Lilies for Our Lady: a medieval graffito at St John’s church, Bromsgrove The Grade I listed medieval church of St John the Baptist is Bromsgrove’s oldest and �nest standing building, and is a familiar sight to drivers used to the journey south of Birmingham via the M5. Established some time before the Norman Conquest, possibly as an Anglo-Saxon minster, the church is notable for its impressive Perpendicular clerestory and collection of medieval alabaster monuments, as well as its lofty Victorian spire – the tallest in all of Worcestershire. 1 Less famous, though no less interesting, is its small collection of historic graf�ti, which can be found scattered across the exterior walls around the tower, buttresses, and south aisle. Like many other medieval churches in the county, Bromsgrove’s graf�ti corpus is dominated by ‘cross marks’ and inscribed names and letters, including the ubiquitous ‘VV’ glyph commonly, though not un- controversially, associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary. 2 One of the more unusual specimens, however, can be seen on the south side of the 14 th -century tower, and takes the form of a well-cut �eur-de-lis with a pointed central petal and two scrolled outer petals (Fig 1). Most of the lower half of this graf�to is now missing, but traces of the cross-bar and stalk can still be seen �anking a patch of mortar positioned beneath the two outermost petals. The �eur-de-lis is one of the most distinctive artistic motifs of the European middle ages, and has featured on coins, seals, statues, and manuscript art since at least the 12 th century. 3 To modern eyes, its most familiar use is as a heraldic charge, where the symbol has long been associated with the Capetian dynasty of medieval France and, during the Hundred Years War, with the English claim to the French throne. 4 While the �eur-de-lis was never a common element of the heraldry of medieval Worcestershire, it nonetheless appeared on the arms of some county landholders. The most notable of these are surely the Dukes of York, who held the manors of Bromsgrove and Ribbesford in the later 15 th century, and whose late medieval heraldry employed a variant of the English royal arms quartered with the French �eur-de-lis. 5 It also featured as a motif on the arms of a small number of families connected to the Cantilupes, whose traditional arms bore three �eurs-de-lis, and whose Herefordshire branch employed three leopards jessant-de-lis, i.e. leopards with �eurs-de-lis issuing from their mouths. 6 However, the most widespread use of the �eur-de-lis in the medieval period was not as a heraldic symbol, but rather as a religious symbol. During the �rst millennium the �eur-de-lis was primarily understood in Christological terms, re�ecting a popular allegory of Christ as ‘the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys’ (Song of Songs 2:1). By the 12 th century, however, the motif acquired distinctively Marian connotations, exemplifying her purity and virginity as ‘the lily among thorns’ (Song of Songs 2:2). 7 This iconographic association was often manifested in religious art, where the lily in its naturalistic and �eur- de-lis forms eventually became a saintly attribute. As such, depictions of the Blessed Virgin Mary on altarpieces and manuscript art frequently include a lily �ower somewhere in the composition (Fig 2), a con- vention that is often observed in church art from Worcestershire. The 13 th -century wall paintings at St Nicholas’ church in Pinvin, for example, feature a scene of the Annunciation in which the Virgin and the archangel Gabriel stand either side of a lily-pot, and a similar depiction on a now-lost stained glass from the church of SS Peter and Paul, Birtsmorton, included a large lily in a yellow pot with a broken letter M behind it. 8 The same scene also appears on a 15 th -century stained glass panel at St Margaret’s church, Alstone, a former Worcestershire exclave, although the lily is shown there in the hands of the archangel instead. The iconographic links between the lily, the �eur-de- lis, and the Blessed Virgin Mary were not restricted to church art, and identical symbolism can be observed Worcestershire Recorder Spring 2024 10 by Murray Andrews Fig 1: Fleur-de-lis graf�to at St John’s church, Bromsgrove. Photo by author.