This account of the ancient rose of Hildesheim was publsihed in Vick’s Monthly Magazine, Vol. VIII 1885. “The Thousand Year Rose,” commonly known as “The Rose of Hildesheim,” grows against the eastern apse of Hildesheim Cathedral (dedicated to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary). The cathedral was destroyed in 1945 by Allied bombs, but the rose, though burst away, put out shoots, and now thrives. It is the oldest rose in the world. (Make sure to read Guillaume Appollinaire’s story connected with this rose).
A wonderful Rose tree clambers up the ancient tower of the ” Dom,” or the Cathedral of Hildesheim, in Lower Saxony, and is an object around which several beautiful legends cluster. The plant is “certainly of a great age, as by researches made in the year 1883, it was found that its roots are really under the foundation stone of the walls, and therefore it has been assumed as a fact that the Rose was there before the building began, and for some reason was preserved during the time the structure was raised, and has been moreover during all the intervening centuries an object of great veneration and care.
“The legend relates that Ludwig, the son of Charlemagne, fixed his residence at Elze, on the Leine river, because of the immense forest and swampy ground there, where game of all kinds abounded. One day the Emperor went a hunting, mounted on a strong horse, and accompanied by a great following of courtiers, huntsmen and hounds. They had ridden for several hours, when suddenly a white stag sprang out of the bushes, so stately and large as had never before been seen, and the Emperor resolved to hunt it, be the consequences what they might. He urged on his hounds, gave his horse the spur, which sprang forward so rapidly that the hounds were soon left behind.
“But faster fled the stag, which seemed as if nothing could tire it; and so proceeded the hunt, over hill and dale, stick and stone, but the Emperor never reached the stag; so came the quarry, whose coat
glimmered through the dark forest, to a stream, into which it plunged, swam across, and disappeared in the gloom beyond The rider forced his horse into the stream in the vain pursuit, but it was thoroughly exhausted and was soon carried away and drowned, he himself swimming to the bank. Just there a little hill reared itself, and up this clambered the Emperor, intending to wait till his retinue came up. He blew his horn, like a Roland, till it all but burst, but no one came; and he gave himself up for lost, and believed that here he must end his days; and being a pious monarch he took from his neck a relic of the Virgin, and hung it on a wild Rose bush, that grew by the side of a crystal fountain; he then knelt down and prayed that she would not desert him, but permit him to be rescued. Being calmed by his devotions, he lay down on the soft moss by the spring, and slumbered, when suddenly a voice cried out of the clouds calling him by name, telling that so far as the snow reached he should build a church to the honor of Mary; and before he had recovered his astonishment it began to snow, although it was the middle of summer.
“It did not last long, but a piece of the moss was covered, and reached unto the Rose bush, showing the ground plan of the walls, the tower and of the pillars and the altar. Presently his retinue came up, and they also saw the wonder, and the place was called “Hilgen Snee,” (Holy Snow,) because of the wonderful fall.
What the Emperor promised was soon carried out, for he was a rich and mighty prince. There came stonemasons and built a beautiful church, but the Rose the Emperor would not allow them to grub out. They carried the walls over its roots, so that it stood under the high altar, and it grew and throve; and it is said that when it puts forth but few leaves, and has but little vigor, then heavy misfortunes befall the church of Hildesheim. So says the legend.
The annalist Saxo says that in the year 815 A.D., when Ludwig had crossed the Leine, and had come to a place where the church now stands, he formed a camp for a time, and had the relics from the royal chapel set up there, and when the hunting camp was broken up the chaplain in charge of the relics forgot them, leaving them behind at the place where offerings had been made, and, going back for them, found them so overgrown by the Rose that in spite of all endeavors they could not be detached, and on account of this wonder a chapel was erected, and years after the place, now become a town, was created a bishop’s see, and Gunthar was the first bishop. The fourth bishop in succession from him, Altfried, built additional structures, one, a chapel, being dedicated to St. Cecelia; and among other alterations, the original chapel became the crypt of the new buildings being consecrated in 872.
Featured: The Thousand Year Rose, postcard, ca. 1905-1909.
