese symbolism was to direct devotion to the incarnate Godhead rather than to Mary of Nazareth, and it is of Him, as the bringer of peace on earth, that the branch of olive tells, as elsewhere the white lily proclaims the virginity of the coming motherhood.

Then again, on that night when the angels sang of peace on earth and goodwill towards men--

... ‘the meek-eyed Peace,
She crown’d with Olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphear.’[123]

In one of the most naïve and fascinating of all Botticelli’s pictures[124] the angels crowned with olive hold up branches of it against the golden sky. Other angels, half distraught with joy, run with waving olive-sprays to greet the astonished shepherds.

The same subject is much more soberly treated by Sano di Pietro.[125] One angel, flying through the twilight, brings a twig of olive to the shepherd who is sleeping on the hillside.

There are many symbolical fruits placed in the hand of the Infant Christ. Botticelli paints a pomegranate, Mabuse a quince, Memling an apple, Il Moretto a pear, and each represents the individual artist’s conviction as to what really was the unnamed fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which grew in the midst of Eden. The placing of the olive, symbol of reconciliation, where it might be confused with the fatal fruit which made that reconciliation so imperative was carefully avoided, and we rarely find the olive branch in the hand of the Child when seated on His mother’s knee. And there was still another reason. He had Himself said: ‘I come not to bring peace upon earth, but the sword,’ therefore the earlier and more literal artists refused Him the symbol of peace, even as divine peace. There are, however, instances of the Christ-Child with the olive branch, of which the most important is the ‘Holy Family’ by Mantegna.[126] The Christ, a beautiful and dignified childish figure of three or four years old, stands on a sort of pedestal with the little Saint John. He holds a branch of olive in His right hand, upright like a sceptre, and in the other is the crystal orb which symbolizes sovereignty. Saint Joseph stands behind and the Virgin lays a rosebud at her Son’s feet.

The Bringer of Divine Peace was an aspect of the incarnate Son of God on which Mantegna laid emphasis. In the ‘Holy Family,’ now in Dresden, painted about the same period, the little Saint John holds a branch of olive (from which two tiny side-sprays grow naturally in the form of a cross) as an attribute of the Holy Child.

The olive branches of the ‘Entry into Jerusalem,’ like the olives of Gethsemane, were only accidentally allegorical. The villagers of the Mount of Olives cut down branches (presumably olive branches) ‘and strewed them in the way.’ With palm branches they would salute any popular leader, and it is scarcely to be believed that they definitely selected the olive and palm with the full understanding of the symbolism which the Christian Church attaches to them.

‘The olive branches signify his office as peace-bringer and the palms his victory over Satan.’[127]

There is in the Catacombs a figure of the Virgin Mary praying between two olive trees. Her name is inscribed above her head. She is standing with raised hands in the early attitude of prayer, and these olive trees apparently symbolize ‘the peace of God which passeth all understanding.’ But after the twelfth century the Church had identified the personality of the Virgin with the figure of Wisdom eulogized in Ecclesiasticus, and the olives which are sometimes found beside her refer to the verse which compares her to

‘A fair olive tree in a pleasant field.’[128]

Botticelli painted a beautiful ‘Madonna of the Olives’ for the Church of S. Spirito. Vasari writes of it: ‘In S. Spirito in Florence he has painted a picture for the Chapel of the Bardi which is carefully executed and well finished, where there are some olives and palms painted with great love.’[129] In another picture by Botticelli[130] angels hold above the Virgin’s head a lightly-framed crown of gold which is decorated with fresh sprays of lily, palm and olive.

The most popular of modern Italian representations of the Virgin and Child is very justly that painted by Niccolò Barabino[131] and entitled ‘_Quasi Oliva Speciosa in Campis_.’ Large branches of olive, painted also ‘with great love,’ are placed about the feet of the sweet-faced Mother, who peeps through her heavy white veil, and they almost hide the fruit of temptation which lies on the ground beneath.

_Martin Schöngauer_

GABRIEL CROWNED WITH OLIVE BRINGS THE MESSAGE OF RECONCILIATION

(Print Room, Alte Pinakothek, Munich)]

One of the _putti_ which fly round the feet of the Madonna in a Spanish ‘Immaculate Conception’ usually carries a branch of olive, and that, too, bears the same meaning. As an olive tree in a pleasant field she brings peace and consolation to mankind. She is the ‘Mater Consolatrix.’

Sodoma painted a stately figure of Saint Victor,[132] with sword and palm, and the little rose-crowned child-angel who supports his shield holds above it a branch of olive, symbol of the peace which to a Christian warrior should be the end of victory.

The same idea dominates the ‘Judith’[133] of Botticelli. The slayer of her country’s enemy returns thoughtfully home, satisfied but not exultant. In her right hand is her sword, carried low; upright, in her left, a branch of olive. Though her deed was bloody, she had brought peace to the land.

Flemish art neglects the olive, and except in the drawings of Martin Schöngauer,[134] whose grave gentle Gabriels wear olive crowns, it is seldom seen in Germany. The reason is easy to guess. The olive tree not growing in the North, the painters would be at a loss to find a branch from which to draw, and the people, unacquainted with the leaf, would scarcely recognize its hidden message of peace. In France it is seen less rarely. On the sculptured portal of the Cathedral of Amiens there is a curious rendering of the parable of the Wise and the Foolish Virgins. A withered olive tree, without fruit or leaves, grows by the side of the foolish maidens, and a healthy olive tree, laden with fruit and ready with abundance of oil, is beside those maidens who were wise.

