THE FLOWER SYMBOLISTS 27 



am the rose of Sharon ' (or ' the flower of the 

 field ') ' and the lily of the valleys,' sings the lover 

 of the Canticles, who prefigures, according to 

 Origen, Jesus Christ. But Saint Bernard of Clair- 

 vaux found that the words veiled the personality 

 of the Virgin Mary, and other writers consider that 

 they refer to the Church of God upon earth. 



There were, in fact, two schools of s3^mbolists 

 though they did not differ greatly. There were 

 those who wrote before the eleventh century 

 and whose influence is traced in the mosaics of 

 Rome, Ravenna and the Baptistery of Florence, 

 and those later ones whose authority was ac- 

 cepted by the painters of the Italian Renais- 

 sance and through them spread throughout 

 the Christian world. Durandus, standing mid- 

 way between the two schools of symbolism, 

 held chiefly to the more ancient, though he also 

 recognized the newer, usage. 



But after the twelfth century the painters 

 of Siena alone kept to the ancient meanmg of 

 the symbols; Florence and the later schools 

 broke away entirely 



As far as flower-symbols were concerned 

 the chief difference was in the use of the hly, 



