The image of the rose is one with which we feel intimately familiar - to us, it symbolizes romantic love. Yet in the Middle Ages the rose took on a number of other associations, representative of both the divine and the profane. The image of the rose was used in both religious and secular contexts to represent a multiplicity of different images and settings, to invoke a variety of intellectual and emotional responses from those who encountered it, and ultimately, to mediate between the human and the divine. Thus, both profane love and religious devotion found expression in the symbol of the rose. While the actual rose was cultivated in monastery gardens and used for medicinal purposes, the symbolism of the rose was omnipresent in religious and secular art and literature. Through extensive use of the rose in both religious and secular culture in the Middle Ages, it became a symbol whose meanings were at once discrete, shared, and interchangeable, to the point where any one intended meaning of the rose could no longer exist.

Nowhere is this situation more apparent than in the Ars Antiqua motet, which flourished in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This genre is at once an integration and a juxtaposition of texts and of musical lines which, perhaps paradoxically, combine to form a cohesive and coherent whole. Like the rose, the motet texts encompass both the divine and the human, and the motet is also a place where a wealth of musical and textual symbols and meanings coexist, literally in harmony. Like the subject itself, my approach to the study of the rose as it appears in motet is necessarily multi-layered: I will first examine the accepted interpretations of the rose in both religious and secular culture in the Middle Ages; then I will discuss textual and intertextual aspects of the Ars Antiqua motet, focusing on those motets with texts which mention roses. For the purposes of this paper, I have concentrated on motets contained in four manuscripts: the Montpellier Codex, the Huelgas Codex, the Bamberg Codex and the La Clayette manuscript.¹ Finally, I will discuss the importance of the rose as a symbolic marker in various settings, that are present in and implied by the motet, such as amorous, narrative, temporal, local.

For the literati of thirteenth-century France for whom Ars antiqua motets were written and performed, the rose, or its image, was always nearby. Roses were cultivated in monastery gardens, especially in the mountainous regions of France, and in Switzerland. They were also highly valued by the nobility, and because of this St Louis is said to have brought a new variety back from the Crusades. If we are to believe the motet texts, rose bushes grew abundantly in meadows, providing shelter for pretty young maidens. The rose is also apparent in much medieval literature, and is the focus of the most popular romantic poem of the late Middle Ages, the Roman de la Rose. Surviving in three hundred manuscripts, the Roman de la Rose tells the story of a man who has a dream about a rose held prisoner in a castle. With the aid (or hindrance) of various allegorical characters such as Courtesy, Youth, Fear, and Idleness, the lover pursues and tries to win the rose, which symbolizes romantic love.² The mystic rose also appears in Dante's Divine Comedy, where it represents God's love. Medieval anatomists made use of the rose too - they were accustomed to describing the human body by comparison, and to them the rose seemed analogous to the female genitalia.³ Since one of the standard euphemisms for the male organ was the nose, something as seemingly innocent as "smelling the roses" could take on a whole new meaning!

The rose has been a symbol in religious writing and iconography since the early Middle Ages. The red rose represents the blood of Christ and the martyrs, but the most common association of the rose is with the Virgin Mary.⁴ The medieval Saint Bernard compared her virginity to a white rose and her charity to a red rose. The third-century Saint Ambrose believed that there were roses in the Garden of Eden, initially without thorns, but which became thorny after the fall, and came to symbolize Original Sin itself. Thus the Blessed Virgin is often referred to as the 'rose without thorns', since she was immaculately conceived. In the later Middle Ages, the Immaculate Conception came to be represented by the image of an enclosed garden, and in iconography this garden usually contains roses as well. This is of particular interest to the topic of the Ars Antiqua motet because many of the pastoral settings present in the motet are a secular echo of this theme. For example, in a typical pastourelle text sung by one of the upper voices in a motet, a maiden waits in a garden, surrounded by wild roses and other flowers. However, while the sacred version of this image is static and timeless, in the motet texts, the lover (usually Robin or another stock character) enters the garden and deflowers the maiden, creating a narrative situation. Although secularized, the image of the man entering the garden is derived from the Song of Songs,⁵ and fittingly enough, so is the Marian epithet "rose without thorns." ⁶

