Commentaria in Leviticum
Tropologically, the mouse and weasel signify the frauds of the poor, and fraudulent poor men. So Radulphus; whence also Cyril, book 9 Against Julian: “The weasel,” he says, “and the mouse designate the timid and poor, less manly, and clamorous kinds of thieves.” Wherefore Brasidas, having caught a mouse among figs and been bitten by it, let it go, adding: “Nothing is so small that it cannot be saved, if it dare to defend itself or avenge those who do it violence”; Plutarch witnesses in the Laconic Sayings.
The crocodile is unclean because it is amphibious, hard and rapacious (3).
Tropologically, the crocodile signifies public robbers. So Radulphus.
Verse 30. The shrew (4)—is the field-mouse (mus araneus), which is of the size of a mouse, of weasel-like appearance, with oblong mouth and slender tail, as Aetius says. The island of Britain abounds in these; it is called mygale, as if from mys, that is, mouse, and gale, that is, weasel: because the mygale partakes of both animals and is as it were compounded of them, from which it draws equally the vice of greed and of theft. So Hesychius and Radulphus.
Demochares, seeing a thief led away by the eleven magistrates: “Ah, wretch,” he said, “why did you steal such trifles, and not rather great things, that you might have led others away also?” indicating that from small thefts we ought to be deterred by the smallness and vileness of the thing to which so great an infamy is joined; for from great ones the crime itself and the gallows sufficiently deter.
Socrates was asked why he laughed? He answered: “I see great robbers leading a small one to the gallows, who are more worthy of the gallows. The smallest sacrileges,” he says, “are punished, but the great are carried in triumphs.” So Valerius Maximus, book 7.
Zeno ordered a slave taken in theft to be beaten; and when he excused himself, saying that “it was in the fates for him to steal,” he said: “And it was in the fates for you to be beaten.” So Laertius, book 7, chapter 1.
The chameleon.—In Greek chamaileon, as if chamai leon, a dwarf, or little lion; it is an animal in form and size like a lizard, often changing colour over its whole body: for it varies with great ease according to the colours it sees, except to red and white. Hence the proverb: “More changeable than the chameleon,” signifying a shifty, inconstant person turning himself at the time into every shape. Whence tropologically, the chameleon signifies parasites, who adapt their mouth and words to every wind, says Radulphus.
Hence Gregory Nazianzen, writing against Julian the Apostate, compares him to the chameleon; for as the chameleon, he says, easily varies, and takes on all colours except white, so he from a Christian became a pagan; and there was in him a humanity, but inhuman, and his persuasion was nothing else than violence, and probity by excuse of savagery, so that he seemed rightly to fly to violence, when by persuading he could effect nothing. Rightly Seneca in the Proverbs: “The greatest sign,” he says, “of a bad mind is fluctuation, and a constant tossing between the pretence of virtues and the love of vices.”
Again, the chameleon has a snout like a swine’s, a very long tail, hooked claws, a motion slower, like the tortoise’s, a rough body like the crocodile’s, himself lofty, with ever gaping mouth; alone of animals he is nourished neither by food nor drink, nor by any other nourishment than air, says Pliny, book 28, chapter 8, Aristotle, book 3 On Animals, chapter 3, Solinus and others.
Where note first: Abulensis on Deuteronomy 14 judges that the chameleon properly does not change colour, but species; for the colour of the object cannot produce colour in it, but only its own species: and so the chameleon’s colour sends forth a species from itself, but weak and thin; but takes into itself a stronger species of colour from the object, and reflects it as if it were a mirror, so that its colour seems to be proper to it.
Others more truly judge that the chameleon changes colour by a contraction of blood and spirits: whence Aristotle says that, being inflated, it changes colour, as we in shame, fear or joy change colour; for when the chameleon sees the colour of the object, it so imprints it on its imagination that, by the dilation or contraction of blood and spirits already mentioned, it expresses the same in its body. See Simon Portius, book On Colours, which is extant among the works of Aristotle.
Note secondly, that Pliny and others relate that the chameleon lives without food on air alone; it is absolutely not true: for there is no animal that lives on air without food.
