XIIITHE FLEUR-DE-LYS
Amongthe 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 themselvesrois par excellence. Later, the origin being forgotten and lost, the Celtic root of the wordliwas ignored by the heralds. They regarded this symbolical ornament as theliliumor 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 theChristian 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 beingoruponazurand having three petals, it ought in that case to have five petals and appear inargent.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 quelquesorte 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
Tradition says that the first appearance of the fleur-de-lys upon this earth was at the baptism of King Clovis. King Clovis was married to Clotilda, a Christian Princess of Burgundy, and her prayers having obtained the victory for France at a critical moment, he in gratitude became a Christian also. On the occasion of his baptism by Saint Rémi an angel presented him with three heavenly lilies.
In the Bedford Missal,174presented to Henry VI when he was crowned King of France, the legend is illustrated in miniature. The angel is shown receiving the three lilies in Heaven. He descends to earth and carries them to Saint Rémi, who reverently receives them in a napkin and gives them to Queen Clotilda. Lower down in the picture Clotilda presents the emblazonedshield bearing the three fleurs-de-lys to her husband. This legend might seem disproved by the decoration of fleurs-de-lys, which was already upon the great brazen bowl now in the Louvre, known as the Font of King Clovis, had not recent archæological investigation discovered the origin of the bowl to be neither Frankish nor Christian, and the fleurs-de-lys prove merely that the vessel was designed for royal use.
The confusion of the fleur-de-lys with the lily of Heaven and the flower of the Virgin gave it a semi-religious value, which excused its intrusion into the decoration of churches and church furniture. Sometimes it was used entirely heraldically, as the indication of the giver of a gift. It is used heraldically upon the silver shrine of Saint Simeon at Zara, the gift of Louis the Great and his wife, Elizabeth, where the fleur-de-lys of the coat of arms is repeated throughout the entire decoration. Heraldically, yet with some sense of the right placing of the flower which emblemizes purity, were the fleurs-de-lys embroidered with the wordamorupon the tiny shoes of theVirgin de los Reyes. The figure, which is still in Seville Cathedral, was a gift from SaintLouis of France to his brother saint, Ferdinand of Spain.
The flower is again heraldic upon the magnificent tomb of Robert the Wise,175the patron of Giotto and Simone Martini, where it decorates the background with fine effect, though it is perhaps too insistently repeated on crowns, sceptres, brooches and the floriation of crosses; but the constantly-recurring fleurs-de-lys in the architecture of the Cistercian Brotherhood appear quite definitely as the flower of the Virgin. She was the patron of the order, and their famous saint, Bernard of Clairvaux—‘her own faithful Bernard’—devoted his life to praising the ‘lily of the valley.’ Her impress is upon the stone of the Cistercian abbeys of England and of France, where repeatedly we find the ‘carved work of open lilies.’ But the Cistercians had no monopoly of the symbol. Almost naturally the stone work of French Gothic architecture seems to bud and break into the formal flower. In the great Church of Albi each upspringing slender shaft ends in afleur, alternating with shields along the screen. In the rood-loft of St Florentin,in the town of that name, fleurs-de-lys form the centre of elaborate tracery, and in the rood-loft of the Madeleine at Troyes a very beautiful crowned fleur-de-lys fills the panels of the surmounting balustrade.
In the panel176designed for the tomb of Edward VI by Torregiano, and now forming part of the altar above Henry VII’s tomb, the rose and the lily meet in a charming Renaissance decoration, and the link between the heraldic and the symbolical seems to be supplied, for the personal badges of the king, the Tudor rose and the fleur-de-lys, are woven together in flowing lines, till, losing heraldic stiffness and personal application, they become the Rose of Love and the Lily of Purity, a fit decoration for the altar of God.
But it was not in France and England only that the fleur-de-lys was used as a symbol of royalty. In a Greek miniature of the tenth century177fleurs-de-lys are scattered over the mantle of King David, and Didron mentions that he saw a fleur-de-lys ornamentation of the thirteenth century in the Church of Hecatompyli.The miniature was, of course, painted before the lilies had appeared on the royal banner of France, and the decoration at Hecatompyli would be drawn from Eastern sources.
The most noble use of the fleur-de-lys is to express the majesty of God. Floriated crowns as a symbol of Divine majesty were common in French, Flemish and German art, but are seldom seen in Italy. Most usually it is God the Father only who is so distinguished. In a French miniature of the end of the fourteenth century,178where the three persons are represented under human form, God the Father wears the floriated crown, the other persons the cruciform halo. In a stained glass window, with the figure of God the Father holding the Crucifix,179He wears a tiara of five tiers, each decorated with the fleur-de-lys.
Memling and his school, painting for the Court of Burgundy, held to the French traditions, and God the Father in the ‘Coronation’ on the shrine of St Ursula, God the Son in the ‘Christ surrounded by Angels’ in Antwerp,and the Virgin on the wings (outer) of the ‘Last Judgment’ at Danzig, all wear crowns ornamented with fleurs-de-lys.
