And in a copy of the _Biblia Pauperum_[20] of the fifteenth century we find a branch of roses so placed as to balance the sword, both set diagonally like rays, one on each side of the head of Christ. The rose was placed on Christ’s right hand above the forgiven souls, and clearly typified divine love and mercy; the sword on the left was above the damned, and typified divine condemnation. But almost immediately the rose was replaced by the lily. The lily was, in the fifteenth century, the one distinctly sacred flower. Its lance-like habit of growth made it a most symmetrical pendant to the sword, and possibly, too, the Church of the North, stern both in religious sentiment and in its pictorial expression, preferred the lily, which typified the integrity of the judging God, to the rose, symbol of His mercy. The Netherlands adopted the symbol. It appears in Memling’s most impressive Last Judgment,[21] and in the Last Judgment of Lucas van Leyden.[22] The same device was used by Albert Dürer[23] and many of the less known German masters; but Rubens, in his magnificent picture now in Munich, has replaced the lily by a sceptre. The lily, used in this connection, is not found in Italian art, for though the Netherlands, Germany and England adopted the symbolism of Italy, Italy, though admiring greatly the technical excellence of the Flemish, rarely assimilated the Northern conventions for the expression of the intangible. But the lily is usually reserved for virgin saints and martyrs, and more particularly for her whom Chaucer names ‘Floure of Virgins all’ --that is, the Virgin Mary. The Venerable Bede, writing in the early part of the eighth century, declares ‘the great white lily’ to be a fit emblem of the resurrection of the Virgin; the pure white petals signifying her body; the golden anthers her soul within, shining with celestial light. According to Petrus Cantius, cantor of the Cathedral School of Paris in the early part of the thirteenth century, the lily represented the daughter of Joachim herself, by reason of its whiteness, its aroma, delectable above all others, its curative virtues, and finally because it springs from uncultivated soil as the Virgin was the issue of Jewish parents. As to its curative virtues, it may be added that an anonymous English monk, writing in the thirteenth century, prescribes the lily as a sovereign remedy for burns; and for the reason that ‘it is a figure of the Madonna, who also cures burns, that is, the vices or burns of the soul.’[24]