Commentaria in Leviticum
And again: “Temples are wont to be built to gods, altars raised, ministers appointed to serve, cattle immolated, incense burnt: so to the god belly the kitchen is the temple, the table the altar; the cooks are the ministers; the cattle immolated are the cooked meats; the smoke of the incense is the order of savours.”
Hear also Master Alan, tract. On the Complaint of Nature: “This pestilence,” he says, “not content with common humility, extends itself deeper among Prelates, who, tormenting salmon, pike and other fishes with the various martyrdoms of cooking, adulterating the office of baptism, baptize them in the sacred font of pepper, that from such a baptism they may obtain a manifold grace of savour. At the same table the land animal is drowned in a flood of pepper, the fish swims in pepper, the bird is bound by the viscosity of the same; and while so many kinds of animals are imprisoned in the one prison of the belly, the water animal marvels that with itself the pedestrian and aerial kinds are entombed in the same sepulchre, to whom, if licence of going out were given, the width of the gate would scarcely suffice as they came forth.”
He is the oarsman of the cups, and the sailor of the banquets.
Verse 17. The ibis.—The ibis is an Egyptian bird, hostile to serpents and scorpions, and feeding on them, which, applying salt water with the curvature of its beak, washes itself by that part by which it is most healthful that the burdens of foods be discharged; which the Egyptians observing imitated with the clyster: the ibis therefore taught men the clyster. So Pliny, book 8, chapter 27, and Plutarch in the dialogue, Whether Beasts have any Reason. Rightly therefore the ibis was by the law an unclean bird.
Solinus relates that the ibis begets and conceives by the mouth. Some have thought and think the same of the raven. But it is a little fable, which Aristotle strongly refutes, book 3 On the Generation of Animals, chapter 6: for how would the seed pass from the mouth into the womb? it would have to pass first through the stomach: but there it would be digested. The fable arose from the fact that ravens are seldom seen to use venery, but are often joined by their bills.
Verse 18. The bittern.—The Septuagint render pelican. Perhaps they understand the same bird. For Oppian in the Ixeutica calls the bittern the same which is the pelican; and Gesner, book On Birds, under the bittern, reckons a species of bittern congeneric with the pelican; nay, St. Jerome, Psalm 101:7, with the Septuagint, renders the Hebrew kaath pelican, and in the commentary on the same place asserts that the pelican is called the onocrotalus. Moreover the onocrotalus is so called from onos, that is ass, and krotalon, that is rattle, because by its discordant voice, braying, it resembles a braying ass. By some it is called gutturous, from its gullet, which hangs at its throat like a goitre; and in some it is so large that they devour five-pound live fishes at one gulp; nay, Aldrovandus relates from Francis Sanctius, Ornithology, book 19, chapter 2, that in a certain onocrotalus, which, by reason of its heaviness, had fallen and was caught, a little Ethiopian boy was found. In Hebrew it is called kaath, from vomiting, both because it vomits back the water which it holds in that gullet, to choose and eat the prey from it, as Pliny witnesses, book 10, chapter 47; and because, devouring shells, it vomits them forth opened by the heat of its gullet or stomach, that it may choose and devour the flesh from the oysters. Rightly therefore was this bird unclean to the Jews: nay, Christians also abstain from it, because it has hard, excrementitious flesh, and of scarcely bearable smell, especially when it is older, says Aldrovandus.
Yet for other properties of it this bird is taken in a good sense: for because of its rude and mournful voice, penitents and mourners are likened to the pelican, or onocrotalus, Psalm 101:7. So also eagles, herons, kites are taken now in a good, now in a bad sense, according to their different qualities. So the lion is compared both to Christ, for his fortitude, Apocalypse 5:5, and to the devil, for his cruelty, 1 Peter 5:8. So Radulphus and Hesychius.
The porphyrio.—The porphyrio is a bird having on its head as it were a crest, equal in size to hens, but with longer legs; it takes its name from its colour: for it has a reddish beak, as also legs.