But on the whole the olive is an Italian, and more particularly a Sienese, symbol, though Botticelli also loved the silvery leaves. In his magnificent ‘Pallas taming the Centaur,’[135] painted for Lorenzo de’ Medici, to commemorate his diplomatic victory over the King of Naples and the League in 1480, olive encircles the head of the lovely goddess and is wreathed about her dress. The surface meaning of the picture is that, by the arts of peace taught them by the beneficent goddess, men were enabled to overcome the savagery of nature, typified by the centaur. But it also shows, allegorically, how the wise statesmanship of Lorenzo (with whose badge, rings interlaced, the gown of Pallas is ‘semé’) guided the war-loving League, here figured as the centaur, into the ways of Peace.

X

THORNS

Thorns and thorn branches signify in general grief and tribulation, the word tribulation itself being derived from a Latin root signifying thistles or briars. But, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, thorn bushes signify the minor sins, and growing briars or brambles those greater ones, ‘quæ pungunt conscientiam propriam,’ etc.

He is supported in his opinion by Saint Anselm, and both saints explain in this sense the words of Saint Paul, who wrote to the Hebrews:

‘That which beareth thorns and briars is rejected and is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned.’

The crown of thorns with which jesting soldiers crowned the Christ was in itself an emblem, or at least a parody, of an emperor’s festal rose-crown. According to _The History of the Crown of Thorns of the Holy One_,[136] the first crown with which Jesus Christ was crowned was made of white-thorn and was removed before the Crucifixion and replaced by a second _de juncis marinis_.

But in the great majority of scenes from the Passion the crown is merely formed of large thorns without any attempt to realize any particular natural growth. In Germany, where Entombments and Pietàs were more often painted than in other countries, the crown is frequently green, in allusion, it is suggested, to the words: ‘If these things be done in the green wood, what shall be done in the dry?’

In these pictures the crown of thorns, if not still upon the Saviour’s head, is usually placed very prominently in the foreground, marking to some extent the divinity of the dead Christ, for, since life had fled, there could be no halo.

In Northern art the crown of thorns remains always unchanged, the symbol of Christ’s sufferings, but in at least one Italian Pietà,[137] the dry prickles round the dead Christ’s brow have bloomed with delicate white briar-roses--an exquisite figure of Love’s triumph over Pain.

Sometimes, in pathetic forecast, the Child Christ has the crown of thorns hung on His tiny wrist[138] or plays with it as with a toy, and in a very charming picture,[139] with less poignant and more pleasing symbolism, a waiting child-angel stands by with a wreath of the blue sea-holly.

In Spain the Christian faith was stern. Faith and suffering were more closely allied than faith and joy. They had no ‘jesters of the Lord,’ and their saints glorified God by self-inflicted pain rather than by acts of mercy. So their Christ in childhood was not a smiling, unconscious _bambino_, but a sad-faced child who wounds Himself with the rose-twigs which He twists into a crown. The rose-thorn tears His flesh but the roses lie beside Him and round His feet, for His griefs and sufferings were the outcome of His divine love. Both Zurburan[140] and Alonzo Cano[141] painted fine pictures on this theme.

_Zurburan_ _Photo Anderson_

THE CROWN OF THORNS

(Museo Provinciale, Seville)]

There is a ‘Coronation of the Virgin’ by Hans Burgkmair,[142] painted in 1507, where beneath a cross-surmounted imperial crown Christ wears the Crown of Thorns. In several of the French fifteenth-century miniatures of the Trinity in Glory, God the Son still wears the Crown of Thorns, but this combination of the two crowns is rare. It was, however, in reverent remembrance of the thorn-crowned King of the Jews that the Crusader, Godfrey de Bouillon, twisted a thorn-branch round his coronet when he was crowned King of Jerusalem. His bronze statue, wearing this double crown, stands with those of the other Christian kings guarding the tomb of Maximilian in Innsbruck Cathedral.

Among modern symbolists, Holman Hunt has used thorns with finest effect. In his ‘Light of the World’ the Saviour wears again the double crown, the thorns which symbolize His sufferings intertwisted with the golden crown of His divinity. He stands with the lantern, which is the light of His Gospel, before the closed door of the human heart, a door all overgrown and blocked by the weeds and briars which are the symbols of sin and things evil. There is the poisonous hemlock, the ivy which kills the tree that it embraces, thorns denoting the lesser sins, and the brambles which are the emblems of the greater ones. According to Raban Maur the bramble is also an emblem of the riches which destroy the soul.

In several modern pictures of ‘The Good Shepherd’ Christ is depicted as rescuing a lamb caught by its wool in the briars of the wilderness. The lamb, of course, is the emblem of an erring soul, and the briars represent those sins which hold it back from answering the Shepherd’s call.

In connection with the saints, the Crown of Thorns is not used symbolically, except when placed upon the head of Saint Catharine of Siena,[143] to indicate her austerities. According to the legend, Christ in a vision offered her a crown of roses or a crown of thorns and she chose the thorns. When it is carried by Saint Louis of France it is to recall the fact that it was he who brought to France, as her most precious relic, the Holy Crown itself.

