Miracle of The Roses - Symbolism of The Rose

Symbolism of The Rose

In the Latin West the symbolism of the rose is a Greco-Roman heritage but influenced and finally transformed through Latin biblical texts which were also liturgical. The rose acquired in the Greco-Roman culture a symbolism which can be summarized thus: The rose represented beauty, the season of spring, and love. It also spoke of the fleetness of life and therefore death. In Rome the feast called "Rosalia" was a feast of the dead: thus the flower referred to the next world.

This symbolism attained a deeper complexity when contrasted with the thorns among which this flower blossoms. This contrast inspired the Christian Latin poet Sedulius, who wrote (between 430-450) a very elaborate comparison between Eve, our first mother, and Mary, the Mother of Jesus our Savior. He illustrated the parallelism already made by the martyr and apologist Justin (around 150) and developed it in a deep poetic and doctrinal liturgical teaching in his Paschal song, Carmen paschal.

The rose was evidently a privileged symbol for Mary, Queen of heaven and earth. We see this development later during the Middle Ages, but not in an exclusive manner: The rose became an attribute of many other holy women - for example, Casilda of Toledo, Elizabeth of Portugal, Elizabeth of Hungary, Rose of Lima, and for the martyrs in general. The rose is even a symbol for Christ himself, as seen in the German Christmas song, "es ist ein 'Rose' entsprungen."

During the Middle Ages the rose was cultivated in monastery gardens and used for medicinal purposes. It became a symbol in religious writing and iconography in different images and settings, to invoke a variety of intellectual and emotional responses. The mystic rose appears in Dante's Divine Comedy, where it represents God's love. By the twelfth century, the red rose had come to represent Christ's passion, and the blood of the martyrs.

The most common association of the rose is with the Virgin Mary. The third-century Saint Ambrose believed that there were roses in the Garden of Eden, initially without thorns, but which became thorny after the fall, and came to symbolize Original Sin itself. Thus the Blessed Virgin is often referred to as the 'rose without thorns', since she was immaculately conceived. Saint Bernard compared her virginity to a white rose and her charity to a red rose. With the rise of Marian worship and the Gothic cathedral in the twelfth century, the image of the rose became even more prominent in religious life. Cathedrals built around this time usually include a rose window, dedicated to the Virgin, at the end of a transept or above the entrance. The thirteenth century Saint Dominic is credited with the institution of the Rosary, a series of prayers to the Virgin, symbolized by garlands of roses worn in Heaven.