II. THE LION, EMBLEM OF THE RESURRECTION AND OF THE RISEN CHRIST
In his excellent work on "Religious art in the 13th century in France," (*1) Émile Mâle, explaining the presence of the emblematic Lion on a stained glass window in Bourges which shows it near the tomb of the resurrected Jesus, also reports the tradition by virtue of which the lion became, in Christian art, an emblem of Jesus Christ as the resurrected Man-God, and also as the author and principle of our future resurrection: "Everyone, says Mâle, admitted in the Middle Ages that the lioness gave birth to cubs that seemed stillborn. For three days the lion cubs gave no sign of life, but on the third day the lion returned and animated them with his breath." (Fig. VI).
The authors of the Bestiaries of the Middle Ages certainly took this fiction from Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, although Plutarch, better informed about the things and beings of the East, wrote that lion cubs come into the world, on the contrary, with their eyes wide open; and that this is the reason why the lion, among certain peoples of his time, was consecrated to the Sun (*2); which explains its presence near Mithra, the Sol invictus.
Cuvier and modern naturalists confirm Plutarch's opinion, but it is a fact that the authors and artists of the Middle Ages worked according to the opposite opinion, relying on the authority, very slight in this respect, of Origen (*3) and the Physiologus. In this entirely idealistic world, which sought to monumentalize every truth by symbols, the vogue of the fiction of stillborn lion cubs brought to life on the third day by their father was great; it had the favor of Saint Epiphanius, Saint Anselm, Saint Yves of Chartres, Saint Brunon of Asti, Saint Isidore, Adamantius and all the physiologists (*4). "The apparent death of the little lion represented the sojourn of Jesus Christ in the tomb, and his birth was like an image of the resurrection" (*5).
The image was even double, because one could also see there Christ who, having suffered, became "the first of the resurrection of the dead" (*6) and who is, according to Saint Paul the principle, the pledge and the author of our resurrection. Thus Christ will therefore himself resurrect his children. Let us quote here the verses of Abailard:
The Lord rose again,
Whom the fathers roared with
Like a lion's cub On the third day,
A life-giving physical witness rises.
Then, let us listen to William of Normandy who wrote his Divine Bestiary at the beginning of the 13th century (*7), and which I believe I can translate as follows:
As the lioness gives birth to her cub
It falls to the ground dead;
It will not have the strength to live,
Until the father, on the third day warms it with his
Breath and licks it with love;
In this way he revives it,
No other medicine could do this.
So it was with Jesus Christ:
The humanity that he took for us,
And which for the love of us he revived,
Felt his pains and his work;
But his divinity does not feel anything,
Thus believe, you will do well.
When God was laid in the tomb,
He remained there three days only,
And on the third day The father revived him,
Who revived him as the lion revives his little fawn. (*8)
The custom that was had, before Christianity, in Lycia, in Phrygia as in several other countries, of placing on the tombs of kings or on those of illustrious heroes the image of the lion, would it not have, at least in part, its principle in the fictitious power of resurrection that the Ancients attributed to the lion? In ancient art its image often accompanies the palm tree which was, before our era in all the old world an emblem of resurrection, even more than an emblem of the desert.
Footnotes:
*1. E. MALE, Op. cit., p. 29.
*2. PLUTARCH, Table Talk, L. IV, ch. 5.
*3. ORIGEN, Homily XVXII, ch. 49.
*4. Cf. HUYSMANS, The Cathedral, Ed. Cress. 1920. Vol. II, p. 220.
*5. E. MALE, Ob. cited, ibid.
*6. Acts of the Apostles, XXVI, 23.
*7. Around 1208.
*8. Guillaume DE NORMANDIE, The Divine Bestiary. The Nature of Lion. Ed. Hippeau, pp. 194-196.