In German art there are fewer crowns bearing the fleur-de-lys, the crowns of both the Deity and the Virgin having usually the arched imperial form. But very frequently towards the end of the fifteenth century the rays of light, which in Italian art make a cruciform bar across the halo of the Saviour, in Germany take the form of fleurs-de-lys. They are particularly noticeable in ‘The Virgin and Saint Anne with the Child’ of Hans Fries,180and in a rather more elaborate form in the work of Wolgemut.181
There are two saints who have always had the right to wear the royal lilies of France.
They are Saint Louis of France, in his lifetime Louis IX, and his grand-nephew Louis, Bishop of Toulouse.
King Louis, the saintly soldier who brought to France the Crown of Thorns and, to enshrine it, built the Sainte Chapelle, died in Crusade before the walls of Tunis in 1270.Twenty-seven years later he was canonized, and Giotto painted his portrait in Santa Croce.
Mr Gardner comments on this fresco:
‘St Louis the King (one whom Dante does not seem to have held in honour), a splendid figure, calm and noble, in one hand the sceptre and in the other the Franciscan cord, his royal robe besprinkled with the golden lily of France over the armour of the warrior of the Cross, his face absorbed in celestial contemplation. He is the Christian realization of the Platonic philosopher king; “St Louis,” says Walter Pater, “precisely because his whole being was full of heavenly vision, in self-banishment from it for a while, led and ruled the French people so magnanimously alike in peace and war.” Opposite him is St Louis of Toulouse, with the royal crown at his feet; below are St Elizabeth of Hungary, with her lap full of flowers, and, opposite to her, St Clare, of whom Dante’s Piccarda tells so sweetly in theParadiso—that lady on high whom, “perfected life and lofty merit doth enheaven.”’182Saint Clare carries a lily.
In the Prado there is a Holy Trinity by C.Coello, where Saint Louis is placed opposite to Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, who holds a basket of roses, and this grouping of the two royal saints is often found. St Elizabeth was canonized before St Louis was born, but they are well matched in piety, both of noble birth, both dying in the flower of their age, and both devoted to their people’s welfare. There is a very interesting figure of Saint Louis, intellectual, earnest and strong, in theMariage Mystique183of Jean Perréal.
Saint Louis of Toulouse was the grandson of Charles of Anjou, who was suzerain of Florence for ten years. Perugia chose him as her patron saint, and in Florence he was patron of the Parte Guelfa. He is easily recognized by his mitre and the fleurs-de-lys upon his cope. There is a statue of him by Donatello at Santa Croce, and pictures elsewhere by Bonfigli, Simone Martini, Moretto and Cosimo Rosselli.
Perhaps the most sympathetic and individual portrait of him is that of Bartolommeo Vivarini.184He carries book and crozier and his youthful face is very sweet and earnest, thoughit has the set lips of the true churchman. The cope is bordered with a large design of fleurs-de-lys.
Both these saints wear the fleur-de-lys to mark that they are members of the Royal House of France. The purity which the lily symbolizes when regarded as the flower of the Virgin is a secondary significance. Now another holy one has joined them, who also, though of lowly birth, bore the golden lilies. But for her they were the true lilies of maidenhood, their form merely showing that the right to carry them on her banner was the gift of a French king.
‘With a wreath woven by no mortal hand shall she (Jeanne d’Arc) at Reims engarland happily the gardener of the Lily, named Charles, son of Charles,’ prophesied Engélinde, the Hungarian seer, and at the fulfilment Charles was not ungrateful. Since a woman cannot heraldically bear arms, he granted to the brothers of the maid the right to wear two of the royal lilies on their shield. The blazon wasd’azur à la couronne royale d’or soutenue d’une épée d’argent croisée et pommetée d’or en pal, cotoyée de deux fleurs-de-lisd’or. They were given at the same time (December 1429) the surname ofdu lis.
The sword has the blade ornamented with five fleurs-de-lys and is apparently the famous one unearthed in the Church of St Catharine at Fierbois, ‘decked with five flower-de-luces on each side.’185But in the least doubtful of the many contemporary portraits of the Maid (those in the collection of M. George Spetz) the fleurs-de-lys do not appear. When questioned at her trial as to any supernatural power held by her sword, she declared: ‘It was a rusty sword in the earth, with five crosses on it, and I knew it through my voices.’186
The clergy of the Church of St Catharine, however, after finding the sword by Jeanne’s directions, had had a scabbard made for it of crimson velvet, embroidered with fleurs-de-lys in gold, and legend supported by heraldry seems to have substituted the fleurs-de-lys of the scabbard for the five crosses of the blade.
The device upon the banner was dictated to her by her patron saints, Margaret and Catharine.It was of white linen, fringed with silk, and embroidered with a figure of the Saviour holding a globe in His hands, while an angel knelt on either side in adoration.Jhesus Mariawas inscribed at the foot. A repetition of this banner recopied from age to age is said to be preserved at Tours.