With the rise of Marian worship and the Gothic cathedral in the twelfth century, the image of the rose became even more prominent in religious life. Cathedrals built around this time usually include a rose window, dedicated to the Virgin, at the end of a transept or above the entrance (in other words, either at the north, south or west extremities of a cathedral). The thirteenth century Saint Dominic is credited with the institution of the Rosary, a series of prayers to the Virgin, which are symbolized by garlands of roses worn in Heaven. These garlands are represented on earth by strings of beads, which in the thirteenth century became "an essential component of both devotion and dress."⁷

By the Middle Ages, then, the rose had acquired a number of meanings, some sacred and some secular, which were to some extent related and interchangeable: for example, any maiden in a garden could be an analogue of the Virgin, and the Virgin could represent both sacred and profane love. This interchanging of symbols did not necessarily debase the sacred or elevate the profane, rather, the rose acted as a symbolic marker which allowed images and stereotypes to transgress boundaries, accrue multiple meanings and comment on each other, without ever being contradictory.

It is difficult to discuss the relations between music and text when studying an era that had a profoundly different idea of how these two are associated. We tend to think of music and text as being linked on an explicit level - for example, we might consider a Schubert Lied the height of text expression and word-painting. However, in the Middle Ages, this relationship did not have to be made obvious in either the words or the music, since what was important in music was not the expression of text, but the expression of divine number, which could be expressed in sound, either musical or verbal. Because of this, the terms musica and armonia included both poetry and music.⁸ Dante felt that those who harmonize words are songwriters, whether the songs have music or not,⁹ and the fourteenth-century poet Eustache Deschamps even considered poetry the only "natural music."¹⁰ However, the idea that poetry alone could function as music was a much earlier idea: writing in the eleventh century, Guido of Arezzo states that "in verse we often see such concordant and mutually congruous lines that you wonder, as it were, at a certain harmony of language. And if music were added to this, with a similar internal congruity, you would be doubly charmed by a twofold melody."¹¹

The issue of text and music becomes more complex when applied to the Ars Antiqua motet, since at any given time there are always two voices singing different melodies and different texts. If we are to agree with Guido, then, not only is each voice in a motet singing a musical melody, it is also presenting a poetic one, and it is useless to try and find explicit correspondences between these two. However, for the sake of argument, I did attempt to see if phrases that set the word "rose" were musically similar in any way. This attempt was further complicated by the fact that any rhythmic similarities could simply be a coincidence due to the same rhythmic mode in different pieces, and melodic similarities could be put down to the fact that by the late thirteenth century there was a prescribed way of writing each voice in a motet.¹² As expected, after taking these facts into consideration and after comparing the motets containing the word "rose", I could not find any musical link between them.

Nevertheless, a close relationship between music and text in the Ars Antiqua motets is present, and it exists on a much larger scale. In his treatise De musica, the fourteenth-century theorist Johannes de Grocheio writes that the order of composition is to compose poems first, and then find music that is "correctly designed" for them, which suggests that there was an attempt to fit music and text together harmoniously.¹³ Since the motet texts often relate, they must also have been selected to present an idea that could not be expressed in each individual part. Even if the texts do not relate to each other directly, the very fact that these particular texts were placed together in a motet implies that there was always a larger plan in the mind of the composer. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate to discuss music and text in the Ars Antiqua motet as aspects of a composition which are closely linked, although not in a way that we recognize.

At this point I would like to mention that as well as studying the music associated with texts containing the word "rose", I also examined the texts on their own, and here I was able to draw some conclusions. The word "rose" appears only in shorter poems devoted to the successful pursuit of love or devotion. Within these texts, the word "rose" functions in a variety of ways, one of which is to draw a parallel or mediate between sacred and profane love. Roses are also often a marker of springtime, and many motet texts begin "In May, when the rose is in bloom," or the like. Springtime itself seems to indicate the initiation or renewal of love. In tracking the occurrences of the word "églantier" (wild rose), I noticed that it is used only in texts concerning profane love.¹⁴

