But in the Netherlands, in the fifteenth century, symbolism was usually very precise, and there does seem to be a slight difference in the use of the two lilies. The _lilium candidum_ is used exclusively as the symbol of virginal purity, more particularly in relation to the fact that the Virgin Mary was a mother, but the iris, the royal lily, appears to be the emblem or attribute of the incarnate Godhead. Though Saint Bernard of Clairvaux had attributed the metaphor, ‘I am ... the lily of the valleys,’ to the Virgin, Origen, the older and, in the North, weightier authority, held Christ to be the lily. In the ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’[42] of Hugo van der Goes, where the symbolism all refers to the Child, there is no white lily, but the orange lily and the purple and white iris. In the Annunciation of Memling, the single iris below the lilies may be the emblem of the Prince of David’s house who was to be born of virginal innocence--and it may have the same meaning where it rises above the lilies in the picture where the royal Child sits upon His mother’s knee. It may also indicate royal birth in the ‘Saint Barbara’ of the Prado. She was the daughter of a King, but in this painting has no crown or other attribute of royalty. It is noticeable, too, that had there been a white lily in the vase it would have been difficult to distinguish this Saint Barbara from a figure of the Virgin. The idea of royalty in connection with the iris received support from the constant recurrence of the ‘fleur-de-lys,’ accepted as an iris (though some contend that the form, as a symbol of royalty, came originally from Egypt and was founded on the lotus), on royal crowns and sceptres. Memling and his school used such crowns as the symbol of divine majesty, placing them upon the heads of God the Father,[43] of God the Son,[44] and also on the head of the Virgin Mary.[45] Dante also appears to use the ‘fleur-de-lys’ or ‘fiordaliso’ as a symbol of honour: ‘... Beneath the sky So beautiful, came four-and-twenty elders (signori) By two and two, with flower-de-luces crown’d.’[46] Some commentators, taking the four-and-twenty personages as the four-and-twenty canonical books of the Old Testament, consider the crowns of flowers to be symbolical of the purity of the doctrine found within the books, holding a ‘fiordaliso’ to equal the white lily as a symbol, but it is possible that the poet meant the formal fleur-de-lys upon a golden crown or the fresh iris blooms which would also form a crown of honour.