Medieval Roses and Romance
Cover image: Book of Hours, Lieges, 13th Century. Image taken from 'The Medieval Garden', Sylvia Landsberg.
It's no surprise that the most popular Valentine's Day flower is the rose, accounting for 70% of all flowers purchased on February 14th last year.
Your bouquet of roses might conjure thoughts of Venus, the goddess of love or Victorians giving gifts with hidden meaning to be decoded in a floriography.
The Middle Ages is one period you may not immediately associate with roses and romance, but this month's Flora Historia would like you to reconsider this...
The golden miniatures are taken from a version of The Book of Hours produced in Lieges, Belgium in the late 13th Century, and represent the 'Occupations of the Months'.
The top image representing June shows a man collecting what has been noted as Rose Gallica (also know as Apothocary's Rose) to be used for oil or garlands. Rose Gallica was brought back and cultivated in castles and monastic gardens in Britain from 13th Century onwards. They were a common sight in small, enclosed Medieval gardens called 'herbers' which were populated with flowers grown for scent and beauty unlike the more utilitarian parts of the garden.
Book of Hours, Lieges, 13th Century. Image taken from 'The Medieval Garden', Sylvia Landsberg.
The miniature above represents April, and signifies the month of 'giving' - when nature gives an abundance of blooms to man and lovers can give to one another. Garlands of roses were popular in the Medieval period. A common arrangement was that of a chaplet - or flower crown. The Medieval chaplet was employed during festivals and ceremonies, adorned by nuns in procession or women when they were to be married.
'Madonna and Child in a Rose Arbour', 1473, Tempera on wood, Saint-Martin, Colmar. Image taken from wga.hu
In these small monastic herbers roses took on associations with the Virgin Mary. There are frequent representations of the Madonna and Child with a trellis of Rose alba and Rose gallica growing behind them. For the purpose of our Valentine's research, we will be looking at the symbolism of the rose in the secular world. Here, inside the idealised space of castle herbers and gardens of paradise, roses served as not just the backdrop but also a vital symbol in the language of Medieval courtly love.
Roman de la Rose, Lorris, Guillaume de; Meun, Jean de; (joint authorship), Illuminated manuscript, Place and date of production: S. Netherlands (Bruges), circa 1490-1500. Image taken from British Library Online.
What do we mean by courtly love? It is described as this:
'Characteristic of this love was a situation in which the object of a lover's affection was a married woman of high rank whom the lover could only adore at a distance, his devotion finding practical expression in chivalric deeds of valour performed in her favour.'
The rose as an ideal in courtly love was no better illustrated than in 'Le Roman de la Rose' or 'Romance of the Rose', a Medieval allegorical French poem that gained widespread popularity in England in the 13th Century.
Roman de la Rose, Lorris, Guillaume de; Meun, Jean de; (joint authorship), Illuminated manuscript, Place and date of production: S. Netherlands (Bruges), circa 1490-1500
The above image is taken from 'Romance of the Rose' and shows a pivotal point in the narrative, where Eros pierces the protagonist with the arrow of love! Next to him we see a rose garden encircled by a boundary foreshadowing the quest to overcome challenges to obtain the woman's love, or the woman herself.
This text was extremely popular in the Middle Ages, evidenced by the fact that 300 manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts are still known to survive to this day! In 2006, a copy from the first half of the 15th Century sold at Christies auction house for £21,000.
Outside of Medieval literature, knights showed their admiration and devotion to their beloved through a language of chivalry consisting of various gestures and services of devotion. In the realm of chivalry, roses represented honour, loyalty and virtue.
'The Castle of Love', Luttrell Psalter, 14th Century. British Museum. Image taken from Medieval Manuscripts Blog, British Library.
Finally, we find the interplay between roses and romance in the 'Siege of Love' motif. This allegorical scene was frequently found in medieval manuscripts and on decorative objects such as ivory caskets. One interpretation is that the woman's heart is guarded by the fortification of the castle wall. The knights take aim with flowers and weapons to capture her affection. Interestingly, as we can see in the above image that women in the castle are not passive, but rather defend their position by throwing their own blooms at the invaders.
For key takeaways from Medieval Roses and Romance, and to find out how this research can inspire your own flower arrangements today, sign up to our monthly Flora Historia newsletter.
It includes our February arrangement using Flowercomb® and tips for creating your own Medieval courtly love flower arrangement at home!
Sources and Further Reading:
Paterson, Allen. A History of the Fragrant Rose. 2007, Little Books Ltd.
Landsberg, Sylvia. The Medieval Garden. 1995, The British Museum Press.
Coates, Peter. Flowers in History. 1970, Weidenfeld and Nicolson
Goody, Jack. The Culture of Flowers. 1993, Cambridge University Press
Porter, Pamela. Courtly Love in Medieval Manuscripts. 2003, University of Toronto Press
Touw, Mia. “Roses in the Middle Ages.” Economic Botany, vol. 36, no. 1, 1982, pp. 71–83. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4254352.
Loomis, Roger Sherman. “The Allegorical Siege in the Art of the Middle Ages.” American Journal of Archaeology 23, no. 3 (1919): 255–69. https://doi.org/10.2307/497460.
Christies Auction House, GUILLAUME DE LORRIS (fl. c.1230) and JEAN DE MEUN (c.1240-1305), Roman de la rose, and JEAN DE MEUN, Le Testament, in French, DECORATED MANUSCRIPT ON PAPER, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4728659