SCORPION. - An animal of the arachnids, arthrogastric, of an olive-brown color; the flat body is provided with two large chelicerae and a long, articulated abdomen that ends in a venomous stinger. The European species is small and its sting causes only temporary discomfort; the stings of the tropical species, however, which are of considerably larger size, can be fatal.
The Greeks and Romans made the scorpion the symbol of wickedness because of its insidious and deadly abdominal sting, and regarded it as an animal that served as a prophylactic against the evil eye, on account of its malice (cf. Steier, Spinnentiere, in Pauly-Wissowa, III A, 2 [1929], coll. 1786-1809). In ancient and medieval Christian literature the scorpion is a symbol: 1) of heresy (cf. Tertullian, Scorpiace, 1: PL 2, 121) and of the heretic "quia arcuato vulnere in Ecclesiae corpus venena diffundit" (St. Jerome, Contra Vigilantium: PL 23, 363; cf. also Comm. in Ezechielem, I, 1: ibid., 25, 33; Comm. in Joel: ibid., col. 948; St. Augustine, Serm., 126, 8: ibid., 38, 623; St. Bernard, Epist., 196: ibid., 182, 363; the medieval Latin bestiaries of a mystical and dogmatic character); 2) of falsehood and hypocrisy: "scorpiones ergo sunt - says St. Gregory the Great - qui blandi et innoxii in facie videntur, sed post dorsum portant unde venenum fundant" (Hom. in Ezechielem, I, 9: PL 76, 879; cf. also the moralizing bestiaries). The Physiologus does not know it.
Toward the end of the Middle Ages in Italy and in France the scorpion becomes the symbol of Jewish perfidy. In France the famous Passions of Christ of the 15th century speak of it (cf. the Passions of Arras, of Arnoul Gréban, of Jean Michel). In Italy, on the other hand, the first pictorial and plastic testimonies of it come from the Sienese artistic milieu and date back to the 14th century (cf. Bible illuminated by Sienese artists, Bibl. nationale of Paris, ms. franç. 9561; Barna at S. Gimignano). Having spread through central Italy and being used, for example, by Beato Angelico (Florence; Perugia), by Donatello (Florence), Paolo Uccello (Urbino), Niccolò da Bologna (Vatican Library), etc., this new symbol then passed into northern Italy, where it was used by Giacomo Jaquerio (Ranverso), Luini (Milan), Gaudenzio Ferrari (Varallo), Giov. Boccati (Venice), etc., and into France and Germany. However, as it gradually moved away from its native land, it lost its original meaning and disappeared with the 16th century. The scorpion is a symbol of the Jewish people especially when it is depicted: 1) on the generally yellow standard of the synagogue, vanquished and driven back by Christ, in the scenes of the Altercationes between Church and Synagogue or in the "Living Crosses"; 2) on the standards, garments or shields of the soldiers in the scenes of the Passion of Christ. In these scenes the scorpion is paired with the abbreviation S.P.Q.R., or with the eagle, to point to the presence and responsibility of the two deicidal peoples, the Jewish and the Roman.
In Italian and French monuments from the end of the 14th century and the 16th century, the scorpion is also depicted as an attribute of dialectic or logic in place of the serpent (cf., for example, Andrea Bonaiuti, S. Maria Novella, Florence; Botticelli, Louvre; A. Pollaiolo, tomb of Sixtus IV in the grottoes of the basilica of St. Peter, etc.). - See plate V.
Bibliography2 works
A. Pietro Frutaz