# Mystical Rose

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystical-rose/131726>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 10, 2002, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystical-rose/131726 "2002-10-10T20:27:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rtreeves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/96bed5/32.png) [@rtreeves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rtreeves)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2002, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystical-rose/131726/1 "2002-10-10T20:27:52Z")

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I read that the Virgin Mary was known as the Mystical Rose in medieval times.

Can anyone tell me what the Mystical Rose is?

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**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2002, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystical-rose/131726/2 "2002-10-10T22:53:40Z")

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I think it might originally come from the Song of Songs/ Song of Solomon (everything in the Old Testament gets tie up to the life of Christ in the middle ages-- they were thorough about it)-- she was called the Rose without Thorns and things of that sort, and a series of ave maria prayers, I believe in the 1400s was kind of codified as a “rose garland” of prayers, mnemonically (now known as a rosary).

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**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\
**Post date:** [October 11, 2002, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystical-rose/131726/3 "2002-10-11T02:02:31Z")

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The _Rosa Mystica_ is at the culmination of Dante’s _Paradiso_ — his vision of the ultimate harmony and unity of Heaven, in which all the saints and the blessed are arrayed in circles. In the final canto of the _Paradiso_, immediately after his vision of the Rose, he concludes with a hymn to the Blessed Virgin. So perhaps there is some association there. Mary herself occupies one of the petals of the Rose on the topmost tier.

Canto XXX, Lines 109-120:

- E come clivo in acqua di suo imo  
si specchia, quasi per vedersi addorno,  
quando è nel verde e ne’ fioretti opimo,

sì, soprastando al lume intorno intorno,  
vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie  
quanto di noi là sù fatto ha ritorno.

E se l’infimo grado in sé raccoglie  
sì grande lume, quanta è la larghezza  
di questa rosa ne l’estreme foglie!

La vista mia ne l’ampio e ne l’altezza  
non si smarriva, ma tutto prendeva  
il quanto e 'l quale di quella allegrezza.\*

And as a slope shines in the looking glass  
of a lake below it, as if to see itself  
in its time of brightest flower and greenest grass,

so, tier on tier, mounting within that light,  
there glowed, reflected in more than a thousand circles,  
all those who had won return to Heaven’s height.

And if so vast a nimbus can be bound  
within its lowest tier, what then must be  
the measure of this rose at its topmost round?

Nor were my eyes confounded by that sea  
and altitude of space, but took in all,  
both number and quality, of that ecstasy.

Canto XXIII, Lines 7-9, connects the Rose directly with the Virgin:

- Nel ventre tuo si raccese l’amore,  
per lo cui caldo ne l’etterna pace  
così è germinato questo fiore.\*

The Love that was rekindled in Thy womb  
sends for the warmth of the eternal peace  
within whose ray this flower has come to bloom.

(Translation by John Ciardi)