The Symbolism of Birds in Medieval Latin Hymnography

Abstract

The allegorical thinking of a medieval man allowed him to consider the whole world around him as certain message in the form of signs concealing invisible reality. Familiar objects, plants, living things served as signs, letters, and words. In Medieval Latin hymnography, allegorical images of birds form a rather large group. Two words are used to express the most general concept of “bird”. They are avis and volucer. The former denotes a bird that is close in behaviour to man, while the latter denotes a bird as a living creature. The category of bird images is divided into three unequal parts: there are birds that occur only in positive contexts, including pigeon, dove and nightingale; other birds are found in both positive and negative contexts, such as raven, eagle, hunting birds; birds of prey and hawks occur only in negative contexts. The swan stands apart from all other birds, symbolizing a sinful but repentant soul. The image of a pigeon is the most frequent. It denotes spiritual grace, love, peace, meekness and is also a symbol of the soul. A turtledove, symbolizing chastity, often appears together with a dove. Nightingales are always associated with spring, song and Easter. Quite often we encounter a raven who can act both as a helper to the saints and as the embodiment of a demon. An eagle can act as a negative character, but also as a symbol of Christ and of the Evangelist St John. On the contrary, the hawks are always hostile to saints.