The two most significant flowers associated with Our Lady are the lily and the rose. Fleur Dorrell explores their meaning and role in the history of the church and in religious art.
Introduction
The two most significant flowers associated with Our Lady are the lily and the rose, but did you know that there are nearly 500 original names for plants and herbs referring to the mother of Jesus? This long tradition of honouring Mary with flowers was already evident from the 7th century onwards. The Venerable Bede (AD 672/3 –735) compared the Virgin Mary with a white lily, the petals symbolising her pure body and the golden anthers the radiance of her soul. St Bernard (AD 1090–1153) described Mary as ‘the violet of humility, the lily of chastity, the rose of charity.’ While Chaucer in his poem to the Virgin Mary, writes that Mary is the ‘flower of flowers’.
Although there are many other flowers associated with Mary, the rose in the East and the lily in the West became the most popular. However, it was not always this way. The Early Church saw in the rose a symbol of paganism, orgy, and lust. Tertullian wrote an entire volume against the flower! Thankfully, early Christians ignored this and continued to grow them and use them for various ceremonies. Slowly the Church realised it was better to absorb some aspects of paganism by changing them into Christian symbols instead of simply rejecting them all together.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the rose’s pagan symbolism was pruned and incorporated into Christian culture. Christians still lacked a symbol representing the different aspects of femininity as represented by Aphrodite and other great goddesses and this dilemma strengthened the Cult of Mary. St Ambrose venerated Mary as an example of perfect Christian life and some scholars believe he started the cult of virginity in the 4th century. Her veneration was sanctioned at Ephesus in AD 431 where she was addressed as Theotokos (Mother of God). By the Middle Ages, Mary’s attributions included giving her the title of ‘Mystic Rose’ in her litanies: the perfect symbol of love and beauty.
Blessed Art Thou
It has always been a challenge for the Catholic Church in how to depict and define Mary in art. Just as portraying any religious figure had to follow certain rules, conveying reverence and holiness were absolute criteria for how Mary was to be painted. Yet how men treated women in daily life was translated into how artists portrayed them on the canvas. Therefore, you will mostly see Mary as passive, frightened and humbled despite being surrounded by good books, elaborate gardens and striking interiors that were common to the Mediaeval courts of educated ladies.
As there is very little information about Mary in the Bible it was difficult not to imbue her with characteristics through a particular context or lens, yet anyone who could sing the Magnificat is surely not weak and subservient. Mary’s flower symbols are more than aesthetic or simply deployed to emphasise her role as an object to be revered. The use of botanical imagery flourished in Europe from the 12th century onwards with the rise in new painting techniques and colours, observation of the natural world, and the growing importance of realism. Significant developments in understanding optics and light across Europe, notably in France, Holland and Lincoln by Bishop Robert Grosseteste (AD 1168-1253) contributed to this expanding science and its wider applications.
Botanical devices also provided secret codes for a range of meanings in both the secular and sacred realms. Just as in classical mythology, plants represented virtues and vices, Christianity adopted the Biblical motif of flowers, plants and trees used in many parables to signify a further spiritual meaning. The lily being a symbol of chastity often figures in scenes of the Annunciation but is mentioned in Matthew’s Gospel without connotations of purity, rather as surpassing the fabulous glory of the King.
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin:
even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
Matthew 6:28-29
In depicting the Annunciation, the earliest painters had represented the angel Gabriel carrying a sceptre or an olive spray which comes from Greek influences, seen in the oldest surviving example in the 3rd century Catacomb of Priscilla where the Archangel greets Mary who is spinning purple thread for a new Temple veil. This sceptre motif continues in both Duccio and Simone Martini’s Annunciations and then there is quite a journey regarding annunciation symbols in art from thrones, threads, banners and scrolls to flowing water, gardens (especially Eden revisited), devotional books and hour glasses before the flower takes root. Following the tradition that the Annunciation occurred in Nazareth on 25th March, the Golden Legend argued that ‘Nazareth’ means ‘flower’; which is why Bernard of Clairvaux says that “the Flower willed to be born of a flower in ‘Flower,’ in the season of flowers.”