I was also particularly curious to see if the word "rose" was made to stand out by any musical means, such as long "o" sounds in rose motets, or perhaps in some sort of syllable interplay, and I found that the rose motets in the La Clayette manuscript had various ways of calling attention to the idea of the rose. For example, the first rose motet, Par une matinee/ Mellis stilla/ ALLELUYA¹⁵ (folio 374v) features a triplum that describes a woman, Mariete, going to meet her lover in a meadow filled with flowers. The motetus is a Latin devotional text about the Virgin Mary. When the motetus sings "Rosa primula," the triplum sings "Mariete," thus strengthening the Marian theme, even though Mariete is a secular character. Of course, it is arguable whether or not this is audible, but even if one text cannot be heard, there is a chance that the other will, and thus the Marian motif will reach the audience. In the double motet Ave, lux luminum/ Salve, virgo, rubens rosa/ NEUMA¹⁶ (f. 375v) the motetus sings "rosa" while the triplum rests, so that it is highlighted. Finally, in Douz rossignolet jolis/ Virgo gloriosa/ LETABITUR¹⁷ (folio 375v), the triplum sings "Comme rose par desus lis" while the motetus sings a series of words containing "- osa", so that one would hear the French "rose" juxtaposed against "- osa" and associate it phonetically with the Latin "rosa", which appears in the motetus slightly later. What should be noted about these three "rose" motets is that they appear consecutively in the manuscript, and perhaps represent an intentional grouping of "rose" motets.¹⁸

As well as the harmony that binds the music and text in all motet voices together, there exist intertextual and intermusical links between motets and other music or text. The most obvious of these is the tenor, which in most motets is a section of plainchant, often relating somehow to the text or general idea of the other parts.¹⁹ Although short and containing few words, the tenor's purpose is to provide the essence of the full text of the chant from which it was taken, as well as the feast day on which it was sung. The text of the tenor must also comment on that of the other voices. For example, in the motet Quant voi le douz tens venir/ En mai, quant la rose est florie/ LATUS²⁰, the upper voices describe how love may flourish again now that spring is here. The tenor is taken from the Alleluya for Easter Sunday, "Pascha nostrum immolatus est Christus", which implies not only springtime but also the Resurrection and a general sense of rebirth and renewal. This is a typical example of how the tenor is used in a motet, and this one happens to a motet containing the word "rose." Tenors taken from the Mass for Easter Sunday are common in "rose" motets, perhaps because of the association with renewal, but probably also because of the association with the Virgin Mary (through Christ).²¹ I found four tenors used in rose motets taken from Easter Sunday: IN SECULUM, LATUS, NOSTRUM and ANGELUS or ANGELUS DOMINI.

Not surprisingly, chants for feasts dedicated to the Virgin are often used for rose motet tenors. For example, the tenor EX SEMINE ("Out of the seed") is taken from the Alleluya for the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, and describes the genealogy of Mary. In the version of this rose motet appearing in both the Bamberg and Huelgas codices, all voices begin with the words "Ex semine" and the triplum describes how the thornless rose came to be.

The tenor FLOS FILIUS EJUS ("The flower is her son") was a popular one used in many Ars Antiqua motets but, strangely, it is only used for one rose motet (however, it is used more frequently in motets whose texts are about flowers). This text comes from the responsory for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, sometimes also used for the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.²² As Sylvia Huot points out, this text could be interpreted as either Marian or relating to Christ, but because of the evolution from "virga" in the responsory to "virgo" in the verse, I believe that a Marian interpretation is the more compelling of the two. In addition, this textual progression would seem to be analogous to Huot's idea that the leap from "flos" to "filius" represents the leap from the mundane to the spiritual.²³

Another intertextual aspect of Ars Antiqua motets is their common use of refrains. The medieval refrain consisted of a short maxim or proverb, usually dealing with love, which was often accompanied by a dance-like tune. Some motets are constructed entirely of refrains, but for the most part refrains occur either at the beginning or the end of a motet text, either introducing a situation or commenting on one. The refrain is not necessarily intertextual, since it borrows from the body of unwritten common knowledge. However, it does provide a link between the motet and the outside world, presumably with the motet's intended audience, who would recognize these sayings and their place in the tradition of courtly romance. As an aside, while studying rose motets, it occurred to me that the word "rose" does not appear in any of the refrains. Therefore it must be a purely literary device, and not in circulation in the oral tradition from which the refrains are taken.

