DOROTHY —PATRON SAINT OF GARDENERS 
REV. JOSEPH JACOB 
Rector of Whitewell, Whitchurch, Eng. 
A F'air Maid of Caesarea Who Has Furnished Inspiration to Carvers, Play¬ 
wrights, and Poets for Nearly Twenty Centuries—A Gentle Figure Offering 
To-day’s Sculptor a Theme in Keeping with the Spirit of All Gardens 
Editors’ Note: Familiar to gardeners as an authority on Tulips, the Reverend Joseph Jacob has not confined himself to the purely 
practical aspects of horticulture, but as a student and collector of old books has become extraordinarily conversant with its literary tradi¬ 
tions as well. Out of the fulness of such knowledge he has, at our request, prepared this vivacious and veracious little account of the 
gentle and courageous spirit for generations beloved of gardeners on the Continent but less well known in America where traditions have 
short roots. 
|N WRITING about this Saint my 
purpose is twofold. In the first 
place to make a suggestion which 
1 believe to be in harmony with 
the new gardening spirit of the age, if the 
number of exhibits of garden ornaments to 
be seen at the big flower shows is anything 
to go by; and in the second place to tell the 
tale of a Saint of whom no garden lover 
ought to be wholly ignorant, seeing that the 
apocryphal tales which have accumulated 
round her death have been for many ages 
the inspiration alike of carvers in wood and stone, playwriters, 
poets, and painters. 
My suggestion is that Saint Dorothea would make a fitting 
subject for a garden statue in a Christian country. It would 
be an innovation to be sure, for in the olden days when statuary 
was considered “the O. K. thing” to place in all gardens of any 
size, it was only statues of heathen gods and goddesses that were 
to be found in the groves, near the canals and fishponds, in pri¬ 
vate cabinets, near the beehives, on the mounts, round the 
parterres, in the banqueting houses, and in orchards. In fact, 
into howsoever many parts a great garden was divided, there 
were appropriate gods or goddesses for each. 
It always tickles me to read that one suggested for the flower 
garden was “ Runcina, the Goddess of Weeding”! Evidently 
weeds are no new worry for gardeners! Why should we not 
have a Phocas or a Fiacre* as much as a Flora, a Ceres, and a 
Pomona? Why not a Dorothea every bit as much as Harpo- 
crates, the God of Silence; and Mercury, the God of Eloquence, 
which quaint combination I find was suggested as appropriate 
for arbors or “private cabinets” which one imagines were the 
favored resorts of lordly lovers? It would be striking out a 
new line, but probably not more so than what Jean Franeau 
did when he chose as fitting subjects for the frontispiece of his 
“Jardin d’Flyver ou Cabinet des Fleurs” (published in 1616) 
the pictures of St. Dorothea and St. Theophilus. 
A ND who is Dorothea? And who the Theophilus associated 
L with her? Why should Fraternities of Flemish Florists, 
when more sober times came after the great Tulip madness of 
1635 to 1637 had subsided, dedicate their brotherhood to St. 
Dorothea? Whv is it that similar practises continue in Bel¬ 
gium to the present day, as in France we find benevolent Socie¬ 
ties of Gardeners with their Patron St. Fiacre? Because she 
was a lover of flowers while she lived; and because she ex¬ 
pected one of the joys of the Fleavenly Paradise to be the 
lovely flowers and luscious fruit which she felt sure grew there. 
Expectation became certainty before she died, so the tale goes. 
While waiting for the executioner she saw beside her the angel 
messenger laden with a basket containing her promised gifts to 
Theophilus: 
But for the fair green basket that he had 
It was filled up with heavy white and red: 
Great roses stained still where the first rose bled. 
Burning at heart for shame their heart withholds 
And the sad colour of strong marigolds 
That have the sun to kiss their lips for love; 
The flower that Venus' hair is woven of. 
The colour of fair apples in the sun, 
Late peaches gathered when the heat was done. 
And the slain air got breath; and after these 
The fair faint-headed poppies drunk with ease. 
And heaviness of hollow lilies red. 
This is from the “St. Dorothea” of that marvelous master 
of rhyme, Algernon Charles Swinburne. Fewis Morris, who 
includes St. Dorothea as one of the worthies in his vision of 
Saints, describes the same incident in a more simple way! 
In his hands he bore, so runs the tale, 
A basket, and, within, three golden fruits 
Of Paradise, of scent and hue divine, 
And with them three fair roses, sweeter far 
Than the twice-bearing Paestine gardens bare, 
Summer and Autumn. 
T HA T the tale should appeal to two such different men as 
Swinburne and Fewis Morris need not surprise us when we 
remember how in pre-reformation England the figure of St. 
Dorothea was often found carved on the old rood-screens, for 
‘. safe- A Nk' 
*A native of Ireland, St. Fiacre lived for many years in France, at Breuil 
near Paris, dying there about 670 A. D., celebrated as a worker of miraculous 
cures. The name of this early patron of gardens is kept green in rather amusing 
fashion: The Plotel de St. Fiacre, a little inn at Paris, being the first to institute 
the hire of carriages (about 1650 A. D.), the hackney-coach has ever since been 
known as a fiacre. 
A MEDIAEVAL RENDERING OF ST. DOROTHEA 
As depicted on the frontispiece of a rare old flower book 
(A. D. 1616) “Le Jardin d’Hyver” by Jean Franeau 
336 