Flowers therefore, appear in western Annunciations from the 13th century onwards with the Church instructing artists to depict Gabriel with a spray of Madonna Lilies in his hand. Usually, the spray consisted of three blossoms, embracing the Trinity. The lily became the symbol of innocence, purity and virginity, and when placed on an altar, had the stamens removed lest they “defile” the virginal chastity of the blossom. The Archangel Gabriel is the original Interflora courier. He brings Mary the good news with a fresh lily on every arrival.
A Rose By Any Other Name
The rose is mentioned just three times in the Old Testament and not at all in the New Testament, although in most translations, the word rose is interchangeable with crocus. Yet it has become one of the most important flowers associated with Mary across the world.
In the Song of Songs 2:1 – “I am the Rose of Sharon. The lily of the valleys” later led to the rose symbolising the mystical union between Christ and his Church. And as Mary was honoured as the model of our union with God, the rose became a privileged symbol of the union between Christ and Mary.
Then it appears in Ecclesiasticus (also known as Ben Sirach) 24:14 – “like a palm tree in Engedi, like a rosebush in Jericho.”
Lastly, Isaiah 35:1 says that:
“the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus…”
Mary is often referred to as a ‘rose without thorns’, since she was free of original sin. The five petals of the wild rose are equated with the five joys of Mary: Annunciation, Nativity, Resurrection, Ascension and Assumption. With the rise of Marian devotion and the establishment of the Gothic style in the 12th century, the image of the rose became even more prominent in religious life. Cathedrals built around this time usually include a rose window dedicated to Mary, at the end of a transept or above the entrance.
St. Dominic received the Rosary from Our Lady in an apparition in AD 1206 as a weapon against the Albigensian heresy. Mary appeared to him wearing a garland of roses. This gave him the idea of the Rosary, which serves as an aid for meditating on Our Lady’s mysteries – stories about Mary and Jesus from the Annunciation through the cycle of Jesus’ birth and death to when Mary is assumed into heaven and crowned Queen of Heaven. Rosaries are used for prayer and devotion by Catholics of all ages and across all continents.
Many artists of the 15th century painted Mary with roses, often in a rose garden, which enhanced the theology of her body being that of an enclosed garden or sanctuary – from the Latin phrase ‘hortus conclusus’. In this enclosed space of Mary’s sacred womb, her son Jesus Christ would grow and would also be protected from the outside world and its influences.
Both roses and lilies were said to be found in Mary’s empty tomb after her Assumption into heaven. They are the earthly symbols of her life before she returned to God, which we see in our next painting by Raphael.
Believers saw Mary’s attributes visualised in the flowers growing around them. The flowers provided a starting point for prayer and mediation about good qualities and acts which Mary’s life shows. In the medieval age of faith, before printing, religious art and symbolism were a primary means for instructing the largely illiterate faithful.
Dante’s description of paradise also shows the invitation to contemplate the Mother of God in floral form: “There is the Rose in which the Divine word became flesh: here are the lilies whose perfume guides you in the right ways.” (Paradiso, 23, 71-75). Flowers continue to lead the faithful to an affective and illuminative sense of their reality and of their transience. Sowing, planting, or grafting make good spiritual metaphors for the heart and soul. To encourage the slow and delicate art of growth to maturity and fruition like flowers in a garden is the invitation to us all. Yes, we will need deadheading – the secateurs out in full force, but tending to our souls is not without reward. The thorns are watered for the sake of the rose.
We conclude our journey with an extract by St John Henry Newman from his Meditations and Devotions written in May 1874.
“Mary is the most beautiful flower that ever was seen in the spiritual world. It is by the power of God’s grace that from this barren and desolate earth there have ever sprung up at all flowers of holiness and glory. And Mary is the queen of them. She is the queen of spiritual flowers; and therefore, she is called the rose, for the rose is fitly called of all flowers the most beautiful.”
Fleur Dorrell
Recommended Artworks of Our Lady with the Lily and the Rose
Duccio – The Annunciation
Simone Martini – The Annunciation
Robert Campin – The Annunciation Triptych
Sandro Botticelli – The Cestello Annunciation
Dante Gabriel Rossetti – The Annunciation
Dante Gabriel Rossetti – The Girlhood of Mary, Virgin
Martin Schongauer – The Virgin at the Rose Bush
Raphael – The Coronation and Assumption of the Virgin
Marianne Stokes – Madonna and Child
Joseph Stella – The Virgin
