“The lily is the symbol of beauty and love. By the Greeks it was
called Χαρμα Αφροδιτης, the joy of Venus, and according to Alciatus,
Venus Urania was represented with a lily in her hand.”—J. B.
FRIEDRICH: _Die Symbolik der Natur_.
This story is of the lily, or the _stemma_, or crest of Florence. One
day Virgilio went forth to walk when he met with a Florentine, who
saluted him, saying:
“Thou truly shouldst be a Florentine, since thou art by name a _vero
giglio_”—a true lily (_Ver_’-_giglio_).
Then the poet replied:
“Truly I am entitled to the name, since our first ancestors were as the
lilies of the field, who toiled not, neither did they spin, hence it came
that they left me nothing.”
“But thou wilt leave a lordly heritage,” replied the nobleman, smiling;
“the glory of a great name which shall honour all thy fellow-citizens,
and which will ever remain in the shield as the flower of Florence.”
{182}
* * * * *
This is a pretty tale, though it turns on a pun, and has nothing more
than that in it. Much has been written to prove that the lilies in the
shields of France and Florence and on the ends of sceptres are not
lilies, but there can be no reasonable doubt of its Latin symbolical
origin. Among the Romans the lily was the emblem of public hope, of
patriotic expectation, hence we see Roman coins with lilies bearing the
mottoes: _Spes Publica_, _Spes Augusta_, _Spes Populi Romani_, and Virgil
himself, in referring to Marcellus, the presumed heir to the throne of
Augustus, makes Anchises cry: “Bring handfuls of lilies!”
This did not occur to me till after translating the foregoing little
tradition, and it is appropriate enough to suggest that it may have had
some connection with the tale. The idea of its being attached to power,
probably in reference to the community governed, was ancient and widely
spread. Not only was the garment of the Olympian Jupiter adorned with
lilies, {183a} but the old German Thor held in one hand the lightning and
in the other a lily sceptre {183b} indicating peace and purity, or the
welfare of the people. The lily was also the type of purity from its
whiteness, the origin of which came from Susanna the Chaste, who during
the Babylonian captivity remained the only virgin. Susan is in Hebrew
_Shusam_, which means a lily. “This was transferred to the Virgin Mary.”
Hence the legend that Saint Ægidius, when the immaculateness of the
Virgin was questioned, wrote in sand the query as to whether she was a
maid before, during, and after the Conception, whereupon a lily at once
grew forth out of the sand, as is set forth in a poem by the German
Smetz—of which lily-legends of many kinds there are enough to make a book
as large as this of mine.
The cult of the lily in a poetical sense was carried to a great extent at
one time. The Dominican P. Tommaso Caraffa, in his “Poetiche Dicerie,”
or avowed efforts at fine writing, devotes a page of affected and
certainly florid Italian to the “Giglio,” and there are Latin poems or
passages on it by Bisselius, P. Laurent le Brun, P. Alb. Ines, given by
Gandutius (“Descriptiones Poeticæ”), Leo Sanctius and A. Chanutius.
There is also a passage in Martial eulogizing the flower in comparing to
it the white tunic given to him by Parthenio:
“Lilia tu vincis, nec adhuc dilapsa ligustra,
Et Tiburtino monte quod albet ebur.
Spartanus tibi cedit color, Paphiæque columna
Cedit Erithræis eruta gemma vadis.”
I saw once upon a time in Venice a magnificent snow-white carpet covered
with lilies—a present from the Sultan to the well-known English diplomat
and scholar, Layard—to which it seems to me that those lines of the Latin
poet would be far more applicable than they could have been to what was
in reality about the same as an ordinary clean shirt or blouse—for such
was in fact the Roman tunic. It must, however, be candidly admitted that
he does good service to humanity who in any way renders romantic, poetic,
or popular, clean linen or personal purity of any kind.