Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/193

Rh charadrius occurs. The word is there written gladrius or glabrius. The chaladrius, in fabulous natural history, is a bird perfectly white, which, by looking on a sick person, takes away his diseases. It is a symbol of our Saviour.

The unicorn is a symbol of the Incarnation. The description of the animal, together with the well-known method of taking it, is given from a French Bestiary. According to this, it is a beautiful and not large beast, with the body of a horse, the feet of an elephant, the head of a stag, a loud and clear voice, and a tail curled like a pig's; in the middle of the forehead is a straight sharp horn, four feet in length. It can only be taken by means of a virgin beautifully arrayed. She is placed near the haunts of the animal, which, on perceiving her, runs towards her, kneels down, and laying his head on her lap, falls asleep and is taken. In the Bestiary of Philippe de Thaun, the unicorn is described as having merely the body of a goat. The application of the fable to the Incarnation may there be found. In the present work it is given in the following lines from a MS. in the Bibliotheque Royale.

Towards the sixteenth century, the Incarnation is found represented under the allegory of a chase. The animal is pursued by two couple of hounds, followed by an angel sounding a horn, and throws itself into the bosom of the virgin, who is waiting for it. The two couple of dogs are Mercy and Truth, Justice and Peace, (Psalm lxxxiv. 11.) The huntsman is the archangel charged with the Annunciation.

In the Pelican (No. 6. of the diagram) the authors do not see the commonly received emblem of the Eucharist, or the body and blood of Christ, with which we are fed; but the restoration of the human race to life by means of Christ's blood. This interpretation they justify by the position which the emblem holds in the present window, and in some others, by the early fables respecting the bird, which represent it as restoring its young to life by the blood which it causes to flow from its breast: and by several passages in ecclesiastical writers. They have met with no author anterior to the fifteenth century who speaks of the blood being given as nourishment.

The tree bearing a nest in this medallion appears to be an allusion to the text in Job, which, according to the Vulgate, is, "I will die in my nest, and spread myself as a palm tree."

The dragon's or whale's throat, by which, in the middle ages, the mouth of hell is represented, is "an extension of the symbolism of the Leviathan." From want of space the authors abstain from doing more than giving this