The ancient Jews ornamented their temple with the pomegranate, and their high priest’s robes were bordered with alternate bells and pomegranates. In the Christian Church, too, they have been admitted as decoration, though not with any very clear and definite symbolical significance. There is a very handsome seventeenth-century altar-rail of marble on which rest candlesticks and huge brass pomegranates before the high altar in the ancient church of S. Cecilia in Rome; and a great bronze pomegranate, worn by much caressing, is on the balustrade in the tiny chapel which was once the bathroom of the saint. XXIII THE STRAWBERRY The strawberry stands apart from all other symbolical fruits. It is found in Italian, Flemish and German art, and also in the English miniatures. There is a finely-executed Spanish miniature of the sixteenth century in South Kensington Museum. The Pelican in her Piety is in the centre and the border is formed of roses alternating with strawberries. As a symbol it is not only widespread, but of comparatively early origin. In Siena it appears as a flower of Heaven, growing with lilies, violets and carnations, in the ‘Paradise’ of Giovanni di Paolo painted in 1445;[345] and, almost at the same time, a master of the Upper Rhine painted the well-known ‘Madonna of the Strawberries,’[346] which represents the Virgin sitting upon the edge of a raised bed filled with exquisitely-rendered strawberries. Behind is a hedge of roses, and at her feet violets and lilies of the valley. In the foreground is a small figure of the donor kneeling among tufts of snowdrops. The snowdrop is rare as a symbol (though by no means misplaced in a Madonna picture, having all the qualities, except the perfume, of the lily of the valley), and it was probably the individual fancy of the donor. The strawberry is not mentioned in Scripture, neither does it seem to have been remarked by those Fathers of the Church who concerned themselves with symbolism, but it was very successful in its appeal to the artists of the Renaissance. It is a very perfect fruit, with neither thorns nor stone, but sweet, soft and delicious through and through. Its flowers are of the whiteness of innocence and its leaves almost of the sacred trefoil form, and since it grows upon the ground, not on a tree, there is no possibility of its being the dread fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Its meaning always appears to be the same; it is the symbol of perfect righteousness, or the emblem of the righteous man whose fruits are good works.