The Christian version: The Holy Cross<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In an attempt to pass dendrolatry rituals as their own, Christianity instituted the Holy Cross or Crosses Feast in the month of May to extol the arboreal and totemic standard of Christianity and cover it with flowers. A double and apparently antinomic celebration: on the one hand the floral and vital exaltation and on the other the Cross veneration, a symbol of martyrdom and death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The tree feast became a commemoration of the Vera Cruz discovery’s presumed date, happened in Jerusalem by Saint Helena, Emperor Constantine\u2019s mother (4th century). A celebration still alive in the Pa\u00eds Valenciano\u2019s neighborhoods and hermitages that are called after The Holy Cross name, such as Alicante, Alboraya, l\u2019Alf\u00e0s del Pi, Bigastro, Burriana, Callosa del Segura, el Campello, Granja de Rocamora, Sant Joan d\u2019Alacant, Mutxamel, Paterna, Sagunto, Val\u00e8ncia, J\u00e1vea, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exaltation of the floral goddess, Maya<\/strong><\/p><\/h2>\n\n\n\n May is also the month dedicated to the goddess in charge of flowers’ care, Maya, by ancient Romans. A name that, once hybridized with Miry\u0101m by Christians \u2013the Hebrew name of Jesus\u2019 mother\u2013 resulted in that of Mary, a particularly exalted name along this month. In fact, to those of us who are of a certain age, the \u201cVenid y vamos todos con flores a Mar\u00eda\u201d song<\/a> reminds us of the month in which we prepared, with such enthusiasm, altars presided over by a Virgin Mary stamp or figure \u2013in the houses or classrooms’ courtyard. Of course, always surrounded by spring flowers\u2019 jars with peculiar scents in order to consolidate the local flora’s ethnobotanical knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were very chromatic altars, although with a certain predominance of the white color in order to highlight Mary\u2019s purity. There were lilies<\/a> or white lilies (Lilium candidum<\/em>), the calla lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica<\/em>), the white daisies, and the sweet mock-orange<\/a> (Philadelphus coronarius<\/em>). In a list of plants used in the Moraira school (Marina Alta) in the sixties \u2013provided by the Universidad de Alicante professor Concepci\u00f3n Bru\u2013 also appear the following: the bearded iris<\/a> (Iris germanica<\/em>), clavelina de pluma (Dianthus broteri<\/em>), daffodil (Narcissus cf. assoanus<\/em>), hyacinth (Hyacinthus<\/em>), rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis<\/em>), wild asparagus (Asparagus acutifolius<\/em>), roundhead bulrush (Scirpus holoschoenus<\/em>), etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n White lilies (Lilium candidum<\/em>), on the left, or the calla lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica<\/em>), on the right predominate the altars to highlight Mary\u2019s purity through the white color. \/ Zachi Evenor – Wikipedia<\/a> \/ Mandred Heyde – Wikipedia<\/a><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Roses<\/a>, in particular, are one of the Mary plants par excellence<\/em>. A bond especially developed from the thirteenth century. Some examples are Rosa das rosas<\/em>, cantiga 10<\/a> of the king Alfonso X of Castile, known as the Wise, written in Galician-Portuguese; or the Candida Rosa<\/em> poetic apotheosis, the center of the Paradise where the Virgin Mary is located in the XXXII Canto<\/a> of Paradiso<\/em>, Dante Alighieri\u2019s Divina Commedia. And, later, the lletanies lauretanes<\/a> (XVII century), supplications (litaneia<\/em>, in Latin) to the Virgin Mary, the Rosa Mystica<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Talking about this connection, the rosary\u2019s practice (13th century) deserves a special chapter: a Hail Marys\u2019 sequence of which the account is taken with a balls string, each one representing a rose, while the set a rose garden (rosarium<\/em>, in Latin).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Mary altars tradition was promoted in the 19th century by the Piedmontese John Melchior Bosco, San Francisco de Sales civic-religious society founder, the Salesinas. Don Bosco<\/a> spread Il mese di maggio consacrato to Maria SS. Immacolata ad uso del popolo<\/em> (1858), where he promoted the floral, popular, and infantile devotion that still endures on the month of May. Four years later, the Catalan Francesc Palau<\/a>, Discalced Carmelites founder, added and edited in Barcelona El Mes de Mar\u00eda: flores del mes de mayo<\/em>, a remarkable treatise of botanical spiritual symbolism, almost an hyperdulia mediated by plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The expansion of Mary botany associated with the month of May found an exceptional diffuser in Jacint Verdaguer<\/a>. A good Catalan flora connoisseur, who published the religious-botanical poems Flors [of the month] de Maria (1902): a fifty poems compilation we could describe as ethnobotanical since talk about popular knowledge of plants associated with the Virgin Mary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jacint Verdaguer, in a portrait made by Ramon Casas in 1901 and preserved in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, in Barcelona. \/ MNAC – Wikimedia<\/a><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n If they had favorable properties for humans it was because they had been pleasing to the Virgin Mary. The author tried to combine the didactics and promotion of human archetypal virtues with the positive characteristics of plants in his poetry book. He did it through ethnobotanical Mary poems (uses, symbols, legends, all related to plants), and through a careful compilation of words and proverbs contributed by his interlocutors, which he often transformed into fine and luminous metaphors. Interlocutors coming, it has to be said, not only from his nearest Catalu\u00f1a, since he had also visited Alicante (1889), Valencia (1881 and 1889), and Mallorca (1883, 1887, and 1894).