The tonsure was originally instituted to keep fresh in the memory the Saviour’s Crown of Thorns. And in the ‘Paradise’ of Fra Angelico[144] the monks are crowned with roses. Thus the emblem reverted to the original symbol. The Crown of Thorns was the parody of the rose-crown, symbol of rejoicing; the tonsure the reverent imitation of the thorny wreath, and angels at the entrance of Paradise change the tonsure for a wreath of roses.

In early German art the Virgin is often found seated in a garden of which each flower has its significance. Behind and around her there is usually a sort of trellis or bower covered with roses. The roses have very pronounced thorns, and the thorns are accentuated to recall that Mary is the lily and the bride of the Canticles, the ‘Lily among thorns.’ In an Assumption of Seghers[145] one of the attendant _putti_ flies towards her with a single lily enclosed in branches covered with long-spiked thorns.

On the other hand, when the rose is the direct emblem, not the attribute of the Madonna, it has no thorns, for then it illustrates her title, ‘_rosa sine spina_.’

The Roman Breviary likens the Virgin to the burning thorn bush in which Jehovah revealed Himself to Moses and the simile was cited by Bishop Proclus in a Mary-sermon preached in the fifth century. Though enwrapped in the all-consuming flame of divine love, she yet remains unharmed. It is only in German art that this simile has been pictorially translated. German artists were familiar with the idea through Conrad von Würtzburg’s apostrophe to the Virgin:

‘In the thorn bush on the bare field
Moses, the hero of God
Saw in a glow of bright fire
The birth of our Saviour foreshadowed.
In the blast of the flame
It remained unaltered
As if neither leaf nor twig
Perceived the death-giving blaze.
In this we may recognize
The full magnificence of thy maidenhood.’[146]

And we find this burning Thorn Bush with the Ivory Tower, the Sealed Fountain, the Fleece of Gideon and other emblems of the Virgin, in the fifteenth-century renderings of the _Hortus Inclusus_ and in the background of the essentially German allegory of the Incarnation, known as the ‘Hunting of the Unicorn.’ There are some fine embroideries and tapestries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Bavarian National Museum,[147] in which the burning thorn bush, with the other symbols of the Virgin’s purity, are worked with most careful detail.

The burning bush, not particularly a thorn bush, but the ‘bush’ of our Authorized Version, is now the chosen emblem of the Church of Scotland.

There were neither thorns nor thistles in Eden. It was not till the day when Adam fell that God laid a curse upon the ground: ‘Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.’ Therefore thorns and thistles are in general the symbols of sin and death. A little German woodcut expresses eternal death with gruesome completeness: a skull, with the apple of damnation between its bare jaws, has round its brow a wreath of twisted thorns.

XI

THE PALM

The Romans took palms for their symbol of Victory. There is a sarcophagus in the Vatican on which is carved a Roman conqueror with captive barbarians kneeling before him, and the winged Victory who crowns him with laurel holds a palm in her left hand.

Simon Maccabees, after he had taken the Tower of Jerusalem, entered it ‘with thanksgiving, and branches of palm trees and with harps.’[148] And the seers of Scripture saw palms in heaven: ‘A great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds and people, and tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands.’[149] ‘These be they that have put off the mortal clothing and put on the immortal, and have confessed the name of God; now are they crowned and receive palms.’[150]

Palms were therefore the meed of martyrdom, the symbol of the martyrs’ victory over death.

‘... The angel said
God liketh thy request,
And bothe with the palme of martirdome,
Ye shallen come unto His blissful rest.’[151]

During the first three centuries of Christianity Christian art concerned itself almost exclusively with the events recounted in the Old and New Testaments and the Apocryphal Gospels. ‘But during the fourth century artists began to represent the acts of the martyrs, at the bidding of Saint Basil, who called to his aid illustrious painters of athletic combats, to paint with resplendent colours the martyr Barlaam, the crowned athlete, whom he found himself unable adequately to describe.... A fresco came to light in 1887, under the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo on the Celian Hill, which shows three Christians being put to death beneath the rule of Julian the Apostate, kneeling with eyes bound and hands tied behind their backs. This may be considered as the first representation of a martyrdom....’[152]

Sixtus III (432–440), as is shown by the inscription which is read above the principal door of Santa Maria Maggiore, had had the instruments of their martyrdom painted only beneath the feet of the martyrs.

‘Ecce tui testes uteri sibi proemia portant
Sub pedibusque jacet passio cuique sua.
Ferrum, flamma, ferae, fluvius, sævumque venenum
Tot tamen has mortes una corona manet.’[153]

Thus in the fourth century there were representations of martyrdoms, and in the fifth century single figures of the martyrs more or less idealized, but they apparently carried the crown of victory, ‘the crown of their high calling,’ not the palm. But though the crown was generally used, the palm of the primitive Christian Church was not forgotten, for, as Cassiodorus, writing at the beginning of the sixth century, points out, it was palms which, in the eyes of the people, indicated those strong athletes who were victorious, and advocates their use as a religious symbol.

