74 FLORAL SYMBOLISM 



Or again as a fruit rising from the mystical 



rose: 



' Now spring up fiouris fra the rule 

 Revert you upward naturally 

 In honour of the blissit frute 

 That raiss up fro the rose Mary.' ' 



There are some mediaeval Latin hymns for 

 the Nativity in which Christ is referred to as 

 the rose springing from the lily. The simile, 

 however, was by no means applied to Him 

 exclusively, for in a Visitation hymn of the 

 same period He is alluded to as the lily hidden 

 in the rose. But though the rose is not often 

 the emblem of Jesus Christ, both in literature 

 and art it is used as the symbol of His love. 



Saint Mectilda, in the discourse on the 

 three perfumes of divine love, tells us that 

 ' the first of these perfumes is the rose-water 

 distilled in the still of charity from the most 

 beautiful of all roses, the heart of our Lord,' ' 

 and repeatedly in ecclesiastical art, roses faUing 

 or fallen from Heaven, signify divine love. The 

 lovely angels in Signorelli's ' Paradise ' ^ carry 

 roses in their looped draperies and scatter them 



' William Dunbar. ^ The Book of Spiritual Grace. 



3 Orvieto Cathedral. 