Hence Theophrastus teaches that the chameleon lives on dew, and has often been caught eating flies; and hence perhaps arose that opinion of the vulgar that it lives on air, namely from this, that the chameleon, being of slow digestion, lives long without food, and when it takes it, takes thin and light, as dew, flies, etc. So Augustine Niphus, Gesner and others. In like manner what is falsely boasted of the salamander, that it lives in fire and is not burned, had its origin in this, that the salamander, by reason of its coldness and the thickness of its skin, is not so quickly consumed by fire, but even from time to time, if it be small, extinguishes it.
Hence symbolically chameleons are those who feed on the wind of honour and the flies of delights. The Emperor Domitian, as Suetonius witnesses, was wont daily for two hours to amuse himself by catching flies; whence it passed into a proverb: “Not even a fly,” because he alone left not even a fly. O Domitian, you carry on and rule the business of the whole world, why then catch flies? How many Christians are more foolish than Domitian, who, when they ought to procure their salvation and eternity, daily catch flies, not for two hours but at all hours! You covet riches, you covet a fly. You covet a rich and beautiful bride, you covet a fly. You covet wines and delicacies, you covet flies, which tickle the flesh, the palate, but do not satisfy, and which in a short while, turned to filth and corpses, will bring forth stench and nausea. You covet a prebend, you covet an office, you covet a fly, a slight thing you covet, which shortly will fly from you to your successor. You wish to be honoured, to excel, to be loved, to be courted, you covet a fly; like a chameleon you catch at the breeze of the people, you draw in wind, you live on wind, you delight in wind. O the cares of men, O how much emptiness in things! Wretched, blind mortals, you run like a headless hen, brainless, after food, after worms, after butterflies, after flies; you run after prebends, after dignities; you run to tables, to feasts, to cups; you run after wages and wealth, and not once do you think: And what at last? to what end all this? what will be after this? why am I here? why did I receive from God a rational and immortal soul? why do I look up at the sun and the sky? what place, what state will receive my soul, after all this soon to end? Go now, young man, leap, be merry, get drunk, indulge belly and Venus; but know that for all these God will bring you into judgment, that you shall go into the house of your eternity.
Live therefore not as the chameleon on flies, but as the lion on solid food, live for God, live for ETERNITY; be an eagle: “The eagle catches not flies; do not seek to be first among the jackdaws, when you can be an eagle.”
The stellio.—An animal not unlike the lizard, though much smaller, having its back marked with certain shining spots in the manner of stars; it feeds on dew and spiders; its bite makes a man half stupid, and variously affects him; no animal envies man more fraudulently than the stellio: for the skin which it sheds every year it forthwith devours, to deprive man of the most present remedy for the falling sickness. Hence stellio signifies the fraudulent, and the crime of stellionatus is called the crime of guile and imposture. So Pliny, book 30, chapter 10. The saying of a stellio was that of Lysander, who, when blamed that he did many things by guile, answered: “Where the lion’s skin does not suffice, there the fox’s must be sewn on.” Plutarch is witness in the Apophthegms.
Seven reptiles are numbered here, because although all reptiles are unclean, as is plain from verse 41, yet these above the rest. So Hesychius.
But why does this law forbid eating? Besides the literal cause given in verse 29, there is the symbolic one which Novatian assigns, book On Jewish Meats, chapter 3, where he says: “Who would make the body of a weasel a food? but it reproves thefts; who a lizard? but it hates the uncertain variety of life; who a stellio? but it execrates the spots of those seeking prey from another’s death; who a raven? but it execrates crafty wills; who a sparrow (for so he renders what the Septuagint have as the ostrich, but wrongly: for it is plain from the Hebrew, the Chaldee and our version that it must be rendered ostrich; for the sparrow was not an unclean but a clean animal, and apt even for expiation, as is plain here, chapter 14:5)? when it forbids it, it convicts intemperance; when the owl, it hates the light-shunners of truth; when the swan, the proud of high neck; when the charadrius, the too garrulous intemperance of the tongue; when the bat, those seeking the darkness of night and at once of error: so in the camel it condemns an enervated life, twisted with crimes; with the swine, it reproves a life which places its good in the flesh alone; with the hare, it accuses men remade into women.” For the naturalists relate that the hare has both sexes, as also the hyena. So also Cyril, book 9 Against Julian, Radulphus and Hesychius, already often cited.