Palms at this period seem to have been used as an emblem of the public games themselves. On the consular diptyches, the double tablets of ivory which a consul had carved to commemorate his entry into office, it was customary to put palms beneath the figure of the consul, among the bags of money and other objects that were supposed to represent the benefits which would accrue to the populace beneath his rule.

It was probably this secular use of the palm which excluded it from the symbolism of the Church during the early centuries, for it is palm trees not palm branches which are found in the early mosaics, notably those of S. Apollinare Nuova in Ravenna, where palm trees alternate with the figures round the frieze, and palm trees, according to St Ambrose, were not the symbol of victory but the emblem of the righteous man, ‘for its roots are upon the earth but its head is lifted towards the heavens.’

But by the thirteenth century the public games had dropped from Italian social life, and religious art reverted once more to the palm branch of the catacombs as the symbol of a martyr’s triumph over death. Durandus, writing about the year 1286, unites the different renderings of the palm’s significance. He says: ‘Martyrs are painted with the instruments of their torture and sometimes with palms, which signify victory, according to that saying:

‘“The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree; as a palm tree flourishes, so his memory shall be preserved.”’[154]

After the Renaissance martyrs were very generally depicted with palms, either in place of, or in addition to, the instruments of their martyrdom. They varied in size and shape, from the tiny closed palm no longer than a human hand, used by Cimabue,[155] to the magnificent pedestal of palm branches on which Carpaccio has set his ‘Saint Ursula in Glory.’[156] Saint Christopher, the giant saint, in consideration of his size, was always allowed a whole palm tree as his staff, but a whole palm tree, or the tiniest scrap of its foliage, carried exactly the same meaning.

The palm is also given occasionally to several saints who have not suffered a violent death, but have been conspicuous for their victory over pain and temptation; for instance, Saint Francis, Saint Catharine of Siena and Saint Clare.

Even in the Catacombs two palms are sometimes placed crossways, not on the tombs of martyrs only, but on other Christian tombs, to signify the victory of the cross. For life as a declared Christian in the early days of the faith was sufficiently difficult and perilous, even if it did not end in death at the hands of the executioner. In the same way the pilgrim who had overcome difficulties and encountered possible death on a journey of piety to the holy sepulchre was permitted to take the name of palmer when he ‘brings home his staff enwreathed with palm.’[157]

Meanwhile palms never fell into disuse as a secular symbol. When they appear on the seals and coins of emperors and kings they indicate entirely worldly power and authority, and it is not in recognition of sainthood that the winged genius presents Henri IV with palm and wreath of laurel in the fine allegorical picture of his ‘Entry into Paris after the Battle of Ivry.’[158]

In a hymn of Saint Augustine, Jesus Christ is designated the ‘Palma bellatorum,’ but, perhaps by reason of its pagan origin, and also because it has never been exclusively a religious symbol, Christ as the conqueror of sin and death is seldom depicted with the palm of victory. In a few devotional Crucifixions palms are placed crossways above the Saviour’s head, and very rarely it is seen in the hand of the newly-risen Christ. He almost invariably carries instead the banner of the Resurrection with a scarlet cross upon a white ground. In one of the rare representations[159] where He holds a palm He holds also the banner in His other hand, and it is striking how the adding of the lesser symbol to the greater, an error the early masters carefully avoided, detracts from the dignity of the figure.

In the four canonical gospels, palms as a symbol are only mentioned once, the occasion being the entry of Jesus Christ ‘riding lowly upon an ass’ into Jerusalem before the feast of the Passover.

‘They ... took branches of palm trees and went forth to meet Him, and cried Hosanna!’

It was a respect paid to a reigning sovereign and would support the accusation of the Jews that He sought to make Himself a king.

The entry into Jerusalem is not an incident in the life of Christ which is used for devotional contemplation, though it occurred usually in the series of scenes from the life of Christ which were frequent in pre-Renaissance art, executed in carved wood, ivory and marble; and in the hands of the villagers of the Mount of Olives the palms signified, of course, simply triumph, for they had not yet gained the full Christian meaning of victory through the Cross.

In representations of the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, the palms are merely a historical detail, but it is a true symbol, in defiance of the probable fact, when the Saviour Himself is represented carrying the palm, as in the _Biblia Pauperum_ of 1440.[160] It is then purely a symbol of His triumph over sin and death.

In this same edition of the _Biblia Pauperum_ the palm is also, strangely enough, placed in the hand of Christ in the Ecce Homo; the ‘reed in His right hand’ set there in mockery, changed to the victor’s palm.

Occasionally the palm is given to the angel Gabriel when he comes from Heaven to announce the Saviour’s approaching birth. ‘Ave’ is his salutation to the Virgin, and in Roman fashion, as in salutation to a queen, he kneels with a lifted palm.

Spinello Aretino paints Gabriel with the palm. In his Annunciation at Arezzo[161] the angel is first seen above, flying with the palm from before God’s throne. Below he kneels, the palm in his hand, before the Virgin. Ambrogio Lorenzetti[162] and others follow the same tradition, but the palm was soon superseded in Siena by the olive and elsewhere by the lily, which was adopted by painters of all nations as the flower of the Annunciation.

The _Legenda Aurea_ of Jacobus de Voragine gives an account of the death and burial of the Virgin. The legend is said to be an invention of the Gnostics, and there is reason to believe of Lencius in the second century.[163]

Shortly before the Virgin’s death the angel Gabriel again appeared to her, and ‘he gave her a branch of palm from Paradise which he commanded should be borne before her bier.’

