Among them Saint Catharine of Siena comes first. She was still merely one of the many children of a working tanner of Siena, her sanctity unrecognized, when she was sent a dream from Heaven. In her dream she saw Saint Dominic, who held in one hand a lily which, like the burning bush of Moses, burned but was not consumed. With his other hand he offered her the black and white habit of the Dominican Tertiaries. Saint Catharine regarded the dream as a definite call and later joined the third Order of Saint Dominic. She was a woman not only of most saintly life but of wonderful force of character, and intervened with altruistic motives and plain common sense in the complicated politics of her day. She experienced the mystical trances which were the crown of holiness to the mediæval mind, and was remarkable also for the austerities and good works which her devoted friend and biographer, Raimondo da Capua, likens to lilies.
‘Taught, nay rather compelled, by her supreme Teacher, she learned every day more and more both to enjoy the embraces of the Celestial Bridegroom in the bed of flowers, and to descend into the valley of lilies to make herself more fruitful, nor ever to leave or lessen the one for the sake of the other.’
The most interesting of the pictures of Saint Catharine is that by her friend and disciple, Andrea Vanni,[292] and which is therefore a portrait from memory, if not from life. It was probably painted at the time of her canonization, thirteen years after her death, and shows her as a tall, slight woman with a refined enthusiastic face. In her left hand she holds the lilies[293] which represent the austere virtues of a monastic life. She is the most distinguished woman who wore the veil, and since she is almost invariably represented with a lily, the lilium candidum is sometimes called Saint Catharine’s lily.
Saint Scholastica of the Benedictines[294] and Saint Clare of the Franciscans are also usually depicted with lilies. The last, who styled herself the Little Flower of Saint Francis, has met with great good fortune at the hands of the painters, for two at least, Simone Martini[295] and Luca Signorelli,[296] have very beautifully materialized her sweetness and humility.
Pictures which represent the mystic espousals of any nun usually have the lily as a detail.
Chief among the monks who carry the flower is Saint Dominic. He was a Spaniard and had all the chivalrous Spanish devotion to the person of the Virgin. It was he who arranged the rosary and instituted it as a religious exercise. He founded a community of preachers for the conversion of heretics, which afterwards developed into the great Dominican order. The great aim of his life was to guard the purity of the Catholic faith, and to this end he hunted forth the Albigenses with his hounds of the Lord—the Domini canes. He is rewarded with the lily which, in his picture by Bellini,[297] has a singularly rigid stem.
During the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries sainted monks were comparatively rarely painted, preference being given to the more picturesque figures of the early martyrs who suffered under Roman persecutions. But the earliest to appear, and the most frequently seen, is Saint Dominic. Duccio di Buoninsegna puts him beside the Madonna; Orcagna painted him among the happy souls in the Paradise of Santa Maria Novella. And the reason why he, rather than the other great founders, should appear in heavenly groups is not the fine relief of his black habit among the gay gowns of the angels, but because his order spent their gold on painted decorations at a time when the Franciscans, vowed to poverty, and the Benedictines, devoted to the making and collecting of books, had less to spend on the encouragement of art. Later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and more particularly in Spain, saints in all habits constantly appear.
Saint Dominic almost always carries a lily. Saint Francis was sufficiently distinguished by the stigmata, Saint Benedict by the chalice; but Saint Dominic has a lily white as the austerity of his faith.
Saint Anthony of Padua is to-day the most popular of all the monastic saints. His sane and gentle piety and his reputation for granting little ordinary boons has endeared him to simple folk. There seems no particular reason why he, above other saintly monks, should be so distinguished, but when he is not represented with the Infant Christ in his arms he invariably has a lily. In the very beautiful ‘Vision of Saint Anthony,’ by Murillo,[298] where the Holy Child appears in a ray of light, a vase of lilies stands upon the table. In another picture, by Annibale Caracci, the Child-Christ Himself holds the lily.
Another bearer of the lily is he