The Marian Symbolism of Spring, ca. 1200-ca. 1500: Two Case Studies

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.I saw a beautiful woman ascending like a dove over the banks of the waters, whose inestimable fragrance was overwhelming in her garments. And like a spring day, rose blossoms and lilies of the valley surrounded her.-Vidi speciosam (Responsory for the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin)Rose, lily, springtime, greenery, Flower, balm, and sweetest fragrance, Lovely Lady, you surpass them all in sweetness.-Guillaume de Machaut, Rose, liz (Rondeau 10)All therefore look with joy upon the resurgent Christ. Flowers and fields flourish with renewed fruit, and with the sorrowful frost cleared away, birds sing sweetly.-Notker Balbulus, Laudes salvatori (Sequence for Easter Sunday) I n the high and late Middle Ages, the flowers that bloomed in the spring season were fraught with symbolic value. Red roses symbolized virginity, white lilies purity. Both were invoked again and again in secular song praising an elevated beloved and in sacred verse venerating the Virgin Mary. The liturgy of Easter, moreover, viewed spring blossoms as an earthly sign of the salvation made possible by Christ's Resurrection. The earthly vibrancy of the vernal season did more than provide a vocabulary of images common to