Dissertation on Birds of Prey and the Sport - the Falconry Heritage ...

compared to them have reached the goal of their pilgrimage, have fed on divine love,
and now dance in joy because of love. The cranes in the simile are fulfilled, yet they
retain their connotations of responsible leadership: Dante calls them, "milizia del
ciel," a phrase that could as easily describe the militant cranes, who guard each other
and fly in formation "en maniere de chevaliers qui vent en battaile" (Latini). The
completed, celebratory souls of this last simile are far from the incomplete damned of
Inferno: here, heavenly cranes form an eagle, in contrast to infernal cranes, that can
only manage to be like starlings: disorderly, dirty birds with no redeeming qualities.
The final M that the cranelike souls create in the sky transforms into a lily and
then an imperial eagle, a bird that is both a symbol of the Roman Empire (i.e., good
government) and of Christ. The eagle then, as a prelude to launching into its discussion
of divine justice in Canto XIX, acts like a falcon that has just been unhooded, prior to
being flown:
Quasi falcone ch' esce del cappello,
move la testa e con l'ali si plaude,
voglia mostrando e faccendosi bello,
vid'io farsi quel segno, che di laude
de la divina grazia era contesto,
con canti quai si sa chi la su gaude.
(Paradiso XIX, 34-39)
It is appropriate that finally in Paradiso falcons are unhooded and flying; the goal of
their hunt-divine love-is ever present here. The aim of this unhooded falcon is to
expand the knowledge of the divine by explaining divine justice to Dante. The speech on
divine justice concentrates much on the poor sight of mortals who should not try to see
and understand more than they can with mortal eyes. The eyes of the divine eaglelfalcon