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the case of the poem dedicated to the violet (Viola odorata<\/em>), the only species of the violacee <\/em>family that emits a sweet and pleasant smell, a perfume:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cQuina flor tri\u00e0? [Maria] \/ Tri\u00e0 la viola \/ sa flaire al sentir, \/ perqu\u00e8 no li ha dit \/ encara ella sola: \/ Veniu-me a collir\u201d. <\/p> \u201cWhat flower did you choose? [Maria] \/ She chose the violet \/ its smell to feel, \/ since it didn\u2019t tell \/ yet by itself: \/ \u201ccome to harvest me\u201d.<\/p> A poem published in the XII Diada de Verdaguer Excursionista<\/em> booklet (2015) by the ethnobotanist Mari Carmen Barcel\u00f3, a scholar of the Verdaguer\u2019s work vegetophile aspects.<\/p><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n But the poet also used those plants not having virtues, or even having reprehensible characteristics, as examples. It was the case of the common flax, the Linum tenuifolium<\/em>, a small bush of grass and sprouts lying on a calcareous substrate that blooms from May to August. The popular tradition ensures that since the flower wanted to be whiter than the Virgin Mary, the sky punished it by not giving it any smell or flavor. Since then, it is rejected by everyone and not even rabbits eat it. A plant that, due to these characteristics, receives names as descriptive as male\u00efda<\/a> (cursed), or, given its whiteness, Virgin Mary mantle, and others<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Linum tenuifolium<\/em> detail pictures. \/ Archenzo – Wikipedia<\/a> \/ Bernd Haynold – Wikipedia<\/a><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Verdaguer also dedicated a poem, Glop de neu (Snow Gulp), to this supposedly vain, anti-Mary May flower:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI aquesta pobra flor \/ perd\u00e9 l\u2019olor \/ La rosa fug\u00ed d\u2019ella \/ lo repunx\u00f3 tamb\u00e9 \/ I l\u2019ardenta rosella \/ Li digu\u00e9:\/ \u2212 M\u2019estim m\u00e9s per ve\u00efna \/ la pota cavallina\u201d. <\/p> \u201cAnd this poor flower \/ lost the smell \/ The rose fled from it \/ as well as the rampion \/ the burning poppy \/ Says to it:\/ -The one I want the most by my side \/ is the coltsfoot\u201d.<\/p>(Verdaguer, 1902)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Of the plants mentioned in the poem, the \u201cpota cavallina\u201d name (coltsfoot in English, but literally the horse\u2019s hoof) (Tussilago farfara<\/em>) alludes to the fact that this plant\u2019s leaves, once in the ground, look like a horse\u2019s hooves. In Sweden it is known as h\u00e4sthov (hoof-horse) and is considered the flower that marks the beginning of spring (v\u00e5rtecken). Scientists and amateurs, in fact, rush to discover the first hoof of the year in the field, its announcement is considered an honor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Christian one, however, was not the only ideological-religious appropriation intended to counteract the ancestral cults’ influence on the collective imaginary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The traditional holiday calendar results from a complex and valuable cultural construction, in which different ways of interpreting natural phenomena \u2013such as astronomical, phenological, climatic, ecological, etc. \u2013 and nature adaptation \u2013such as agricultural, dietary, etc.\u2013 participated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A calendar in which the year began on September 22 of 1792, pompously described as the first day of the \u201cFrench Age\u201d, all traditional festivals were abolished, and the year was divided in a different way. Months\u2019 names were changed alluding to the nature manifestations (those of Paris, of course), the saints\u2019 calendar was removed, and, instead, the days were dedicated to plants, animals, and field tools. Proposal made by the Occitan poet and revolutionary Fabre de \u00c9glantine. All of this served him little. He was the victim of one of the Jacobins\u2019 purges carried out during the \u201cReign of Terror\u201d, as well as other personalities such as the Occitan feminism\u2019s precursor Olympe de Gouges (author of the Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen<\/em>), or the Parisian \u201cChemistry\u2019s father\u201d Antoine Lavoisier. \u00c9glantine was guillotined on April 5 of 1794, the Saint Vicent Ferrer\u2019s day, or according to the new calendar promoted by him, the 16th of Germinal, the day of the laitue<\/em> (lettuce).