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]
But though theologians occasionally used the lily as a symbol of virginity, before the eleventh century we do not find it associated with the Mother of Christ pictorially, either as her emblem or her attribute. There are no lilies in the Catacombs, and those in the early mosaics are decorative, or symbols of the joy of Heaven. The miniaturists occasionally used the flower as the attribute of virgin martyrs, but not in representations of the Virgin.
It was by a Spanish king that the lily was first definitely, and in a manner pictorially, associated with the Mother of Christ—as her own flower. In the eleventh century Spaniards and Moors were each fighting for their faith, and the Moslems instituted military orders called rábitos, the members of which were vowed to perpetual warfare against the ‘infidel.’
The Christian knights were not to be outdone, and in 1043 Garcias of Navarre founded an order of chivalry vowed to the service of the Virgin, which he named ‘the Order of the Lily of Navarre.’
Edmondson[25] writes: ‘The Order of “Our Lady of the Lily,” or “of Navarre,” was instituted in the city of Nagera by Garcias, the sixth King of Navarre, in the year 1043, on the occasion of a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary issuing forth of a lily, and holding the Infant Jesus in her arms, being then discovered in that city. This order was composed of thirty knights, chosen out of the principal ancient families in Navarre, Biscay and old Castile. Each of these knights wore on his breast a lily embroidered in silver, and, on all festivals and holy days, he wore about his neck a collar composed of a double chain of gold interlaced with Gothic capital letters
; and pendent thereunto an oval medal, whereon was enamelled, on a white ground, a lily of gold springing out of a mount, supporting a Gothic capital letter
, ducally crowned.’[26]