The Rose A Marian Symbol. Rose History
The Rose A Marian Symbol Say it with Flowers! Christians did not wait until this century to express their religious life and belief with flowers. Why did the rose become a relatively important symbol through the Christian ages? Is there a Biblical foundation? Although wild roses grew in Palestine at the time of ancient Israel and of Jesus, the rose is mentioned neither in the Hebrew Bible nor in the New Testament. In the Greco-Roman culture, the rose represented beauty, the season of spring, and love. It also spoke of the fleetness of time, and therefore inferred death and the next world. In Rome the feast called rosalia was a feast of the dead. In Latin Christian iconography the first use of the rose appears in the scenes representing the next world, paradise, together with the lily and other flowers. These flowers also became symbols of virtues and of categories of the elect; for example, the red rose for martyrs, and the lily for virgins. The rose as the queen of flow...