Commentaria in Leviticum
And the griffon.—You will ask, whether there is a griffon, and what it is? That griffons exist is taught by, of the Greeks, Herodotus, Pausanias, Ctesias, Aelian; of the Latins Mela, Solinus, Apuleius and others, and they place them in Asiatic Scythia, or in the Riphaean mountains. Ctesias says griffons are four-footed birds of the size of a great wolf, with the legs and claws of lions, with feathers red on the breast, blue on the neck, black on the rest of the body, with fiery eyes. Leonicenus adds that it is a bird like a horse; Volaterranus, that in face it differs not much from the human. Abulensis here and John de Montevilla say the griffon bears in front the appearance of an eagle, behind that of a lion; that in size it equals eight lions; that it is of such strength as to carry off into the air two oxen, or a horse with its rider. And this is the common opinion of many.
On the contrary, that griffons do not exist, but are fabulous, Pliny contends, who calls almost frenzied those who assert such birds to exist. So Origen, who very rashly censures Moses for forbidding the Hebrews to eat griffons. So Matthias Michonius and Perottus Decembrius in Asiatic Sarmatia, who say that experience shows that no such bird is found in the north, nor in the Riphaean mountains.
I say first: It is of faith that griffons exist, and that they are birds, as is plain from this place of Scripture; for the Hebrew peres signifies griffon, as the Septuagint, the Chaldee and our version render. For peres signifies a bird having curved and huge claws (from parsa, that is, hoof), as also a beak. Such therefore is the griffon, and hence gryphus in Greek and Latin signifies hooked, curved, clawed. Hence Antiochus Grypus, and others, from a hooked and aquiline nose, were called gryphi.
I say secondly: Griffons, as described by the ancients already mentioned, are fabulous; for it is known by experience that no bird is found which is partly bird, partly lion or horse; hence the ancients, in painting griffons, joined them to the sphinx: but it is known that the sphinx is a fable.
I say thirdly: What griffons are cannot be certainly defined. Yet probable is the opinion of Ulysses Aldrovandus, book 10, chapter 1, and of Goropius, that Moses signifies here by the griffon a bird, and, as it seems, the largest and most rapacious kind of eagle, which has the beak and claws most hooked, and is the strongest and most rapacious, whose size, strength and rapacity seem to have given the ancients occasion for the fable (1). This is proved first, because the Hebrew peres signifies this; again, because the griffon is here placed after the eagle, before the osprey; as therefore the osprey is a species of eagle, so the griffon seems to be. Secondly, because Aristophanes places the griffon as a species of eagle, and calls it grypaetos, as if you should say the griffon-eagle; as the halimetos is called, as if you should say the sea-eagle. The gryps is therefore the grypaetos, that is, an eagle most rapacious, which has a beak and claws very much hooked (grypho). Thirdly, because Sigismund Herberstein, ambassador of the Emperor to the Duke of Muscovy, writes that among the Muscovites there are birds like eagles but much larger, which the Muscovites call Kreutzet. Fourthly, because certain eagles grow to a very great size. George Fabricius relates that in the year 1550, between Misnia and Dresden, certain towns of Germany, an eagle’s nest was found extended over three oaks, in which were found the hides of calves and sheep, and a fawn freshly brought in. One young one had wings seven ells long when stretched across; the claws were equal to the fingers of a large man, the legs larger than those of lions. Aldrovandus relates that in Ethiopia there are eagles so large and strong as to snatch away an ox or a whole horse in their feet. Paul the Venetian writes that beyond Madagascar he often heard from the inhabitants of a bird called the ruc, which had wings so great that the feathers were twelve paces long; and it was itself so strong as to lift and carry off an elephant, and he says he thought it was a griffon; but he heard that it was two-footed, and like no beast: though the griffon indeed, if it is a bird and an eagle, is two-footed.
Tropologically, griffons are avaricious, unjust and rapacious princes. “Remove justice,” says St. Augustine, book 4 of the City of God, chapter 4, “what are kingdoms but great robberies? for what are robberies but little kingdoms? This evil grows so great that it holds places, fixes seats, occupies cities, subjugates peoples, and more evidently assumes the name of kingdom. Which is in plain fact conferred upon it, not by cupidity laid aside, but by impunity added. Therefore elegantly and truly did a certain pirate, captured, answer Alexander the Great, when asked by him what he meant by infesting the sea: with free voice he said, What do you mean by infesting the whole world? But I, because I do it with a little ship, am called a robber; you, because with a great fleet, an emperor.”
