GOLDEN ROSE, an ornament made of wrought gold and set with gems, generally sapphires, which is blessed by the pope on the fourth (Laetare) Sunday of Lent, and usually afterwards sent as a mark of special favour to some distinguished individual, to a church, or a civil community. Formerly it was a single rose of wrought gold, coloured red, but the form finally adopted is a thorny branch with leaves and flowers, the petals of which are decked with gems, surmounted by one principal rose. The origin of the custom is obscure. From very early times popes have given away a rose on the fourth Sunday of Lent, whence the name Dominica Rosae, sometimes given to this feast. The practice of blessing and sending some such symbol (e.g., eulogiae) goes back to the earliest Christian antiquity, but the use of the rose itself does not seem to go farther back than the 11th century. Begin ning with the 16th century, a letter was sent with the rose, giving the reasons for sending it and recounting the merits and virtues of the receiver. When the change was made from the form of the simple rose to the branch is uncertain. The rose sent by Inno cent IV. in 1244 to Count Raymond Berengar IV. of Provence was a simple flower without any accessory ornamentation, while the one given by Benedict XI. in 1303 or 1304 to the church of St. Stephen at Perugia consisted of a branch garnished with five open and two closed roses enriched with a sapphire, the whole having a value of seventy ducats. The value of the gift varied according to the character or rank of the recipient. John XXII. gave away some weighing 12 oz., and worth from £250 to £325. Many kings and queens have received this honour at the hands of the pope ; and if, in any year, there is deemed to be no worthy recipient the rose is laid up in the Vatican.
Some of the most famous Italian goldsmiths have been em ployed in making the earlier roses ; and such intrinsically valuable objects have, in common with other priceless historical examples of the goldsmith's art, found their way to the melting pot, there fore few specimens are extant. There is one of the 14th century in the Cluny Museum, Paris, believed to have been sent by Clement V. to the prince-bishop of Basel; one conferred in 1458 on his native city of Siena by Pope Pius II. ; and the rose be stowed upon Siena by Alexander VII., a son of that city, is de picted in a procession in a fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena.