Last night I enjoyed (enjoyment!) my second pomegranate ever. My friend and I scraped the seeds into a bowl in preparation for fork-fulls (do you eat the seeds? or enjoy the burst of juice only?), our wrists intertwined, admiring colour: such are the moments I live for, I think. I tried to say as much and was accused of sentimental poetical tendencies. Like my mother, I’m trying to develop a harsher social presence.

In a moment of confusion (sure, I’ll study European history…), I subscribed to an Early Modern list-serve. Academics fired emails about their weighty problems. There was a several weeklong conversation about the significance of the pomegranate. Inordinately amused by the realization of a stereotype, I saved as many posts as I could. Here now, some highlights:

Can anyone direct me towards a useful source for the 16thC symbolism of the pomegranate in England? …Did it retain its meaning as a fertility symbol? I have a feeling this is the sort of thing I should have picked up in grad school, but I seem to have misspent my formative years.

Aren't pomegranates the fruit of the dead?

Persephone ate six pomegranate seeds in the house of Hades, but they also symbolize fertility and unity-despite-diversity in other contexts. Or maybe fertility is also inextricably linked with mortality?

I seem to recall that the pomegranate was the personal device of Catherine of Aragon, and so it appears in some art of the early Henrician period.

When newly weds entered their bridal chamber, pomegranates were thrown on the floor so that the bursting fruits would strew seeds signifying that the marriage would be blessed with children.

The prophet Mohamed said ' eat the pomegranate for it purges the system of envy and hatred.'

The name for the fruit derives from the Latin pomun meaning apple and granatum with seeds.

The Hospitaller Brothers of St. John of God have an emblem combining the cross and the pomegranate, which they call the emblem of charity

In Christian art, it is a symbol of hope. I

think the especial significance would be the Hapsburg heraldic connection

One of the cloth-of-gold curtains is embroidered with a device of a crown with a pomegranate underneath it and I find it rather perplexing and most emphatically un-gallic. Perhaps it meant something different in Italy.

Alciato's Emblem 114 depicts a pomegranate on the shield of Cupid but seemsto call it a "Punic acorn."

For what it's worth, the pomegranate ("granada" in Spanish) is the symbol of the city and kingdom of Granada.

William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, Act II Sc. iii, "Go to, sir; you were beaten in Italy for picking a kernel out of a pomegranate; you are a vagabond and no true traveller: you are more saucy with lords and honourable personages than the heraldry of your birth and virtue gives you commission."

The ground husks of pomegranates mixed with carbonate of zinc make a transparent yellow tincture.

Also, the pomegranate seems to have a hermetic meaning.

Reportedly, there is a Masonic rite in which the pomegranate denotes "plenty" due to the exuberance of its seed.

May your seeds be exuberant!