Roses were strewn at public ceremonies and banquets; rosewater bubbled through the emperor’s fountains and the public baths surged with it; in the public amphitheaters, crowds sat under sun awnings steeped in rose perfume; rose petals were used as pillow stuffings; people wore garlands of roses in their hair; they ate rose pudding; their medicines, love potions, and aphrodisiacs all contained roses. No Bacchanalia, the Romans’ official orgy, was complete without an excess of roses… At one banquet, Nero … spent the equivalent of fifty thousand pounds just on roses – and one of his guests smothered to death under a shower of rose petals.2
In 220 AD, Athenaeus mentions that rose petals were strewn eight inches deep upon the ground in Cleopatra’s private chambers when she first met Mark Antony! In the early years of the Roman Empire, the rose was linked with Venus, the Goddess of love – but in latter years, as the Empire declined and decayed, it came to stand for vice and immoral behaviour. After the fall of the Empire, the Roman Catholic Church thus condemned the rose as a heathen flower. The Church was particularly contemptuous of the old pagan custom of offering wreaths of roses to the dead:
If they are blessed, they do not need them – and if they are lost, they won’t have any pleasure in them!3
But the rose was not an image that could be wiped clean from human consciousness. The custom of offering roses to the dead persisted, and since the symbolism of the rose could not be eradicated, it gradually became incorporated into early Christian mythology. The red rose became the symbol of Jesus’ blood – the five petals representing the five wounds of Christ – and a sign of martyrs and saints. The custom of decorating churches with roses and carving roses over the entrance to the confessional as an emblem of discretion also dates from Roman times. In the Roman story, the rose was given by Cupid as a bribe to Harpocrates, the god of Silence. Henceforth, a rose was suspended above Roman banqueting tables to indicate that anything said beneath it was to be held in strictest confidence – the origin of the expression ‘sub-rosa’.
To the early Christian mystics, the rose (especially the white rose) was also associated with the Virgin Mary and the ideal of ‘purity’ or ‘divine love’. The Madonna is often depicted in a garden of roses in icon paintings. Here, the rose indicates Mary’s love for the child Jesus, while more profoundly it suggests the love required for the nurturing of the Christ principle within. According to tradition, the Virgin appeared to St Dominic bearing a chaplet of roses, and the first rosary was made in commemoration of this vision. Rosaries originally consisted of 165 dried, carefully rolled up rose petals, sometimes darkened with lampblack as a preservative. One of the oldest Maria hymns says:
Fresh rose, pure rose, chaste rose,
Without thorns, rose flowering,
Fruits bearing, burning red,
More than a rose, whiter than a lily.4
During the following centuries, roses became more and more widespread as the Crusaders returned to Europe bringing with them new and old varieties. In the days of chivalry, a chaplet of roses was granted to gallant knights for acts of bravery, and the image of the rose became associated with sovereignty. Different types of roses were increasingly used in royal heraldry, as in Britain’s ‘Wars of the Roses’, the thirteenth-century feud between the House of York (the white rose) and the House of Lancaster (the red rose). The Tudor rose of Elizabeth I bore the motto Rosa sine spina (‘a rose without a thorn’), and the wild dog rose (Rosa canina) remains the royal flower of England. The British King or Queen is still anointed at the coronation ceremony with a ‘holy oil’ containing rose essence, the recipe for which dates back to the twelfth century.
During the Middle Ages, the rose naturally became the favoured flower of the famous ‘troubadours’ and often featured in their love poetry:
Maiden may I go with thee to thy rose garden?
I would lead thee, sweet love, to the place where the red roses grow.5
In Elizabethan times the rose was also used as an image of the transient nature of love, as in the well-known verse by Herrick:
‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…’
It was fashionable at this time to use a posy of flowers to convey messages of the heart: a red rose meant passion; a white rose, purity or innocence; a yellow rose stood for jealousy or falsehood! A single red rose is still offered today as a token of love. It is remarkable that over thousands of years, the rose’s symbolic meaning has remained virtually intact, representing the most profound and far-reaching ideals of human aspiration:
The single rose is, in essence, a symbol of completion, of consummate achievement and perfection.6
The Traditional Medicinal Uses of the Rose
The rose distils a healing balm,
the beating pulse of pain to calm.
Anacreon
Roses have been used medicinally since the earliest times. In ancient Persia, the birthplace of the rose, rosewater was regarded as something of a panacea, while oils and fats saturated with rose petals were used in religious ceremonies and for balms of all kinds. A paste of pounded rose petals mixed with honey was taken as a remedy for angina and tuberculosis, while an infusion of dried flowers was used as a tea to alleviate diarrhoea and (by women) leucorrhoea.
Preparations made from roses also feature strongly in traditional Chinese, Indian, Egyptian and Arabian medicine. In China, the flowers of a highly scented variety, Rosa rugosa (‘mei gui hua’) are still used in the form of a decoction as a blood tonic and to help stimulate stagnant liver energy, or ‘qi’ (the Chinese word for energy). The petals are also used for digestive or menstrual irregularities, especially to help relieve heavy periods. A rose extract and rose oil made from Rosa rugosa are also used in China, as Li Shih-Chen describes:
Its nature is cooling, its taste is sweet with a slight bitterishness, and it acts especially on the spleen and liver, promoting the circulation of the blood. It is prescribed in the form of an extract for haematemesis, and the flowers are used in all diseases of the liver, to scatter abscesses, and in blood diseases generally… Essence of Rose is made by distilling the flowers of Rosa rugosa. Its medicinal action is upon the liver, stomach, and blood. It drives away melancholy.1
In India, likewise, the rose has a long history of traditional usage. In Ayurvedic medicine, Rosa damascena is thought to have a regulating and revitalizing effect, being particularly beneficial for the heart, eyes and the skin:
It is a laxative, and a tonic; and increases semen, and enhances the beauty of the complexion. It has a combined bitter and sweet taste. It is a digestive, restores the balance of ‘tridoshas’ (primary qualities) and it is highly efficacious in blood impurities.2
In ancient Egypt, a rose unguent was prepared by infusing the flowers in fat for use in the treatment of various skin complaints and as an ingredient
