152 FLORAL SYMBOLISM 



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 archaeological 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 fur- 

 niture. Sometimes it was used entirely heral- 

 dically, 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 em- 

 broidered 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 



