was in itself an emblem, or at least a parody, of an emperor’s festal
rose-crown. According to _The History of the Crown of Thorns of the
Holy One_,[136] the first crown with which Jesus Christ was crowned was
made of white-thorn and was removed before the Crucifixion and replaced
by a second _de juncis marinis_.
But in the great majority of scenes from the Passion the crown is
merely formed of large thorns without any attempt to realize any
particular natural growth. In Germany, where Entombments and Pietàs
were more often painted than in other countries, the crown is
frequently green, in allusion, it is suggested, to the words: ‘If these
things be done in the green wood, what shall be done in the dry?’
In these pictures the crown of thorns, if not still upon the Saviour’s
head, is usually placed very prominently in the foreground, marking to
some extent the divinity of the dead Christ, for, since life had fled,
there could be no halo.
In Northern art the crown of thorns remains always unchanged, the
symbol of Christ’s sufferings, but in at least one Italian Pietà,[137]
the dry prickles round the dead Christ’s brow have bloomed with
delicate white briar-roses--an exquisite figure of Love’s triumph over
Pain.
Sometimes, in pathetic forecast, the Child Christ has the crown of
thorns hung on His tiny wrist[138] or plays with it as with a toy, and
in a very charming picture,[139] with less poignant and more pleasing
symbolism, a waiting child-angel stands by with a wreath of the blue
sea-holly.
In Spain the Christian faith was stern. Faith and suffering were more
closely allied than faith and joy. They had no ‘jesters of the Lord,’
and their saints glorified God by self-inflicted pain rather than
by acts of mercy. So their Christ in childhood was not a smiling,
unconscious _bambino_, but a sad-faced child who wounds Himself with
the rose-twigs which He twists into a crown. The rose-thorn tears His
flesh but the roses lie beside Him and round His feet, for His griefs
and sufferings were the outcome of His divine love. Both Zurburan[140]
and Alonzo Cano[141] painted fine pictures on this theme.
[Illustration:
_Zurburan_ _Photo Anderson_
THE CROWN OF THORNS
(Museo Provinciale, Seville)]
There is a ‘Coronation of the Virgin’ by Hans Burgkmair,[142] painted
in 1507, where beneath a cross-surmounted imperial crown Christ wears
the Crown of Thorns. In several of the French fifteenth-century
miniatures of the Trinity in Glory, God the Son still wears the Crown
of Thorns, but this combination of the two crowns is rare. It was,
however, in reverent remembrance of the thorn-crowned King of the Jews
that the Crusader, Godfrey de Bouillon, twisted a thorn-branch round
his coronet when he was crowned King of Jerusalem. His bronze statue,
wearing this double crown, stands with those of the other Christian
kings guarding the tomb of Maximilian in Innsbruck Cathedral.
Among modern symbolists, Holman Hunt has used thorns with finest
effect. In his ‘Light of the World’ the Saviour wears again the double
crown, the thorns which symbolize His sufferings intertwisted with the
golden crown of His divinity. He stands with the lantern, which is
the light of His Gospel, before the closed door of the human heart, a
door all overgrown and blocked by the weeds and briars which are the
symbols of sin and things evil. There is the poisonous hemlock, the ivy
which kills the tree that it embraces, thorns denoting the lesser sins,
and the brambles which are the emblems of the greater ones. According
to Raban Maur the bramble is also an emblem of the riches which destroy
the soul.
In several modern pictures of ‘The Good Shepherd’ Christ is depicted
as rescuing a lamb caught by its wool in the briars of the wilderness.
The lamb, of course, is the emblem of an erring soul, and the briars
represent those sins which hold it back from answering the Shepherd’s
call.
In connection with the saints, the Crown of Thorns is not used
symbolically, except when placed upon the head of Saint Catharine of
Siena,[143] to indicate her austerities. According to the legend,
Christ in a vision offered her a crown of roses or a crown of thorns
and she chose the thorns. When it is carried by Saint Louis of France
it is to recall the fact that it was he who brought to France, as her
most precious relic, the Holy Crown itself.
The tonsure was originally instituted to keep fresh in the memory the
Saviour’s Crown of Thorns. And in the ‘Paradise’ of Fra Angelico[144]
the monks are crowned with roses. Thus the emblem reverted to the
original symbol. The Crown of Thorns was the parody of the rose-crown,
symbol of rejoicing; the tonsure the reverent imitation of the thorny
wreath, and angels at the entrance of Paradise change the tonsure for a
wreath of roses.
