212 FLORAL SYMBOLISM 



Jehoshaphat and place it in a new tomb that 

 had been dug there, and watch three days 

 beside it, till He should return. 



' And straightway there surrounded her 

 flowers of roses, which are the blessed company 

 of martyrs; and lilies of the valley, which are 

 the bands of angels, confessors and virgins.' 



But the Byzantine Guide to Painting, in 

 the paragraph entitled * How to represent the 

 Assumption of the Divine Mother,' directs that 

 in the lower part of the picture there should be 

 ' an open and empty tomb.' 



There was therefore divergence of opinion, 

 and the Church apparently left the artist free. 



Jacobus de Voragine seems to have collected 

 the many floating legends of the Virgin, and with 

 that poetic judgment which was the peculiar 

 gift of his generation, to have preserved those 

 forms particularly marked by sweetness or dis- 

 tinction of incident. But some even of his own 

 countrymen apparently preferred the legend in 

 its balder form, for the astonished Apostles 

 surround a bare and empty tomb. Beyond 

 the Alps, where the Legenda Aurea never had 

 much influence, the tomb is almost invariably 