This branch of palm was clearly the symbol of victory over sin, since she had passed a full lifetime in perfect sinlessness and her surpassing sorrows had entitled her to the reward of martyrdom.

The Legend continues:

‘And the palm shone which he had left behind with great clearness; it was green like a natural branch and its leaves shimmered like the morning star.’ The palm, therefore, is distinguished from the palms of the martyrs by being encircled with stars. A Sienese artist paints seven,[164] the sacred number, corresponding with the Virgin’s sorrows; other artists give twelve, foreshadowing that there should be upon her head ‘a crown of twelve stars.’

Usually, in Italian pictures of the death or ‘Dormition’ of the Virgin, an angel, or Saint John the Evangelist, appears at her bedside carrying the palm. Northern art was almost entirely uninfluenced by the details given by Jacobus de Voragine of the Virgin’s death and burial, and though in Germany ‘The Death of the Virgin’ is a very favourite subject, the palm is never introduced. Saint John frequently, however, holds a lighted taper, and some form of the starry palm tradition may have drifted northwards, for the master of the Sterzing Altar[165] paints a cluster of star-shaped flowers in the hand of Saint John, who bends over the inanimate form of the Virgin.

Her body was carried by divine command to the valley of Jehoshaphat, ‘and John bare the palm branch in front of it.’

This scene, too, belongs to Italian art, and usually makes a beautiful processional group. Saint John, with the privilege of a son, walks before the bier. Duccio di Buoninsegna[166] paints him with the closed narrow palm of a martyr. In the charming little long-shaped picture by Fra Angelico[167] the palm has its fan-shaped leaves spread wide and it shines as if it were of gold.

In the ‘Immaculate Conception’ of the Spanish school one of the attendant _putti_ usually carries a palm. This may be the palm of victory over sin and death, or, following another authority, it may be a symbol of the Immaculate Conception, since it bears fruit at the same moment at which it flowers.[168]

According to Dr Anselm Salzer, O.S.B., ‘The palm, when referring to Mary, is a figure of her victory over the world and its temptations, of her everlasting virtue, of her sovereignty in heaven, of the protection that she offers to mankind, of her triumphant motherhood and of the beauty of her soul.’[169]

XII

THE ACANTHUS

One plant, the acanthus, which was very much used by pre-Renaissance artists, seems to have dropped later from the flora of symbolism.

_Photo Alinari_

THE ACANTHUS OF PARADISE

Mosaic of 13th century

(S. Clemente, Rome)]

Paradise was embowered, according to Saint Paulino da Nola, in _floriferi caeleste nemus paradisi_, and curving branches of acanthus indicate Heaven in the mosaics of the Baptistery of Ravenna and in the apse of St John Lateran. The Trees of Jesse and the Trees of Life in early art are also founded on the acanthus with various symbolical details niched in the branches. It surrounds the ‘Coronation’ and fills the space above the heads of the saints in the large central mosaic of S. Maria Maggiore[170] and of the fine mosaic in S. Clemente.[171] Venturi writes of the latter:

‘From the plant, whence rises the Cross, spring two green boughs which wreath over all the abside, enclosing with their spirals birds, flowers and saints to give the idea of the garden of felicity. In such a way, in the _Dugento_, at the distance of so many centuries, the verses of St Paulino da Nola are illustrated once more.’

But after the thirteenth century acanthus plants of vast proportions were no longer used to symbolize the gardens of Heaven. Heaven became a natural park-like place with fruit trees and flower-grown grass, except for its inhabitants, differing little from any princely garden. The plant was still used as the motive of much decoration, ecclesiastical and secular, but it was no longer seen in connection with devotional subjects as the representative plant of Heaven.

XIII

THE FLEUR-DE-LYS

Among the symbolical flowers of art, the golden fleurs-de-lys of France hold a high position. They were the arms of the King of France, ‘the eldest son of the Church’; they were borne by Saint Louis, the royal saint, and are typical of Christian royalty. Till the reign of Henry VIII they appeared upon the royal banner of England. Their origin, however, in spite of latter-day legends, was non-Christian, nor are they distinctively lilies. The learned M. de Beaumont, who has made a special study of the origins of the fleur-de-lys, or fleur-de-lis, as he prefers to spell it, has thus summed up his researches:

1. Armorial bearings did not commence in France till after the first Crusade.

2. It was in imitation of the Arabs and Persians that chivalry, tourneys and coats of arms were adopted in Europe and France.

3. This flower, which we name the fleur-de-lis, is the symbol of fecundity and royalty in ancient Egypt; it is also the sacred plant and tree of life, adopted with the same symbolical significance by the Assyrians and Persians, from whom it passed to Byzantium, to arrive at last in the Teutonic countries bordering on the East. It came at the same time to the Venetians, and the Lombards, the Spaniards and the French, and this significant form ornamented sceptres and crowns, the attributes of royalty.

