Pelican

PELICAN. – Bird of the order Steganopodes, family Pelecanidae, which lives along the shores of lakes in warm regions; its white plumage has a tendency toward pink or yellow; its robust, elongated beak is equipped with a dilatable membranous pouch that serves as a reservoir for fish intended for its young; when feeding them, it presses the pouch against its neck in such a way as to appear to open its breast with the tip of its beak, hence the origin of the legends that will be cited. In Sacred Scripture it is an unclean bird (Lv. 11:18, Heb. text = onocrotalus of the Vulgate; V. also the pellicanus of Ps. 101:7), but its identification with our pelican is uncertain.

Physiologus (v.), the Clavis Scripturae of ps. Melito (Carolingian period), Bestiaries (v.), the pelican has been proposed as a symbol of the preacher, penance, charity, the Eucharist, etc. But the pelican is above all the symbol of Christ the Redeemer; indeed, 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 young and makes them rise again after three days by sprinkling upon them its own blood, which it causes to flow from a wound in its breast, sees in this life-giving blood of the pelican a figure of the redeeming blood of Christ; and s. 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 s. 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 upper cornice, or sometimes (but more rarely) at the foot of the cross. Giotto’s pupils were apparently the first to use this iconographic motif, as did 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 (first half of the 15th cent., Vatican Pinacoteca), Andrea della Robbia (end

of the 15th cent., Verna), and Perugino (beginning of the 16th cent., Siena, S. Agostino). It was also taken up by miniaturists such as, for example, Niccolò da Bologna. From the late Middle Ages onward, the pelican was also indicated 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 young with its own blood (v. II). Among the oldest representations of the pelican as a Eucharistic symbol, one must recall a Limoges enamel on the pyx preserved in the Musée de St-Jean d’Angers; in the Baroque and modern periods it is sometimes represented on pyxes, chalices, humeral veils, and tabernacle doors. Representations of the pelican alone are rare; the oldest seems to be the one existing in the Cathedral of Modena (beginning of the 12th cent.). The pelican sometimes appears with other symbolic animals or birds, such as the phoenix, the lion, and the unicorn. – Vedi plate LXXVII.