The floral symbolism of the great masters - The Knowledge Den

i8 FLORAL SYMBOLISM
beneath the patronage of the Devil, typify-
ing and inducing envy, hatred, or perhaps
mahce.
Lastly there were the mystic symbolists, and
it is they who have had most influence on
pictorial art. There were those who, like Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux, could discern through
the darkened glass of Old Testament meta-
phor the divine facts of New Testament revela-
tion, and those who, hke Saint Mectilda of
Germany, were favoured by Heaven with clear
and detailed visions, in which Christ Himself
deigned to explain the complicated symbolism
of His surroundings. His embroidered robes
and jewelled ornaments. And there were those
mystics who were not in holy orders, who did
not claim direct communication with Heaven,
yet who have, nevertheless, by giving shape
and colour to the vague indications of Holy
Writ as to the future state, and by material-
izing, as it were, the illusive inner vision of
things invisible, profoundly influenced the re-
ligious sentiment, if not the theology, of the
world. Chief among them is the poet Dante,
the friend of Giotto and the spiritual father