4. When the laws of heraldry were at last established in France, after the Crusades, this symbol became the arms of the Kings of France, who entitled themselves _rois par excellence_. Later, the origin being forgotten and lost, the Celtic root of the word _li_ was ignored by the heralds. They regarded this symbolical ornament as the _lilium_ or garden lily, in itself a symbol of the Virgin, which for the most Christian Kings of France must have been a powerful motive for its adoption. Perhaps even a religious scruple may have been the cause of this transformation of the heathen into the Christian symbol. It was not till then that the heraldic writers, the greater part of whom belonged to the Church, forced themselves to recognize in the heraldic fleur-de-lys the form of the lilium, even though, in place of being _or_ upon _azur_ and having three petals, it ought in that case to have five petals and appear in _argent_.[172]

The monkish heralds found a very elaborate symbolism in the royal shield of France. The lilies were of gold, not silver, because in heraldry gold signifies the four kingly virtues, nobility, goodwill, charity and magnanimity.

They are three in number because this number is complete as is the Holy Trinity.... Also, the centre one signifies the Christian faith, that on the right the clergy, that on the left the army. There was no end to the hidden meanings.

‘_Enfin_,’ concludes Carlo Degrassalio of Carcassonne, ‘_ces trois fleurs-de-lis d’or sont sur un écu d’azur, parceque, de même que Dieu, le roi des rois, la puissance des puissances, a en quelque sorte pour écu le bleu firmament, resplendissant d’astres d’or; de même le roi de France, fils aîné de l’Eglise, porte pour la plus grande gloire du Christ, l’écu le plus noble, écu sur lequel les lis d’or brillent comme les astres sur un ciel serein._’[173]

Tradition says that the first appearance of the fleur-de-lys upon this earth was at the baptism of King Clovis. King Clovis was married to Clotilda, a Christian Princess of Burgundy, and her prayers having obtained the victory for France at a critical moment, he in gratitude became a Christian also. On the occasion of his baptism by Saint Rémi an angel presented him with three heavenly lilies.

In the Bedford Missal,[174] presented to Henry VI when he was crowned King of France, the legend is illustrated in miniature. The angel is shown receiving the three lilies in Heaven. He descends to earth and carries them to Saint Rémi, who reverently receives them in a napkin and gives them to Queen Clotilda. Lower down in the picture Clotilda presents the emblazoned shield bearing the three fleurs-de-lys to her husband. This legend might seem disproved by the decoration of fleurs-de-lys, which was already upon the great brazen bowl now in the Louvre, known as the Font of King Clovis, had not recent archæological investigation discovered the origin of the bowl to be neither Frankish nor Christian, and the fleurs-de-lys prove merely that the vessel was designed for royal use.

The confusion of the fleur-de-lys with the lily of Heaven and the flower of the Virgin gave it a semi-religious value, which excused its intrusion into the decoration of churches and church furniture. Sometimes it was used entirely heraldically, as the indication of the giver of a gift. It is used heraldically upon the silver shrine of Saint Simeon at Zara, the gift of Louis the Great and his wife, Elizabeth, where the fleur-de-lys of the coat of arms is repeated throughout the entire decoration. Heraldically, yet with some sense of the right placing of the flower which emblemizes purity, were the fleurs-de-lys embroidered with the word _amor_ upon the tiny shoes of the _Virgin de los Reyes_. The figure, which is still in Seville Cathedral, was a gift from Saint Louis of France to his brother saint, Ferdinand of Spain.

The flower is again heraldic upon the magnificent tomb of Robert the Wise,[175] the patron of Giotto and Simone Martini, where it decorates the background with fine effect, though it is perhaps too insistently repeated on crowns, sceptres, brooches and the floriation of crosses; but the constantly-recurring fleurs-de-lys in the architecture of the Cistercian Brotherhood appear quite definitely as the flower of the Virgin. She was the patron of the order, and their famous saint, Bernard of Clairvaux--‘her own faithful Bernard’--devoted his life to praising the ‘lily of the valley.’ Her impress is upon the stone of the Cistercian abbeys of England and of France, where repeatedly we find the ‘carved work of open lilies.’ But the Cistercians had no monopoly of the symbol. Almost naturally the stone work of French Gothic architecture seems to bud and break into the formal flower. In the great Church of Albi each upspringing slender shaft ends in a _fleur_, alternating with shields along the screen. In the rood-loft of St Florentin, in the town of that name, fleurs-de-lys form the centre of elaborate tracery, and in the rood-loft of the Madeleine at Troyes a very beautiful crowned fleur-de-lys fills the panels of the surmounting balustrade.

In the panel[176] designed for the tomb of Edward VI by Torregiano, and now forming part of the altar above Henry VII’s tomb, the rose and the lily meet in a charming Renaissance decoration, and the link between the heraldic and the symbolical seems to be supplied, for the personal badges of the king, the Tudor rose and the fleur-de-lys, are woven together in flowing lines, till, losing heraldic stiffness and personal application, they become the Rose of Love and the Lily of Purity, a fit decoration for the altar of God.

But it was not in France and England only that the fleur-de-lys was used as a symbol of royalty. In a Greek miniature of the tenth century[177] fleurs-de-lys are scattered over the mantle of King David, and Didron mentions that he saw a fleur-de-lys ornamentation of the thirteenth century in the Church of Hecatompyli. The miniature was, of course, painted before the lilies had appeared on the royal banner of France, and the decoration at Hecatompyli would be drawn from Eastern sources.