Nero never delegated an office to anyone without adding: “You know what I need, and let us act so that no one have anything.” A voice more worthy of a robber than of a prince.
Flavius Vespasian, since he was wont to promote the most rapacious of men, only to condemn them presently when enriched, was commonly said to hold his officials as sponges: because he would wet them when dry, and squeeze them when moist. So Suetonius.
Bato the Dalmatian, asked by Tiberius why he had so often revolted with his people from the Romans, and inflicted such a disaster on them, answered: “You are the cause, who to guard your flocks gave not dogs or shepherds, but wolves.” So Dio in the Life of Augustus.
Caius Caligula, when his grandmother Antonia warned him to do certain things otherwise, said: “Remember that all things are permitted to me against all.”
Louis XII, king of the French, was wont to say, as the Annals have it, that “the common people and peasants are the pasture of tyrants and soldiers, but tyrants and soldiers are the pasture of devils.”
Phalaris used to say: “I, who have tried both, would rather be under a tyranny than over it. For the subject, secure from other evils, fears one tyrant; but the tyrant fears both those who plot abroad and those by whom he is guarded.”
The osprey.—In Greek haliaetos, the same as the sea-eagle, so called from the sea and fishermen; for hals is sea, and halieus is fisherman, and aetos is eagle: concerning which Pliny, book 10, chapter 3: “The haliaetus,” he says, “is the most brilliant species of eagle, in sharpness of eyes; poising himself from on high, and seeing a fish in the sea, he rushes headlong upon it, and, dashing aside the water with his breast, carries it off.”
Verse 14. After its kind—after their species: for there are many species of vultures and kites (1).
Verse 15. In their likeness—that is, according to their likeness, as if to say: All birds like the raven, or of the raven’s kind, I hold and judge as unclean, and forbid to be eaten. This will be plain from verse 19 (2).
Verse 16. The larus.—The larus or gull, as Aristotle calls it, swims in the waters and flies in the air, says Hesychius, and is a plunderer of fishes. So Oppian, book On Fowling, namely in the Ixeutica, that is, on bird-lime, or the art of catching birds with lime. Hence the proverb: “the gaping gull,” for the rapacious and thievish.
Hence also arose the fable that gulls were once men who first practised hunting and sea-plunder; then, changed by the gods into birds, flying about cities and harbours, they still remember their ancient art and plunder. So Oppian. The gull is also a symbol of gluttony, whence Alciati in the emblem of gluttony depicts the glutton thus:
A man is painted with a crane’s gullet and swollen belly, who carries in his hands a gull or a bittern.
Truly Juvenal, Satire 4: There are some whose sole cause of living is the palate.
And Socrates: “Others,” he says, “live to eat; I eat to live.” And Seneca, book 10 of the Rhetoric: “Whatever of birds flies, whatever of fishes swims, whatever of wild beasts runs about, is buried in our bellies: ask now why we die suddenly? because we live by deaths.”
as if the name had been given to the ostrich from a shrill cry. But since the notion of clamour seems to be attributed to the word without adequate reason, Rosenmüller, comparing the Arabic teahana, hard and barren ground, renders the Hebrew word “daughter of the desert,”
Hear St. Jerome Against Jovinian and in his epistle: “With satiety lust is always joined: the belly and the genitals are neighbours, and according to the order of the members is the order of the vices.” And again: “The glutton has his heart in his belly, the lascivious in lust, the covetous In the Aphorisms it is taught that gross and obese bodies, which have filled the measure of growth, unless quickly reduced by bloodletting, break out into paralysis and the worst kinds of diseases. For the nature of bodies does not abide in one state, but either grows or decreases; it cannot live otherwise unless it be capable of growth. And Galen says that those whose life and art is fattening can neither live long nor be healthy, and their souls, wrapped as it were in mud by too much blood and fat, think nothing subtle, nothing heavenly, but ever belch forth carnal things and think of the gorging of the belly.”
Hugh of St. Victor, tract. On the Cloister of the Soul: “Certain persons,” he says, “apply too superstitious zeal in the preparation of their foods, devising infinite kinds of boilings, fryings and seasonings; now soft, now hard, now cold, now hot, now boiled, now roasted, now seasoned with pepper, now with garlic, now with cumin, desiring after the manner of pregnant women; so that the arts, questions and anxiety of cooks sweat for them. These seem to worship the belly as a god.”