Hence in Greek porphyrio, that is, purple. So Oppian in the Ixeutica, Gesner and Aldrovandus. It gapes after the plunder of fishes, says Procopius, and alone drinks by biting, ever dipping all its food in water, then carrying it to the beak with its foot as with a hand. So Pliny, book 10, chap. 46, and Aristotle, book 8 of the History of Animals, chapter 6. Aldrovandus adds from Polemon that the porphyrio is untaught, and never grows tame; and from Aelian and Callimachus, that it suffers no one’s sight while it eats, and therefore withdraws and eats in secret. For these causes it was held unclean. In another respect, however, its chastity is wonderfully praised. Athenaeus reports from Polemon, book 9 On the Banquets of the Wise, chapter 11, that a porphyrio nourished in houses is the guardian of the chastity of women, and most sagaciously discovering their adultery, indicates and betrays it by its own hanging and death. But how does a bird of itself hang itself by a noose? Wherefore more rightly Polemon, and from him Aldrovandus, said that it does this by abstinence from food, and by killing itself through want; and Aldrovandus adds from Tzetzes that it is so chaste that, on seeing a harlot, it expires (1).
Verse 19. The heron (herodion).—Of this bird Aristotle, Pliny, Oppian and others make no mention; what then is the herodius or herodion? First, St. Augustine on Psalm 103:18 understands the coot. Secondly, Albertus Magnus, tract. On Birds, thinks it the most noble species of eagle, which is called chrysaetos and stellaris, as if the herodius were the heros, that is, king and leader of birds, as it is called in Psalm 103:17. Thirdly, Radulphus, Lyranus, Gesner and many others think the herodius is the falcon, and especially its most excellent species, which is called the hierofalco, commonly the gyrfalcon. Hence St. Jerome also on Psalm 103 says that the herodius conquers eagles and rules over them: so also the Gloss there. Fourthly, Theodore Gaza on Aristotle’s History of Animals, book 9, chapters 1 and 17, and others, judge it to be the heron. For what Aristotle there says of the herodius, Pliny writes of the heron, book 10, chapter 9. Fifthly, it seems more probable that the herodius is the stork. So Suidas, R. David, and the Hebrews everywhere. It is proved first, for the herodius is called in Hebrew chasida, from piety: for chesed is piety; but the stork’s piety toward its parents is everywhere celebrated.
You will say: Chasida signifies also the kite. I answer: The kite is called chasida by antiphrasis, as being least pious, but rapacious and voracious.
Secondly, because Suidas says the herodius is so called as if helodios, that is, marsh-dweller (for helos is marsh); but the stork frequents marshes, and there feeds on frogs and serpents.
Thirdly, because in Psalm 103 the herodius is called leader of birds, namely of tame ones: but such is the stork; for although eagles and falcons surpass the stork, yet their nests are unknown, as are those of other birds.
Note: Twenty species of birds are named here as unclean, and forbidden to be eaten, because almost all are rapacious; some also because they shun the light and are nocturnal, as the horned owl, the charadrius, the bat; some because amphibious, as the gull and the diver; some because filthy, as the hoopoe, the ibis, the owl; some because they are rather beasts than birds, as the ostrich; some because melancholic, as the herodius or stork; many also are gluttonous, whence they have longer necks, and seek and fish out food from the deep mud of the waters; some finally because of an over-hot intemperature, as the raven and the swan, whose feathers though white and soft, yet its flesh is hard, sinewy and black: whence it has also whiter excrements. For hot birds eject their phlegm by white dung, but retain the bile. The contrary do those which are cold. From which it is plain that these birds are little fit for food, and are rightly reckoned unclean by the law.
Tropologically Radulphus: These twenty birds, he says, denote twenty vices of the powerful, and of those who have lofty spirits: first, the eagle denotes the pride of the powerful. Hence in Ezechiel 17:7 Nabuchodonosor is compared to a great eagle of great wings; secondly, griffons signify the cruelty of the powerful; thirdly, the osprey, which is not of such strength, yet a plunderer, signifies the violent against the poor; fourthly, the kite signifies the snares of the powerful; fifthly, the vulture, following camps and carcasses, signifies those who are as vultures the hangers-on of princes and courts, that by their help they may despoil others, whom Alfonsus, king of Aragon, was wont to call the Harpies of his court. So also Seneca, epistle 96: “He who,” he says, “sits by a sick friend for the sake of an inheritance, is a vulture, awaiting a corpse.” Again, vultures are voracious and gluttonous; for, as Epiphanius writes in the Physiologus: “The vulture is more voracious than all birds: for it abstains from food forty days, and when it finds it, for as many days gorges itself freely on it; thus it compensates its forty days’ abstinence by a forty days’ gluttony.” Vultures therefore are those who, after the fast of Lent, from Easter to Pentecost, stuff and gorge themselves; sixthly, ravens are those who feed on the deaths of others; seventhly, the ostrich, which is like the heron in feathers, but not in flight, Job 39:16, denotes hypocrites, who under the appearance of religion harm others. He who within is Nero, without Cato, says St. Jerome, is a monster like that poetic one: