Article (magazine)  (2011)  Page(s) 116.  
 
Questionable rose identities, exemplified by 'Freya' and 'Creme'....The information re 'Freya' August Jäger's "Rosenlexikon" is short...and describes a different rose than that which we know today as 'Freya', which blooms single white and attains a height of not more than 1.5 m.
In the works of Rudolf Geschwind we find two mentions of this variety. In 1901 he wrote [authors cite from Geschwind's article "Erfolge und Sorgen unserer Rosenzüchter", published 1901 in the "Der Prakt. Rathgeber im Obst- und Gartenbau"]: "One of my Nordland-Roses has bloomed magnificently this year: large, cupped, densely filled, crimson-violet."....
Today's 'Freya' has no similarity with these descriptions. In the comparative planting at the Rosenkultivarium it has been ascertained that it is no different than 'R. sancta' (designated 'R. richardii Richards' in the Europa-Rosarium Sangerhausen), which is widely distributed in commerce.

Article (newspaper)  (Dec 2010)  Page(s) 2.  Includes photo(s).
 
Patricia Routley: Before he died , Don Allen at the Carmel Rose Farm just outside Perth, gave a rose to Carol Mansfield and said “Look after this one Carol.” She did and when I met her in 2001 she passed on to me some wood of Rosa sancta, and I got eight cuttings to grow. Eight of one rose is too many for any fool, so I gave one each to Natalie Kuser and Penelope Shaw in Bridgetown, one to Judy Leahy down in Mt. Barker, one to Susan Ronk in Manjimup; I planted the fifth one myself and can’t now recall what I did with the other three. I have this great need to know all about the roses I am growing and when I saw R. sancta photographed in Philips & Rix book The Quest for the Rose, I was astounded at its antiquity. They had placed a bloom of a freshly-picked rose with that of the remains of a wreath from A.D. 170. Knowing it was a most important rose, I gave it the Hilton style of accommodation in a small bed surrounded by pink and red roses and it has grown well on its own roots. Too well! It is a prickly rose and will put down roots wherever it touches the ground and it gets very hard to weed in that particular bed. The guinea fowl love it for sheltering their nests, but the downside is that when they abandon their nest, for whatever reason, one has to get in there somehow and remove the eggs before they go rotten and explode on you. The single flowers of this rose are a creamy pale pink with just five petals, simple and charming, about 7 cm across and flowering in loose clusters. One distinguishing feature is the conspicuously exserted styles indicative of one parent possibly being a synstylae rose. If so, it should have a superb perfume, but I have never noticed much. I used to look forward each year to its short flowering, simply because of its age - the books tell me it was preserved for centuries in and around churchyards and monasteries where it was known as Rosa sancta, R. richardii, and The Holy Rose. However, a recent article by an American author, the Rev. Douglas T. Seidel, has written that R. sancta has disappeared from gardens and nurseries on both sides of the Atlantic and has been usurped by a form of R. x polliniana. Actually, in doing the research for this article, I’ve discovered that R. sancta Andrews 1826 (syn: St. John’s Rose) was a small flowered deep pink rose which repeated its flowering. I think this is the rose which is long gone, and a second R sancta Richard 1847 took its place. It seems that Mr. Richard may have mis-named what he found, and the rose we have today may well be a form of the most variable R. polliniana. I am getting to dislike the thing, but I was never very religiously inclined anyway.

Magazine  (2007)  Page(s) 15. Vol 21, No. 3.  
 
Rev. Douglas T. Seidel. Rethinking the Reblooming Damasks.
.....Ivan Louette provides an important footnote on the subject of the Holy Rose. He contends that the original R. sancta has disqappeared from gardens and nurseries on both sides of the Atlantic, having been usurped by a form of R. polliniana

Book  (2003)  Page(s) 128.  
 
Rosa x richardii, Holy Rose The other names of this rose include St. John's Rose and Rosa sancta, reflecting its links with religion and Ethiopia...[Ed. note: St. John's Rose is a synonym of R. sancta Andrews, not R. sancta Richard.]

Book  (1997)  Page(s) 182.  Includes photo(s).
 
R. richardii (R. sancta, 'Holy Rose') Hybrid macrantha. Abyssinia 1897. Description and cultivation... Probably a Gallica hybrid of considerable antiquity... flowers: single, soft rose pink...

Book  (1996)  Page(s) 58.  
 
'Freya' (Geschwind, 1910) hybrid R. canina Pink, semi-double, repeats. Tall.

Book  (Nov 1994)  Page(s) 102.  
 
From Other Pens. The Work of Dr. C. C. Hurst.
The Holy Rose. Another interesting but rather mysterious Rose, belonging to the first group of Summer Damask Roses, is the Holy Rose. Our knowledge of this Rose is somewhat scanty, yet it seems to go much farther back in history than any other garden Rose, and there are indications that it may have had a distant part to play in the evolution of our garden Roses. The little we know of its history is both curious and chequered. It was first found in Abyssinia, in the Christian Province of Tigre, where it had been planted in the courtyards of religious sanctuaries. It was described by Richard in I848 in his Flora of Abyssinia under the name of Rosa sancta.* The Holy Rose forms a low erect bush, and is intermediate in its characters between the Red and the Phoenician Rose. Indeed, except for its single flowers with five or six petals, it would pass well for a dwarf Damask Rose. Since its Phoenicia parent is not a cultivated plant, the Holy Rose is presumably a natural hybrid with its home in Asia Minor and Syria, where its two parents overlap, and the question arises how it came to be transported to Abyssinia. The story of St Frumentius may help to solve that problem. St Frumentius was born in Phoenicia about A.D. 300, and it is said that while on a voyage he was captured by Ethiopians, taken to Axum, the Abyssinian capital, and became the King's Secretary. He is said to have converted the Abyssinians to Christianity, and secured its introduction to that country. In 326 he was consecrated Bishop of Axum by Athanasius at Alexandria, and died in 360. In view of the above facts it seems likely that the Holy Rose may have been introduced to Abyssinia from Phoenicia (Syria) by the Phoenician Apostle of Ethiopia, St Frumentius, in the fourth century A.D. This also may explain why the Rose was planted within the precincts of the Christian churches in his diocese, and thus preserved through the centuries.

* In view of the earlier and quite different R. sancta Andrews (1827), Rehder in 1922 amended R. sancta Richard (1848) to R. Richardii, and now both Richard's and Rehder's specific names become synonyms of x R. damascena Blackw.

Book  (Apr 1993)  Page(s) 530.  
 
St. John's Rose Shrub, rose, (R. centifolia sancta Zabel; R. sancta Richard, not Andrews; R. x richardii Rehder); R. gallica x R. phoenciia; Cult. 1902. Abyssinia...

Book  (1993)  Page(s) 11.  Includes photo(s).
 
Caption to Photo: A box of rose remnants from the wreaths found during Petrie's excavations of the tombs at Hawara in Egypt. They are thought to date from AD c170. We photographed the specimens with fresh Rosa x richardii (formerly known as Rosa Sancta, which is what the remnants are thought to be. Seen in the Herbarium at Kew Gardens, London.

Booklet  (1990)  Page(s) 30-31.  Includes photo(s).
 
Rosa sancta - aus Äthiopien
stammend, in der Zeit von 500-200 v. Chr.