I am an unashamed fan of The Bachelor franchise. Those weekly cliffhangers that leave you wondering who’s going to get the rose makes me wonder about roses in history. Of course, because I am a history nerd. [Let’s pause to insert a little rant here about Tayshia and JPJ – I mean, am I the only one who was screaming at the TV this week?! – but I’m not going to say much because it probably won’t age well].
So let’s talk about roses now. The national flower of England is the Tudor Rose, which came from combining the white rose of York with the red rose of Lancaster after the Wars of the Roses. You can find the Tudor rose all over England, including on the backs of many 20p coins. But roses have a long history. Cleopatra carpeted her floor with rose petals in preparation for a tryst with Marc Antony.
The Virgin Mary is often referred to as a Rose without a thorn, and one of the first medieval Christmas carols we have, There is No Rose, refers to Mary as this precious flower:
There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesu;
Alleluia.
For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space;
Res Miranda.
When Jesus was crucified he was supposedly given a crown of thorns, more of the rose motif.
Later in the medieval period the rose was the iconic symbol of the beloved lady – or of the prize of her love itself. personification that found its most exquisite representation in the 13th-century French epic poem Le Roman de La Rose, a medieval French allegorical poem. Throughout the poem, Rose is used both as the name of the beloved lady and as a symbol of female sexuality.
So it made sense for monarchs to embrace the imagery of the rose – the virtue and innocence, the commitment to a higher calling, and the purity.
Elizabeth I used the rose liberally, playing off the association with the Virgin Mary. Look at this portrait, in which Elizabeth is standing in front of a rose garden, and holding a rose. So many roses!
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.