As the final section of my discussion, I would like to talk about the rose acting as a symbolic marker in various settings present in the motet. I believe that the concept of setting is fundamental to the understanding not only of motet texts and melodies (and their relation to each other), but also of the motet as a genre.

Within the motet are settings determined by the music and the text. For example, a dance-like metre in all voices might suggest a motet in which lower-register texts are featured. The type of text itself can also signal a setting, and even more specifically, so can the word "rose." As we have seen, the rose had many meanings in many contexts, many of which overlap and inform each other. However, the rose as it appears in Ars Antiqua motets can also be seen as a symbolic marker which designates and produces different emotional responses from the audience and implies a variety of settings, some of which relate to the motet genre, some of which go beyond the limits of genre and invite the audience to imagine or fantasize.

In sacred music, the purpose of the rose was to move people to devotion through association with the Blessed Virgin. The Rosary could help in this also. In motets which are a mixture of sacred and secular texts, the rose can perform any or all of its sacred and secular functions, but since it is often the only link between two disparate texts, it must also mediate between them, forcing the sacred to be read in terms of the secular and vice versa.

In secular music, the rose has several roles. First, it serves to provide a seasonal setting for a narrative dealing with profane love, as is demonstrated by the number of motet texts which begin something like "In May, when the rose is in bloom. . . ." Since at court spring was associated with love and often a break from proper behaviour,²⁴ the rose serves to mark a specific type of temporal setting in which courtly love can blossom. As we have seen, in the texts dealing with lovers meeting in a meadow, the placement of the word "rose" near the beginning of the text can also imply a type of narrative, such as the pastourelle. In this case, the rose is not just part of the physical setting for the narrative, but a sign that this type of narrative exists at all. Furthermore, in the motet texts dealing with profane love, we must consider all the non-religious meanings of the rose - courtly, amorous and anatomical, and read the motet texts in terms of these meanings as well. When reading profane texts we must even consider the physical aspect of the rose, since by analogy romance narratives are like a rose - slowly unfolding until all is revealed and resolved.

In his article "Sexual Objects of Jean, Duc de Berry", the art hisotorian Michael Camille speculates that we must consider artistic settings, particularly those which we recognize, as settings for the potential playing out of a fantasy.²⁵ He quotes Laplanche and Pontalis, who define fantasy as "not the object of desire, but its setting. In fantasy the subject does not pursue the object or its signs: he appears caught up in their sequence of images".²⁶ In the Roman de la Rose, the object of desire is the imprisoned rose, but since the poem consists of a complete narrative, it does not provide a setting for fantasy. On the other hand, the poetic texts of the Ars Antiqua motets are often fragmentary and enigmatic, repeatedly setting up a situation that does not always get played out in the course of the motet, or leaving us in doubt as to what actually occurred. This provides the circumstances in which fantasy can thrive, and furthermore, the plurality of the texts allows the listener to be confronted with a series of images, all of which may be fleeting, or heard as such when all voices are sung together. The success of the Ars Antiqua motet depends on this sort of interplay among voices, images and symbols, and naturally, the multi-purpose rose fits perfectly into the Ars Antiqua motet.

The rose, then is a symbol which in medieval times had numerous associations and meanings, both sacred and profane, which were used interchangeably and combined, or opposed in order to comment on each other. Because the enormous popularity of the rose as a symbol is directly linked to the rise of Marian worship at roughly the same time as the development of the Ars Antiqua motet, it is understandable that the rose appears frequently in the motet texts. The number of meanings and associations taken on by the rose at this time is confusing, and it is sometimes difficult to know how to read the rose. For example, do all meanings of the rose always apply? Are some meanings specific to individual motets? Would all associations have been understood at the time? There is always the possibility that there are meanings which existed in the Middle Ages that are now lost to us, and there is the equal possibility that we are imposing new meanings onto a symbol which was clearly defined in the Middle Ages. However, given the number of ways in which the medieval rose could be read, even in the motets alone, it is perhaps fitting that we attempt to explore all the possibilities that the rose had to offer.

Notes: 1. text in red refers directly to roses. 2. The folio numbers given for the Montpellier Codex indicate the folio on which the motet begins.

Note: (V) indicates the verse of a responsory or gradual.

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