In early German art the Virgin is often found seated in a garden of
which each flower has its significance. Behind and around her there
is usually a sort of trellis or bower covered with roses. The roses
have very pronounced thorns, and the thorns are accentuated to recall
that Mary is the lily and the bride of the Canticles, the ‘Lily among
thorns.’ In an Assumption of Seghers[145] one of the attendant _putti_
flies towards her with a single lily enclosed in branches covered with
long-spiked thorns.
On the other hand, when the rose is the direct emblem, not the
attribute of the Madonna, it has no thorns, for then it illustrates
her title, ‘_rosa sine spina_.’
The Roman Breviary likens the Virgin to the burning thorn bush in
which Jehovah revealed Himself to Moses and the simile was cited
by Bishop Proclus in a Mary-sermon preached in the fifth century.
Though enwrapped in the all-consuming flame of divine love, she yet
remains unharmed. It is only in German art that this simile has been
pictorially translated. German artists were familiar with the idea
through Conrad von Würtzburg’s apostrophe to the Virgin:
‘In the thorn bush on the bare field
Moses, the hero of God
Saw in a glow of bright fire
The birth of our Saviour foreshadowed.
In the blast of the flame
It remained unaltered
As if neither leaf nor twig
Perceived the death-giving blaze.
In this we may recognize
The full magnificence of thy maidenhood.’[146]
And we find this burning Thorn Bush with the Ivory Tower, the Sealed
Fountain, the Fleece of Gideon and other emblems of the Virgin, in
the fifteenth-century renderings of the _Hortus Inclusus_ and in the
background of the essentially German allegory of the Incarnation, known
as the ‘Hunting of the Unicorn.’ There are some fine embroideries and
tapestries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Bavarian
National Museum,[147] in which the burning thorn bush, with the other
symbols of the Virgin’s purity, are worked with most careful detail.
The burning bush, not particularly a thorn bush, but the ‘bush’ of our
Authorized Version, is now the chosen emblem of the Church of Scotland.
There were neither thorns nor thistles in Eden. It was not till the day
when Adam fell that God laid a curse upon the ground: ‘Thorns also and
thistles shall it bring forth to thee.’ Therefore thorns and thistles
are in general the symbols of sin and death. A little German woodcut
expresses eternal death with gruesome completeness: a skull, with the
apple of damnation between its bare jaws, has round its brow a wreath
of twisted thorns.
XI
THE PALM
The Romans took palms for their symbol of Victory. There is a
sarcophagus in the Vatican on which is carved a Roman conqueror with
captive barbarians kneeling before him, and the winged Victory who
crowns him with laurel holds a palm in her left hand.
Simon Maccabees, after he had taken the Tower of Jerusalem, entered it
‘with thanksgiving, and branches of palm trees and with harps.’[148]
And the seers of Scripture saw palms in heaven: ‘A great multitude,
which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds and people, and
tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb clothed with white
robes, and palms in their hands.’[149] ‘These be they that have put off
the mortal clothing and put on the immortal, and have confessed the
name of God; now are they crowned and receive palms.’[150]
Palms were therefore the meed of martyrdom, the symbol of the martyrs’
victory over death.
‘... The angel said
God liketh thy request,
And bothe with the palme of martirdome,
Ye shallen come unto His blissful rest.’[151]
During the first three centuries of Christianity Christian art
concerned itself almost exclusively with the events recounted in the
Old and New Testaments and the Apocryphal Gospels. ‘But during the
fourth century artists began to represent the acts of the martyrs, at
the bidding of Saint Basil, who called to his aid illustrious painters
of athletic combats, to paint with resplendent colours the martyr
Barlaam, the crowned athlete, whom he found himself unable adequately
to describe.... A fresco came to light in 1887, under the Church of SS.
Giovanni e Paolo on the Celian Hill, which shows three Christians being
put to death beneath the rule of Julian the Apostate, kneeling with
eyes bound and hands tied behind their backs. This may be considered as
the first representation of a martyrdom....’[152]
Sixtus III (432–440), as is shown by the inscription which is read
above the principal door of Santa Maria Maggiore, had had the
instruments of their martyrdom painted only beneath the feet of the
martyrs.
‘Ecce tui testes uteri sibi proemia portant
Sub pedibusque jacet passio cuique sua.
