THE FLEUR-DE-LYS 153 



Louis of France to his brother saint, Ferdinand 

 of Spain. 



The flower is again heraldic upon the mag- 

 nificent tomb of Robert the Wise/ the patron of 

 Giotto and Simone Martini, where it decorates 

 the background with fine effect, though it is 

 perhaps too insistently repeated on crowns, 

 sceptres, brooches and the floriation of crosses; 

 but the constantly-recurring fleurs-de-lys in the 

 architecture of the Cistercian Brotherhood appear 

 quite definitely as the flower of the Virgin. She 

 was the patron of the order, and their famous 

 saint, Bernard of Clairvaux — * her own faithful 

 Bernard ' — devoted his life to praising the * lily 

 of the valley.' Her impress is upon the stone of 

 the Cistercian abbeys of England and of France, 

 where repeatedly we find the ' carved work of 

 open lilies.' But the Cistercians had no mono- 

 poly of the symbol. Almost naturally the stone 

 work of French Gothic architecture seems to 

 bud and break into the formal flower. In the 

 great Church of Albi each upspringing slender 

 shaft ends in a fieur, alternating with shields 

 along the screen. In the rood-loft of St Floren- 



• S. Chiara, Naples. 



