The pelican that revives its young with its own blood
From the Physiologus to Dante and Thomas Aquinas: how the pelican became the supreme symbol of Christ's sacrifice and of the Eucharist.
Of all the images in the bestiaries, none has enjoyed a religious success comparable to that of the pelican tearing open its breast to feed its young. It can be found on altars, tabernacles, liturgical vestments, stained glass and coats of arms, and it still appears in many churches today. Yet the original story is darker and more complex than the best-known iconography suggests, and its history lets us follow step by step the way the Middle Ages built a symbol.
The story in the Physiologus
The Physiologus chapter starts from a verse of Psalm 101 in the Vulgate numbering: ‘Similis factus sum pellicano solitudinis’, I am become like a pelican of the wilderness. It then sets out the nature of the bird. The pelican loves its young dearly, but when they grow they strike it in the face; the parent retaliates and kills them. After three days the mother, or in other versions the father, opens its side with its beak and pours its own blood over the bodies of its young, who thus return to life.
The interpretation is immediate. Humanity struck God with sin and fell into death; Christ, his side opened on the cross, shed his blood to give them life again. The three days point to the Resurrection. Augustine, commenting on the psalm, already reported the story with caution, warning that it might be true or false, but recognising its power as an image.
From bestiary to liturgy
In the course of the Middle Ages the most violent part of the story, the killing of the young, faded into the background. What remained was the image of the parent wounding itself to feed its offspring, read more and more as a symbol of the Eucharist: the blood of Christ nourishing the faithful. This is the sense of the hymn Adoro te devote, attributed to Thomas Aquinas, which calls upon Jesus as ‘pie pellicane’, loving pelican, asking him to cleanse the believer with his blood.
Dante too adopted the image. In Canto XXV of the Paradiso Beatrice points to Saint John as the one who lay on the breast ‘del nostro pellicano’, of our pelican, that is of Christ, at the Last Supper. The poet could take it for granted that readers would grasp the allusion without explanation, a sign of how familiar the symbol had become. The image then passed into the commentaries on the Comedy.
The pelican in her piety
In heraldry and in early modern art the figure settled into a recognisable formula: the bird standing on its nest, neck bent to wound its breast, with its young drinking the blood. In English this composition is still called ‘pelican in her piety’. Elizabeth I of England had herself portrayed wearing a pelican jewel, presenting herself as a mother ready to sacrifice herself for her people.
The real pelican, of course, does nothing of the kind. It has been suggested that the legend arose from watching the bird press its beak against its breast to empty its pouch, or from the reddish colouring some species take on, but these are conjectures. What is certain is that an ancient piece of natural history, read with the eyes of faith, produced one of the most enduring symbols of Christian culture.