Ferrum, flamma, ferae, fluvius, sævumque venenum
Tot tamen has mortes una corona manet.’[153]
Thus in the fourth century there were representations of martyrdoms,
and in the fifth century single figures of the martyrs more or less
idealized, but they apparently carried the crown of victory, ‘the
crown of their high calling,’ not the palm. But though the crown was
generally used, the palm of the primitive Christian Church was not
forgotten, for, as Cassiodorus, writing at the beginning of the sixth
century, points out, it was palms which, in the eyes of the people,
indicated those strong athletes who were victorious, and advocates
their use as a religious symbol.
Palms at this period seem to have been used as an emblem of the public
games themselves. On the consular diptyches, the double tablets of
ivory which a consul had carved to commemorate his entry into office,
it was customary to put palms beneath the figure of the consul, among
the bags of money and other objects that were supposed to represent the
benefits which would accrue to the populace beneath his rule.
It was probably this secular use of the palm which excluded it from
the symbolism of the Church during the early centuries, for it is palm
trees not palm branches which are found in the early mosaics, notably
those of S. Apollinare Nuova in Ravenna, where palm trees alternate
with the figures round the frieze, and palm trees, according to St
Ambrose, were not the symbol of victory but the emblem of the righteous
man, ‘for its roots are upon the earth but its head is lifted towards
the heavens.’
But by the thirteenth century the public games had dropped from Italian
social life, and religious art reverted once more to the palm branch
of the catacombs as the symbol of a martyr’s triumph over death.
Durandus, writing about the year 1286, unites the different renderings
of the palm’s significance. He says: ‘Martyrs are painted with the
instruments of their torture and sometimes with palms, which signify
victory, according to that saying:
‘“The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree; as a palm tree
flourishes, so his memory shall be preserved.”’[154]
After the Renaissance martyrs were very generally depicted with palms,
either in place of, or in addition to, the instruments of their
martyrdom. They varied in size and shape, from the tiny closed palm
no longer than a human hand, used by Cimabue,[155] to the magnificent
pedestal of palm branches on which Carpaccio has set his ‘Saint Ursula
in Glory.’[156] Saint Christopher, the giant saint, in consideration
of his size, was always allowed a whole palm tree as his staff, but a
whole palm tree, or the tiniest scrap of its foliage, carried exactly
the same meaning.
The palm is also given occasionally to several saints who have not
suffered a violent death, but have been conspicuous for their victory
over pain and temptation; for instance, Saint Francis, Saint Catharine
of Siena and Saint Clare.
Even in the Catacombs two palms are sometimes placed crossways, not on
the tombs of martyrs only, but on other Christian tombs, to signify the
victory of the cross. For life as a declared Christian in the early
days of the faith was sufficiently difficult and perilous, even if it
did not end in death at the hands of the executioner. In the same way
the pilgrim who had overcome difficulties and encountered possible
death on a journey of piety to the holy sepulchre was permitted to
take the name of palmer when he ‘brings home his staff enwreathed with
palm.’[157]
Meanwhile palms never fell into disuse as a secular symbol. When they
appear on the seals and coins of emperors and kings they indicate
entirely worldly power and authority, and it is not in recognition
of sainthood that the winged genius presents Henri IV with palm and
wreath of laurel in the fine allegorical picture of his ‘Entry into
Paris after the Battle of Ivry.’[158]
In a hymn of Saint Augustine, Jesus Christ is designated the ‘Palma
bellatorum,’ but, perhaps by reason of its pagan origin, and also
because it has never been exclusively a religious symbol, Christ as
the conqueror of sin and death is seldom depicted with the palm of
victory. In a few devotional Crucifixions palms are placed crossways
above the Saviour’s head, and very rarely it is seen in the hand of the
newly-risen Christ. He almost invariably carries instead the banner
of the Resurrection with a scarlet cross upon a white ground. In one
of the rare representations[159] where He holds a palm He holds also
the banner in His other hand, and it is striking how the adding of the
lesser symbol to the greater, an error the early masters carefully
avoided, detracts from the dignity of the figure.
In the four canonical gospels, palms as a symbol are only mentioned
once, the occasion being the entry of Jesus Christ ‘riding lowly upon
an ass’ into Jerusalem before the feast of the Passover.
‘They ... took branches of palm trees and went forth to meet Him, and
cried Hosanna!’
