La jonchée de roses du banquet des Arvales aux processions de la Fête-Dieu

TL;DRAbstract

In Rome, all banquets ended with a rain of roses. If this custom had a clearly profane character, it also belonged to religion ; either the ground was strewn with rose petals whenever there were processions in honour of Isis (Apuleius, Met., XI,9,2) and Cybele (Lucrèce 11,627) or the Arvales gave one another the petals of roses, at their annual banquet. Meticulous studies by J. Scheid have shown that each moment, each gesture of the May feasts in honour of Dea Dia had a precise ritual value, in connection with Dea Dia, ≪ goddess of the luminous sky and ripening nature ≫ and with Lares, the protecting divinities of those plots of land ≪ which a man or a group of men or a society use in a lasting, regular or simply important way≫, according to Dumezil's quotation. Petals that priests exchanged had a meaning in connection with agrarian cults and rituals of property. For decades, the Catholic liturgy has featured rains of petals in its processions for Pentecost or for Corpus Christi celebr

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