|
The fascinating
Passion Flower ("Passiflora") became known to the West around A.D. 1610,
when an Augustinian friar named Emmanuel de Villegas visited Rome from Mexico,
bringing drawings to Jacomo Bosio, a monk who was writing a treatise on Christ's
Passion. Bosio looked at the drawings, but was tentative about including
mention or drawings of them in his narrative as they looked so strange he
figured the drawings given to him must be exaggerated. But more drawings
came, and visiting Mexican Jesuits assured him that the flowers were quite
real.
In the flower's three bracts, he saw a symbol of the Trinity; it its corona
filaments, he saw the Crown of Thorns, and in its stigma, the three nails
and the column at which Christ was scourged. He described the stamens as
"five spots or stains of the hue of blood evidently setting forth five wounds
received by our Lord on the Cross." The leaves of the plant are shaped like
St. Longinus's spear, and their undersides bear round spots signifying the
30 pieces of silver for which Christ was betrayed by Judas.
The flowers he saw opened for one day, and then closed back up into their
bell-like shapes. This, he postulated, could be so because "in His infinite
wisdom it pleases Him to create it thus, shut up and protected, as though
to indicate that the wonderful mysteries of the Cross and of His Passion
were to remain hidden from the heathen people of these countries until the
time preordained by His highest Majesty."
There are over 600 species of Passiflora (some with edible fruits -- "passion
fruit"), so they come in all colors -- white, yellow, pink, red, purple,
blue. They originate in the South American rain forest, but are now found
all over the world. Passiflora is known in Spanish not only as "flor passionis,"
but as "flor de las cinco llagas" -- "flower of the five wounds." |
|
