Or for she whitnesse had of honestee,
And grene of conscience, and of good fame
The swote savour, lilie was her name.’
Since the lily was appropriated by the celibates of the Church another symbol had to be found for the chastity of those still in the world, and for the virtue of the secular the unicorn was chosen. The mediæval legend ran that the unicorn was of all created beasts the fiercest and most difficult to capture. But should a maid be in his path he would lie down with his head upon her lap and then the hunter could take him with great ease.
‘The Triumph of Chastity’ with the ‘Triumph of Love’ as a pendant were rather favourite subjects in the fifteenth century in Italy, particularly as a decoration of the elaborate bridal chests or cassoni, then in vogue. ‘The Triumph of Chastity’ of Liberale da Verona[281] is typical. The white-clothed figure of a young woman stands upon a car drawn by unicorns, while behind follows a rejoicing crowd. She holds a cornucopia but no lily appears.
On the shutters in the Hall of Heliodorus, in the Vatican, there is a very beautiful Renaissance design in which the lily and the unicorn are united, but usually in Italy the lily was kept as an ecclesiastical and the unicorn as a secular symbol.
In German art both lily and unicorn are held to be symbols of the Virgin’s purity, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were many tapestries and embroideries executed in the convents illustrating that strange allegorical version of the Annunciation known as ‘The Hunting of the Unicorn.’ But the unicorn is never associated with the monastic saints, and indeed, in Northern art, monastic saints themselves are rather rare.
The lily was, therefore, latterly the symbol of monastic celibacy. There is a curious allegorical picture of Saint Francis by Sassetta. The present owner, Mr B. Behrenson, describes it thus:
‘Over the sea and the land, into the golden heavens, towers the figure of the blessed Francis, his face transfigured with ecstasy, his arms held out in his favourite attitude of the cross, his feet firmly planted on a prostrate warrior in golden panoply. Cherubim and Seraphim, with fiery wings and deep crescent halos, form behind the saint a nimbus framing a glory of gold and azure, as dazzling as the sky and as radiant as the sun. Overhead, on opalescent cloudlets, float Poverty in her patched dress, looking up with grateful devotion, Obedience in her rose-red robe with a yoke about her neck and her hands crossed on her breast, and Chastity in white, holding a lily.’[282]
All three maidens are attractive, and Chastity the prettiest of the three, unlike the immured ‘Castitas’ of Giotto,[283] whose guards, with surely unnecessary vigour, drive off ‘Amor’ with pitch-forks.