The Lilies of the Field

Flowers as symbols in medieval art and spirituality

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet muskroses, and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.
—A Midsummer Night’s Dream

We’ve been travelling through medieval symbolism for over a week now, and our destination is nothing less than a fundamentally transformed perception of reality (we like ambitious goals here at Via Mediaevalis). We began the journey with general reflections on the nature and importance of symbols, in medieval life and in our lives, and we continued with medieval symbolism of numbers and of the four classical elements. Today we will continue with the symbolic energies of the natural world, and more specifically, of flowers.

To prepare for the flowers, let’s return to sumbolon, the Greek word from which “symbol” derives. In the previous post, we used the meanings of sumbolon to rediscover symbolism: “A symbol is an object—understood broadly as something we perceive with our senses—that ‘says’ to us, in the poetic language spoken natively by the human soul, something else is here…. This ‘something else’ is usually more meaningful or consequential, more profound or spiritual or transcendent, than the object itself—which may even be so commonplace as to escape our notice.”

Sumbolon has another meaning that we have not yet considered. If you’ve ever seen the Nicene Creed described as the “symbol of faith,” you already know this meaning. In the Christian era, Greek sumbolon was used in the way that we use “creed” in English. And yet, English “creed” and English “symbol” seem to be two very different things.

Rufinus of Aquileia, a theologian and priest who died in the early fifth century, explained that the Apostles’ Creed was called the Sumbolon in part because a sumbolon was a sign or token, and “the Apostles therefore prescribed this formulary as a sign or token by which he who preached Christ truly, according to Apostolic rule, might be recognized.” Rufinus continues:

They say that in civil wars, since the armor of both sides is alike, and the language the same, and the custom and mode of warfare the same, each general, to guard against treachery, is wont to deliver to his soldiers a distinct symbol or watchword, … so that if one is met with, … he may disclose whether he is friend or foe…. The Creed is not written on paper or parchment, but is retained in the hearts of the faithful, that it may be certain that no one has learned it by reading, as is sometimes the case with unbelievers, but by tradition from the Apostles.

We see again, then, the power of the symbol to signify the presence of something or someone greater than itself. The creed was “symbolic” because its sacred words were a sign that God and His Truth were present in someone’s mind and heart. Rufinus also reminds us that symbolism, in its fullest and most elevating sense, is inseparable from tradition. The symbols that we find in modern novels are disconcertingly arbitrary: authors have great liberty to create symbolic objects and fashion their meanings from the raw materials of the imagination. Deeply cultural symbols, on the other hand, are not the fruit of individual creativity. Symbols such as these—transcendent, psychologically potent, life-changing symbols that inhabit and spiritualize daily life—are drawn from a shared treasury of religion, history, mythology, and folklore. They cannot be invented; they must be received.

The grave where Pearl had gone from view
Was shadowed with herbs of lovely sheen,
Ginger, gillyflower, gromwell too,
And spreading peonies scattered between.
If that sight was fair to be seen,
Yet fairer the fragrance from the plot.
—“The Pearl,” translated by Brian Stone

That flowers are still enchanting in this disenchanted age is a testament to their extraordinary and mysterious beauty. Even today there is, I think, a sense that flowers—so diverse and abundant, so delicate and intricate, so unnecessarily colorful and fragrant and artistic—must mean something. They most certainly meant something in medieval culture, which saw them as an especially rich source of symbolism for literature, visual art, spirituality, and the everyday poetics of life.

Let’s ponder some of this floral symbolism. I’ll make no attempt at an exhaustive list—if compiling such a thing were even possible, the result would far exceed my attention span. Instead, I’ve selected a few highlights that I hope you’ll enjoy.

Rose: Arguably the queen of flowers in medieval culture, roses acquired a variety of illustrious associations. Red roses evoked the Blood of Christ, and white roses evoked the chastity of the Virgin Mary, who was, furthermore, the “rose without thorns.” Roses also served as a symbol of the three theological virtues: white for faith, green for hope, and red for charity.

A rose is also the centerpiece of a remarkable thirteenth-century poem called Roman de la Rose. An exceedingly long and exceedingly complex allegorical dream-vision, the poem is not for the faint of heart. Sarah Kay, a specialist in medieval French literature, put it bluntly: “It is difficult to say what the [Roman de la] Rose is about.” But it at least has something to do with love, and with a rosebud that symbolizes a maiden.

Finally, a white rose composed of the souls of the blessed, with Mary as its queen, is part of the sublime imagery in Dante’s Paradiso:

In fashion then as of a snow-white rose
Displayed itself to me the saintly host,
Whom Christ in his own blood had made his bride.

Lily: Still familiar today as a symbolic element, the lily was a highly Marian flower; it represented her purity and was used in depictions of the Annunciation.

Columbine: Long admired as an almost uniquely beautiful flower, columbines were associated with Christ as the Redeemer, and their tripartite leaves evoked the Holy Trinity. The flower seems to have had a connection with fidelity and resurrection as well, and the color violet was a symbol of penance.

Dianthus: This category includes both carnations and “pinks” (a rather unimaginative name for a plant whose sweet-swelling flowers are typically pink). The carnation was a cultivated version of pinks and served as a symbol of sacred or secular love, and pinks, at least in the Renaissance, were associated with the Crucifixion—more specifically, with the nails used in the Crucifixion. The precise nature of this connection is not clear to me; one source suggested that it derives from pinks’ clove-like scent, since dried cloves resemble nails. In the image below of the Crucified Christ, the artist included pinks in the floreate ornamentation.

Strawberry: As a counterpoint to all the previous examples, strawberry symbolism was not primarily in the flower itself but in the fruit that resulted from the flower. Popular as a decorative element in illuminated manuscripts, the strawberry was an emblem of righteousness, and according to the renowned strawberry expert Dr. George Darrow, it represented “noble thought and modesty, for although it is conspicuous by its color and fragrance, it nevertheless bows humbly to the earth.”

Strawberries were also associated with the fruitful virginity of Mary. The three illustrations below, of the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Coronation, include strawberries in the surrounding ornamentation. (Apparently medieval strawberries were more spherical than modern ones.)

Flower symbolism shows us, yet again, the medieval tendency to see the objects and elements of material reality as significant, in the etymological sense—that is, as signs of higher realities: earthly things did not merely exist but also spoke of heavenly and transcendent things.

I don’t like to overemphasize the specific meanings of particular flowers. It can be difficult to really pin these meanings down, and it can be easy to overgeneralize—just because a certain group of artists in fourteenth-century France used this or that flower to symbolize mystical love doesn’t prove that it had any such significance in eleventh-century Spain or tenth-century Ireland. There was, I’m sure, a group of villages somewhere in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria that had an elaborate and deeply poetic collection of symbolic meanings for their cherished local flowers. But no one wrote it down, and it is lost forever.

And finally, we don’t want to “over-symbolize” medieval flowers, which were also, quite simply, delightful little pieces of Creation—sweet scented, pleasing to the touch, incomparably beautiful, and therefore proof that God, who did not need to make them so, was generous and exceedingly good.