It was a respect paid to a reigning sovereign and would support the
accusation of the Jews that He sought to make Himself a king.
The entry into Jerusalem is not an incident in the life of Christ which
is used for devotional contemplation, though it occurred usually in
the series of scenes from the life of Christ which were frequent in
pre-Renaissance art, executed in carved wood, ivory and marble; and in
the hands of the villagers of the Mount of Olives the palms signified,
of course, simply triumph, for they had not yet gained the full
Christian meaning of victory through the Cross.
In representations of the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, the palms
are merely a historical detail, but it is a true symbol, in defiance
of the probable fact, when the Saviour Himself is represented carrying
the palm, as in the _Biblia Pauperum_ of 1440.[160] It is then purely a
symbol of His triumph over sin and death.
In this same edition of the _Biblia Pauperum_ the palm is also,
strangely enough, placed in the hand of Christ in the Ecce Homo; the
‘reed in His right hand’ set there in mockery, changed to the victor’s
palm.
Occasionally the palm is given to the angel Gabriel when he comes
from Heaven to announce the Saviour’s approaching birth. ‘Ave’ is his
salutation to the Virgin, and in Roman fashion, as in salutation to a
queen, he kneels with a lifted palm.
Spinello Aretino paints Gabriel with the palm. In his Annunciation at
Arezzo[161] the angel is first seen above, flying with the palm from
before God’s throne. Below he kneels, the palm in his hand, before the
Virgin. Ambrogio Lorenzetti[162] and others follow the same tradition,
but the palm was soon superseded in Siena by the olive and elsewhere by
the lily, which was adopted by painters of all nations as the flower of
the Annunciation.
The _Legenda Aurea_ of Jacobus de Voragine gives an account of the
death and burial of the Virgin. The legend is said to be an invention
of the Gnostics, and there is reason to believe of Lencius in the
second century.[163]
Shortly before the Virgin’s death the angel Gabriel again appeared to
her, and ‘he gave her a branch of palm from Paradise which he commanded
should be borne before her bier.’
This branch of palm was clearly the symbol of victory over sin,
since she had passed a full lifetime in perfect sinlessness and her
surpassing sorrows had entitled her to the reward of martyrdom.
The Legend continues:
‘And the palm shone which he had left behind with great clearness;
it was green like a natural branch and its leaves shimmered like the
morning star.’ The palm, therefore, is distinguished from the palms
of the martyrs by being encircled with stars. A Sienese artist paints
seven,[164] the sacred number, corresponding with the Virgin’s sorrows;
other artists give twelve, foreshadowing that there should be upon her
head ‘a crown of twelve stars.’
Usually, in Italian pictures of the death or ‘Dormition’ of the Virgin,
an angel, or Saint John the Evangelist, appears at her bedside
carrying the palm. Northern art was almost entirely uninfluenced by the
details given by Jacobus de Voragine of the Virgin’s death and burial,
and though in Germany ‘The Death of the Virgin’ is a very favourite
subject, the palm is never introduced. Saint John frequently, however,
holds a lighted taper, and some form of the starry palm tradition may
have drifted northwards, for the master of the Sterzing Altar[165]
paints a cluster of star-shaped flowers in the hand of Saint John, who
bends over the inanimate form of the Virgin.
Her body was carried by divine command to the valley of Jehoshaphat,
‘and John bare the palm branch in front of it.’
This scene, too, belongs to Italian art, and usually makes a beautiful
processional group. Saint John, with the privilege of a son, walks
before the bier. Duccio di Buoninsegna[166] paints him with the closed
narrow palm of a martyr. In the charming little long-shaped picture by
Fra Angelico[167] the palm has its fan-shaped leaves spread wide and
it shines as if it were of gold.
In the ‘Immaculate Conception’ of the Spanish school one of the
attendant _putti_ usually carries a palm. This may be the palm of
victory over sin and death, or, following another authority, it may be
a symbol of the Immaculate Conception, since it bears fruit at the same
moment at which it flowers.[168]
According to Dr Anselm Salzer, O.S.B., ‘The palm, when referring to
Mary, is a figure of her victory over the world and its temptations, of
her everlasting virtue, of her sovereignty in heaven, of the protection
that she offers to mankind, of her triumphant motherhood and of the
beauty of her soul.’[169]
XII
THE ACANTHUS
One plant, the acanthus, which was very much used by pre-Renaissance
artists, seems to have dropped later from the flora of symbolism.
