III. THE LION, BIBLICAL EMBLEM OF THE DEATH OF JESUS CHRIST
Always searching for passages in the Bible that could symbolize Jesus Christ in whatever way, the mystics of the Middle Ages found a prophetic image of his sacrifice in the death of the lion that Samson defeated in the vineyards of Thamna.
Let us reread the sacred text:
"Samson went down with his father and mother to Thamna. When they came to the vineyards of Thamna, behold, a young lion roared and met him. The spirit of Yahweh seized Samson, and Samson tore the lion to pieces as one tears a kid...
Some time later, having gone again to Thamna, he made a detour to see the carcass of the lion, and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the lion's body. He took some in his hand and ate it on the way..." (*1)
The commentators of the Scriptures, in Capetian times in particular, meditating on this scene, regarded Samson as the allegorical image of humanity putting to death Christ the Redeemer: Just as, they said, the lion of Thamna died under the efforts of Samson, Christ died by the hands of men; just as Samson found comfort in the mouth of the dead lion, so the human race has found salvation in the death of the Redeemer.
Very often, Christian art of the past has taken pleasure in representing this struggle between the champion of Israel and the wild beast, giving it the meaning I have just explained: "O lion! Samson compares your death to that of Christ," says the large enamel of the Klosterneuburg altarpiece executed by Nicolas de Verdun in 1181 (*2). We see the hero, pushing apart until they are torn the two jaws of the wild beast, whose muscles protrude violently; and all around this picture, we read these words: "Samson with the lion. This man wears your lion of death XPe (Christ) figure."
IV. THE LION, EMBLEM OF THE TWO NATURES OF JESUS CHRIST
The hypostatic union in Jesus Christ of the two natures, divine and human, has been the theme of many allegorical images, and we will find it in several other emblems. The lion is certainly the one in which the two hypostases, divine and human, are least ostentatiously differentiated.
The Ancients agreed that all the active qualities of the lion are located in its forequarters, in its head, its neck, its chest and its front claws; the hindquarters, for them, only had the role of support, of terrestrial fulcrum.
Also, in the figurative sense, and relying on Saint Irenaeus, (*3) Peter Valerian will write when speaking of the lion: To the anterior parts he refers to the heavens, to the posterior parts the earth. And here the emblematic lion joins the allegorical conceptions which are attached to centaurs and griffins.
Based on this, they made the front of the lion the emblem of the divine nature of Christ, and the back of the animal the image of his humanity.
In his Bestiary, Philip of Taun, the elder of William of Normandy, tells us that, in the emblem of the lion:
The strength of the Divinity (of J.-C.)
Dwell in his broad chest;
In his hindquarters,
Made in a slender manner,
Remains Humanity
That he shares with divinity.
A stone lion, of Syrian art and of the Syro-Roman period, magnificently stylized, clearly shows this characteristic of a strong chest and hindquarters made in a "slender manner" (*4) which Christian symbolists of the past used to allegorically represent the two natures of Jesus Christ. (Fig. VIII).
*1. Book of Judges, XIV, 5-9. Trad. Crampon, The Holy Bible, p. 260.
*2. Cf. E. MOLLINIER, L'Emaillerie, p. 115.
*3. Saint IRENÉE, Hieroglyphicorum. Law VI, c. 27.
*4. Cf. R. DUSSAUD, Voyage en Syrie, in Revue archéologique, 3rd Ser, T. XXVIII, (1896), p. 304.