The rose was long in disgrace as the flower of Venus. But even saints could not exclude it from their lives, and gradually it crept into Christian hagiology. Roses decorate some of the most poetical of the histories in the _Legenda Aurea_, which was compiled by Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, during the last half of the thirteenth century, and there are roses in plenty in the pictures of the fifteenth century. Their meaning, at first sight, is not so clearly defined as is that of some other flowers. Raban Maur and _L’anonyme de Clairvaux_ had used them as the type of charity; Durandus had explained them, red and white, as emblems of martyrs and virgins. Walafrid Strabo also considered them the symbols of martyrdom, but in the Golden Legend and in the pictures of the Renaissance, when plucked and falling, or when sent from Heaven, they are symbols of divine love; when they are woven into wreaths they symbolize heavenly joy. The symbolism of the lesser flowers is not so clear, but the water lily and the saffron as well as the rose were held by Raban Maur to be symbols of charity; verdure, according to Durandus, was the emblem of beginners in the faith; the heath, hyssop, convolvulus and violet all represent humility; the lettuce temperance; the elder, zeal; and the thyme, activity. Of these, however, with the exception of the violet, Christian art has taken little note. There are certain flowers which appear repeatedly in pictures which represent the garden of Heaven; they grow in the ‘Enclosed Garden’ of the Madonna, and surround the Infant Christ when He is laid upon the ground to receive adoration. They are the rose and the lily, and also the violet, the pink and the strawberry, the last with fruit and flowers together. The symbolists are unanimous in ascribing humility to the violet; the pink or carnation, which is usually introduced when there are no roses, is, like the rose, the flower of divine love; the strawberry with fruit and flower represents the good works of the righteous, or the fruits of the spirit. To these are sometimes added the clover and the columbine. According to the legend, Saint Patrick was the first to use the trefoil as an illustration of the Trinity in Unity, and the shamrock or clover is the emblem of the Holy Trinity. The little doves which make up the flower of the columbine wonderfully resemble the little doves which in early art, particularly in the French miniatures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, represent the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is true that in the columbine the little doves number five, not seven, but the Flemish artists, always extremely careful in their symbolism, rectified this by painting the plant with seven blooms upon it. It should only be used as the attribute of God the Son.