[Illustration:
_Photo Alinari_
THE ACANTHUS OF PARADISE
Mosaic of 13th century
(S. Clemente, Rome)]
Paradise was embowered, according to Saint Paulino da Nola, in
_floriferi caeleste nemus paradisi_, and curving branches of acanthus
indicate Heaven in the mosaics of the Baptistery of Ravenna and in
the apse of St John Lateran. The Trees of Jesse and the Trees of Life
in early art are also founded on the acanthus with various symbolical
details niched in the branches. It surrounds the ‘Coronation’ and fills
the space above the heads of the saints in the large central mosaic
of S. Maria Maggiore[170] and of the fine mosaic in S. Clemente.[171]
Venturi writes of the latter:
‘From the plant, whence rises the Cross, spring two green boughs which
wreath over all the abside, enclosing with their spirals birds,
flowers and saints to give the idea of the garden of felicity. In such
a way, in the _Dugento_, at the distance of so many centuries, the
verses of St Paulino da Nola are illustrated once more.’
But after the thirteenth century acanthus plants of vast proportions
were no longer used to symbolize the gardens of Heaven. Heaven became a
natural park-like place with fruit trees and flower-grown grass, except
for its inhabitants, differing little from any princely garden. The
plant was still used as the motive of much decoration, ecclesiastical
and secular, but it was no longer seen in connection with devotional
subjects as the representative plant of Heaven.
XIII
THE FLEUR-DE-LYS
Among the symbolical flowers of art, the golden fleurs-de-lys of France
hold a high position. They were the arms of the King of France, ‘the
eldest son of the Church’; they were borne by Saint Louis, the royal
saint, and are typical of Christian royalty. Till the reign of Henry
VIII they appeared upon the royal banner of England. Their origin,
however, in spite of latter-day legends, was non-Christian, nor are
they distinctively lilies. The learned M. de Beaumont, who has made a
special study of the origins of the fleur-de-lys, or fleur-de-lis, as
he prefers to spell it, has thus summed up his researches:
1. Armorial bearings did not commence in France till after the first
Crusade.
2. It was in imitation of the Arabs and Persians that chivalry,
tourneys and coats of arms were adopted in Europe and France.
3. This flower, which we name the fleur-de-lis, is the symbol of
fecundity and royalty in ancient Egypt; it is also the sacred plant
and tree of life, adopted with the same symbolical significance by the
Assyrians and Persians, from whom it passed to Byzantium, to arrive at
last in the Teutonic countries bordering on the East. It came at the
same time to the Venetians, and the Lombards, the Spaniards and the
French, and this significant form ornamented sceptres and crowns, the
attributes of royalty.
4. When the laws of heraldry were at last established in France, after
the Crusades, this symbol became the arms of the Kings of France, who
entitled themselves _rois par excellence_. Later, the origin being
forgotten and lost, the Celtic root of the word _li_ was ignored by
the heralds. They regarded this symbolical ornament as the _lilium_
or garden lily, in itself a symbol of the Virgin, which for the most
Christian Kings of France must have been a powerful motive for its
adoption. Perhaps even a religious scruple may have been the cause
of this transformation of the heathen into the Christian symbol. It
was not till then that the heraldic writers, the greater part of whom
belonged to the Church, forced themselves to recognize in the heraldic
fleur-de-lys the form of the lilium, even though, in place of being
_or_ upon _azur_ and having three petals, it ought in that case to have
five petals and appear in _argent_.[172]
The monkish heralds found a very elaborate symbolism in the royal
shield of France. The lilies were of gold, not silver, because in
heraldry gold signifies the four kingly virtues, nobility, goodwill,
charity and magnanimity.
They are three in number because this number is complete as is the Holy
Trinity.... Also, the centre one signifies the Christian faith, that on
the right the clergy, that on the left the army. There was no end to
the hidden meanings.
‘_Enfin_,’ concludes Carlo Degrassalio of Carcassonne, ‘_ces trois
fleurs-de-lis d’or sont sur un écu d’azur, parceque, de même que Dieu,
le roi des rois, la puissance des puissances, a en quelque sorte pour
écu le bleu firmament, resplendissant d’astres d’or; de même le roi
de France, fils aîné de l’Eglise, porte pour la plus grande gloire du
Christ, l’écu le plus noble, écu sur lequel les lis d’or brillent comme
les astres sur un ciel serein._’[173]