THE LILY 55 



what specially endeared her to the people of 

 Spain was the knowledge that in the fealty they 

 paid her the infidel could have neither part nor 

 lot. The chosen knight of the Immaculate 

 Virgin was, of course, Santiago, Saint James, 

 the patron saint of Spain, but every Spanish 

 cavalier acknowledged himself the servitor of the 

 Lady of the Lily. 



Rather more than fifty years after the found- 

 ing of the Order of the Lily of Navarre the poet- 

 saint, Bernard of Clairvaux, was preaching his 

 famous series of Homilies on the Song of Solo- 

 mon. The sermons were eighty in number, each 

 based on the text of the Canticles, and each 

 celebrating the perfections of the Virgin. Dif- 

 fering from Origen, he found the Virgin 

 Mary, not the Christ, to be the speaker of the 

 words : ' I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of 

 the valleys.' Differing again from the Church 

 father, he further identified ' the lily among 

 thorns,' she who is addressed as * my sister, my 

 spouse,' with the Virgin and not with the Church 

 of God upon Earth. 



Saint Bernard was the most popular preacher 

 of his time ; his sermons became known through- 