The most noble use of the fleur-de-lys is to express the majesty of God. Floriated crowns as a symbol of Divine majesty were common in French, Flemish and German art, but are seldom seen in Italy. Most usually it is God the Father only who is so distinguished. In a French miniature of the end of the fourteenth century,[178] where the three persons are represented under human form, God the Father wears the floriated crown, the other persons the cruciform halo. In a stained glass window, with the figure of God the Father holding the Crucifix,[179] He wears a tiara of five tiers, each decorated with the fleur-de-lys.

Memling and his school, painting for the Court of Burgundy, held to the French traditions, and God the Father in the ‘Coronation’ on the shrine of St Ursula, God the Son in the ‘Christ surrounded by Angels’ in Antwerp, and the Virgin on the wings (outer) of the ‘Last Judgment’ at Danzig, all wear crowns ornamented with fleurs-de-lys.

In German art there are fewer crowns bearing the fleur-de-lys, the crowns of both the Deity and the Virgin having usually the arched imperial form. But very frequently towards the end of the fifteenth century the rays of light, which in Italian art make a cruciform bar across the halo of the Saviour, in Germany take the form of fleurs-de-lys. They are particularly noticeable in ‘The Virgin and Saint Anne with the Child’ of Hans Fries,[180] and in a rather more elaborate form in the work of Wolgemut.[181]

There are two saints who have always had the right to wear the royal lilies of France.

They are Saint Louis of France, in his lifetime Louis IX, and his grand-nephew Louis, Bishop of Toulouse.

King Louis, the saintly soldier who brought to France the Crown of Thorns and, to enshrine it, built the Sainte Chapelle, died in Crusade before the walls of Tunis in 1270. Twenty-seven years later he was canonized, and Giotto painted his portrait in Santa Croce.

Mr Gardner comments on this fresco:

‘St Louis the King (one whom Dante does not seem to have held in honour), a splendid figure, calm and noble, in one hand the sceptre and in the other the Franciscan cord, his royal robe besprinkled with the golden lily of France over the armour of the warrior of the Cross, his face absorbed in celestial contemplation. He is the Christian realization of the Platonic philosopher king; “St Louis,” says Walter Pater, “precisely because his whole being was full of heavenly vision, in self-banishment from it for a while, led and ruled the French people so magnanimously alike in peace and war.” Opposite him is St Louis of Toulouse, with the royal crown at his feet; below are St Elizabeth of Hungary, with her lap full of flowers, and, opposite to her, St Clare, of whom Dante’s Piccarda tells so sweetly in the _Paradiso_--that lady on high whom, “perfected life and lofty merit doth enheaven.”’[182] Saint Clare carries a lily.

In the Prado there is a Holy Trinity by C. Coello, where Saint Louis is placed opposite to Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, who holds a basket of roses, and this grouping of the two royal saints is often found. St Elizabeth was canonized before St Louis was born, but they are well matched in piety, both of noble birth, both dying in the flower of their age, and both devoted to their people’s welfare. There is a very interesting figure of Saint Louis, intellectual, earnest and strong, in the _Mariage Mystique_[183] of Jean Perréal.

Saint Louis of Toulouse was the grandson of Charles of Anjou, who was suzerain of Florence for ten years. Perugia chose him as her patron saint, and in Florence he was patron of the Parte Guelfa. He is easily recognized by his mitre and the fleurs-de-lys upon his cope. There is a statue of him by Donatello at Santa Croce, and pictures elsewhere by Bonfigli, Simone Martini, Moretto and Cosimo Rosselli.

Perhaps the most sympathetic and individual portrait of him is that of Bartolommeo Vivarini.[184] He carries book and crozier and his youthful face is very sweet and earnest, though it has the set lips of the true churchman. The cope is bordered with a large design of fleurs-de-lys.

Both these saints wear the fleur-de-lys to mark that they are members of the Royal House of France. The purity which the lily symbolizes when regarded as the flower of the Virgin is a secondary significance. Now another holy one has joined them, who also, though of lowly birth, bore the golden lilies. But for her they were the true lilies of maidenhood, their form merely showing that the right to carry them on her banner was the gift of a French king.

‘With a wreath woven by no mortal hand shall she (Jeanne d’Arc) at Reims engarland happily the gardener of the Lily, named Charles, son of Charles,’ prophesied Engélinde, the Hungarian seer, and at the fulfilment Charles was not ungrateful. Since a woman cannot heraldically bear arms, he granted to the brothers of the maid the right to wear two of the royal lilies on their shield. The blazon was _d’azur à la couronne royale d’or soutenue d’une épée d’argent croisée et pommetée d’or en pal, cotoyée de deux fleurs-de-lis d’or_. They were given at the same time (December 1429) the surname of _du lis_.

The sword has the blade ornamented with five fleurs-de-lys and is apparently the famous one unearthed in the Church of St Catharine at Fierbois, ‘decked with five flower-de-luces on each side.’[185] But in the least doubtful of the many contemporary portraits of the Maid (those in the collection of M. George Spetz) the fleurs-de-lys do not appear. When questioned at her trial as to any supernatural power held by her sword, she declared: ‘It was a rusty sword in the earth, with five crosses on it, and I knew it through my voices.’[186]

The clergy of the Church of St Catharine, however, after finding the sword by Jeanne’s directions, had had a scabbard made for it of crimson velvet, embroidered with fleurs-de-lys in gold, and legend supported by heraldry seems to have substituted the fleurs-de-lys of the scabbard for the five crosses of the blade.