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fabre d’\u00c9glantine (1793), portrayed by Pierre Augustin Thomire. The work is part of the Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts<\/em> collection in Carcassona. On the left hand he shows a small silver bouquet of evergreen rose (Rosa sempervirens<\/em>) awarded by the Acad\u00e9mie des jeux floraux de Tolosa<\/em>. \/ Wikipedia<\/a><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n On the contrary, April 23, Saint George’s day, would become the 4th of Flor\u00e9al and it wouldn\u2019t be dedicated to the rose, but to the aub\u00e9pine (hawthorn<\/a>, Crataegus monogyna<\/em>), the shrub that represented the first of May in Celtic times. In the new calendar, May 1 was changed to the 12th of Flor\u00e9al, stripped of all prominence, and associated with a forage grass, the sainfoin, esparcet, or holy clover<\/a>, Onobrychis viciifolia<\/em>. The deliberate marginalization of what was considered “old”, “religious” or “unrevolutionary” was also applied to the lily of the valley<\/a> (Convallaria majalis<\/em>), the other first of May characteristic plant, deported to the 7th of Flor\u00e9al (April 26). Anyway, the poet also dedicated a day to his surname: the \u00e9glantier<\/em> (\u00e9glantine, Rosa canina<\/em>), which was on the 21st of Fructidor, 7 September equivalent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Englantine rose (Rosa rubiginosa<\/em>). \/ Wikipedia<\/a><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Fortunately, the French revolutionary calendar was abolished by Napoleon on the last day of 1805. This terminology’s implicit anachronism had been artistically manifested in the Jos\u00e9 Pinazo Mart\u00ednez Floreal <\/a><\/em>(1915), where the flowers are eclipsed by a fruit sample as exuberant as decoupled in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An anachronism as inappropriate as the previous ones became clear a century and a half later, during the Spanish civil war of 1936-1939 due to the toponymic change of the semiarid Sant Vicent del Raspeig for the Floreal del Raspeig. This Valencian village, aridity characterized (Sequet per\u00f2 sanet, \u00abDry but healthy\u00bb is its motto), has a relatively brackish terrain. Its vegetation is basically formed by esparto grass<\/a> (Stipa tenacissima<\/em>), albardine (Lygeum spartum<\/em>), opposite-leaved saltwort <\/a>(Salsola soda<\/em>), and shrubby sea-blite<\/a> (Suaeda vera<\/em>), with their little showy flowering. Only the almond trees’ spectacular flowering stands out in the February<\/a> landscape! However, and revolutionary speaking, the name imposed by the local anarchists was Floreal (del Raspeig), which corresponds to the months of April-May when the almond trees have already lost their flowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we have seen, in changes imposed by manu militari<\/em> in order to denature the Gregorian calendar, some kind of Paris-centrist naturism, revolutionary arrogance, obsessive anti-religiosity, traditional calendar\u2019s meaning ignorance, and totalitarian ideology was mixed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christianity had been able to adapt many of the \u201cpagan\u201d calendar features by assuming its dates, gods (often transformed into \u201cSaints\u201d), or ancestral liturgies. Regarding the 1st of May \u2013the May Day that marks the good weather beginning\u2013, the new \u201csecular religions\u201d of the 19th and 20th centuries (socialism, communism, fascism, and Nazism) opted for a similar path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They did so by taking advantage of a tragic event. On May 4 of 1886, the Chicago police killed some workers during riots that followed a May 1 strike in favor of the 8-hour labor day. Furthermore, five detainees, anarchists, were sentenced to death and hanged after an unfair trial on November 11. Three years later, the recently founded Second International \u2013the origin of socialism and communism (Third International)\u2013 wanted to honor the \u201cChicago Martyrs\u201d by proposing to hold demonstrations on the usual May Day, considering it International Workers\u2019 Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1891, during one of those demonstrations in Fourmies (France), the army butchered the participants. The date remained firmly rooted in the workers\u2019 memory to the point that the German National Socialist Workers Party (NSDAP) \u2013the Nazi party\u2013 instituted the May 1 National Workers\u2019 Day declaring it as a Holiday as soon as it came to power in 1933. As it would do Vicky’s collaborationist and pro-Nazi government in 1941.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dog Rose (Rosa canina<\/em>). \/ Manfred Werner – Wikipedia<\/a><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/espores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Cruces_mayo_1200.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/espores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/FlorsMaigII_2_Azucenas_lirios.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/espores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ramon_Casas_-_MNAC-_Jacint_Verdaguer_1200.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/espores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Linum_1200.jpg\")
The revolutionary version<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/espores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Fabre_dEglantine_1793_-_Pierre_Augustin_Thomire1200.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/espores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rosa_rubiginosa_1200.jpg\")
The working-class version<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/espores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Hunds-Rose_Rosa_canina_1200.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/espores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sandro_Botticelli_-_La_Primavera_1200.jpg\")