Curiosities
Rosarium: A Garden of Roses
The meaning of the name
In Latin, rosarium means a rose garden. In the Middle Ages the word was also used for a garland or anthology, a 'bouquet' of choice texts. Applied to prayer, it evoked a crown of roses offered to the Virgin, each Hail Mary a flower. The German Rosenkranz means exactly that: 'wreath of roses'. Artists loved to set Mary in an enclosed garden of roses, as in Stefan Lochner's Madonna of the Rose Bower, painted in Cologne around 1440.
The rose had long been a symbol of Mary: the 'rose without thorns' of medieval hymns and the Mystical Rose of the Litany of Loreto. A popular medieval legend told of a young monk who crowned a statue of the Virgin with fresh roses each day. When he could no longer do so, he prayed fifty Hail Marys instead, and others saw each prayer become a rose that Mary wove into a garland. Martin Schongauer painted this Madonna of the Rose Bush for Colmar in 1473.