Pelican

PELICAN. - A bird of the order Steganopodes, family Pelecanidae, which lives on the shores of lakes in warm regions; its white plumage tends toward pink or yellow; its stout, long beak is provided with a dilatable pouch-like membrane that serves as a reservoir for the fish destined for its offspring; in the act of giving them, it presses the pouch against its neck in such a way as to seem to open its breast with the tip of its beak, whence the origin of the legends that will be cited. In Sacred Scripture it is an unclean bird (Lev. 11:18 Hebrew text = onocrotalus of the Vulgate; see also the pellicanus of Ps. 101:7), but its identification with our pelican is uncertain.

The pelican, through the influence of the Physiologus (v.), of the Clavis Scripturae of pseudo-Melito (Carolingian era) and of the Bestiaries (v.), has been proposed as a symbol of the preacher, of penance, of charity, of the Eucharist, etc. But the pelican is above all the symbol of Christ the Redeemer; in fact the Christian compiler of the Physiologus (Greek recension, ed. F. Sbordone, Milan 1936, pp. 16-19; Latin version B, ed. F. J. Carmody, Paris 1939, p. 17), after recounting that the pelican kills its offspring and brings them back to life after three days, sprinkling upon them its own blood which it causes to gush from a gash in its breast, sees in this life-giving blood of the pelican the figure of the redemptive blood of Christ, and St. Augustine, referring to this, exclaims: « Habet ergo haec avis, si vere ita est, magnam similitudinem carnis Christi, cuius sanguine vivificati sumus » (Enarr. in Ps., 101, § 8: PL 37, 1299). The pelican is a symbol of the Redeemer for St. Thomas in the Adoro te devote, for Dante in the Paradiso (XXV, v. 113) and for the artists who placed it in a roundel above the cymatium or sometimes (but more rarely) at the foot of the cross. The pupils of Giotto were the first, it seems, to use this iconographic motif, such as the master who painted the crucifix in the church of S. Felice in Florence or Baronzio in the small panel of the Vatican Pinacoteca. Other notable examples are due to Masolino da Panicale (1st half of the 15th century, Vatican Pinacoteca), to Andrea della Robbia (end

15th century, Verna) and to Perugino (beginning of the 16th century, Siena, S. Agostino). It was also taken up by illuminators such as, for example, Niccolò da Bologna. From the late Middle Ages onward the pelican is also pointed to and represented as a symbol of the Eucharist, with the spread of the legend, not recorded in the Physiologus, according to which the pelican nourishes its little ones with its own blood (see above, col. 769, the medal of Pius II). Among the most ancient depictions of the pelican as a eucharistic symbol, one must recall a Limoges enamel in the pyx preserved at the Museum of St-Jean d'Angers; in the Baroque and modern era it is sometimes depicted on pyxes, chalices, humeral veils and tabernacle doors. Representations of the pelican alone are rare; the most ancient appears to be the one existing in the Cathedral of Modena (beginning of the 12th century). The pelican sometimes appears with other symbolic animals or birds such as the phoenix, the lion and the unicorn. - See plate LXXVII.

A. Pietro Frutaz