The device upon the banner was dictated to her by her patron saints, Margaret and Catharine. It was of white linen, fringed with silk, and embroidered with a figure of the Saviour holding a globe in His hands, while an angel knelt on either side in adoration. _Jhesus Maria_ was inscribed at the foot. A repetition of this banner recopied from age to age is said to be preserved at Tours.

XIV

THE LILY OF THE ANNUNCIATION

There is one incident in the life of the Virgin Mary which is particularly associated with lilies. It is the Annunciation.

The Annunciation was not often depicted before the twelfth century, though there are instances of it on some early ivories, on a sarcophagus at Ravenna of the fifth century, in the famous sixth-century Syrian MS. of the Laurentian Library,[187] and among the mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore.[188] During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, while the veneration of the Virgin within the Catholic Church steadily grew greater, the story of her life, as apart from that of her Divine Son, appeared in sculpture and stained glass, but still the Annunciation was a comparatively rare subject and simply treated. Early in the fourteenth century, however, a whole flight of announcing angels settled down over Italy, some drifting as far north as Holland. We find them kneeling, standing, just alighting, often with the wind of swift movement still in their garments and almost always on the left hand of the picture, with the Virgin in the place of honour on the right. The Annunciation, the announcing of the near approach of ‘the dayspring from on high,’ which was to bring light and joy and freedom to a world groping in the twilight of an imperfect revelation, was an incident which particularly appealed to minds rejoicing in the intellectual liberation of the Renaissance. It appealed, too, to the joyous nature of the Florentines, who hated the sad and tragic aspects of life, loving fresh and spring-like things and rather elaborate simplicity. Pictures of the Annunciation multiplied, particularly in Florence, which was just then evolving the school which was to influence so powerfully the Western world’s pictorial conceptions of the divine mysteries. And in the great majority of Annunciations we find lilies, for in this incident of the Virgin’s life above all others it was necessary to emphasize the purity which made the wonder of the angel’s salutation.

The most characteristic treatment of the lily, as the lily of the Annunciation, was to place it in a pot or vase. About the year 1291, Cavallini, the mosaicist, was in Rome decorating the Church of S. Maria in Trastevere, and beneath the great centre mosaic of the apse he placed a series of scenes from the life of the Virgin. In the Annunciation the Virgin is seated on a marble throne, which has broad, table-like arms. On one arm there is a dish, apparently of fruit, and on the other a vase filled with lilies. The vase may or may not have been placed there definitely as a symbol, but as a detail--in vulgar English phraseology--it caught on. We find it on the famous carved candlestick of Gaeta,[189] worked by an unknown contemporary of Niccola d’Apulia. It appears on an embroidered book-cover of English work[190] attributed to the end of the thirteenth century, and is cleverly squared out of the chequered background of a Netherlandish music-book[191] of 1330.

The vase of lilies soon became a more or less elaborate detail in numerous illuminations, carvings and paintings. The earliest of the Flemish masters, Jan van Eyck,[192] Roger van der Weyden[193] and the Master of Flémalle,[194] make use of it. It was particularly popular in Florence.

The Florentines loved the Annunciation as a subject and were charmed by the easy, graceful symbolism of the lilies. They were also, doubtless, deeply gratified, as citizens and as churchmen, to identify the lily, their city’s badge, as the flower of the Virgin.

In Spain, even before there was any native school of painting, the vase of lilies passed from being a detail to be an almost essential factor in every representation of the Annunciation, and early in the fifteenth century we find it standing detached as the special and distinguishing attribute of the Virgin. In the insignia of the Order of the Lily of Aragon, founded in 1410 by Ferdinand, Duke of Pegnafiel, the chain was composed of alternate griffins and pots of three lilies, and Ford mentions that when the Regent Fernando recovered Antequera from the Moors he gave the city for arms the badge of his military order, which was _La Terraza_, ‘the vase,’ the pot of lilies of the Virgin.[195]

The symbol of the vase had come to the Netherlands and Germany while they were still pictorially inarticulate; but when they at length found means of expression, the Germans slowly, the Flemings in a splendid burst with the van Eycks, it was their earliest and their favourite symbol. Memling places it also beside his enthroned Madonnas, and it is never omitted from an Annunciation except on the occasions, comparatively rare in the North, when Gabriel holds a branch of lilies in his hand instead of the herald’s wand. Then there is no vase, for there is no necessity to repeat the symbol.

But in Italy itself the vase of lilies, though popular, was never considered essential. No vase decorates the loggias where sit the Virgins of Giotto,[196] Botticelli,[197] Melozzo da Forlì,[198] or Leonardo da Vinci,[199] though Giotto introduces it with identical symbolism in the Visitation. Indeed many of the most typical painters of both the early and the high Renaissance, Taddeo di Bartolo,[200] Spinello Aretino,[201] Fra Angelico,[202] Lorenzo di Credi[203] and Raphael,[204] banish lilies entirely, both from the vase and from the angel’s hand. Ghirlandaio places a vase beside the Virgin’s reading-desk, but alters its significance by filling it with roses, daisies and jasmine, the flowers of love, innocence and divine hope.[205]