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

other. Hugh may have written the text as a guide, both verbal and visual, to help
Rainier in the teaching of religion and morality to other, less-educated lay-brothers.34
Hugh compares himself to a dove, and Rainier, the former knight, to a hawk.15 One
represents the contemplative, the other the active life. Rainier's conversion to the
religious life is likened to the taming of a hawk: Rainier has progressed from being a wild
hawk that hunts domestic fowl into being a domesticated one that seizes wild birds, i.e.
laymen, and brings them to conversion:
Ecce in eadem pertica sedent accipiter et columba. Ego enim de clero, tu de
militia. Ad conversionem venimus ut in regulari vita quasi in pertica sedeamus; et
qui rapere consueveras domesticas aves, nunc bonae operationis manu silvestres
ad conversionem trahas, id est ~aeculares.~~
In addition to the intriguing notion of the lay-brotherlhawk doing good works by
"capturing" sinners, the very idea of seeing the domestication of a hawk caught in the
wild as a metaphor for the enlightenment and conversion of the sinner is quite rare.
Although in Provengal poetry, Italian poetry of the Duecento, and German poetry as well,
as we will see,37 the training of the hawk is used to indicate the acquiring and "training"
of a lover, only Dante in Italian literature truly exploits the mystical religious potential of
this image.38
Hugh's seven chapters on the hawk consist primarily of allegorical interpretations
of various aspects of the lives of domesticated hawks. They begin, however, with a
34 See Willene B. Clark, "The Illustrated Medieval Aviary and the Lay-Brotherhood," Gesta XXI, no. 1
(1982): 63-74; and her edition of Hugh's work, The Medieval Book of Birds, Hugh of Fouilloy's Aviarium
(Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992).
35 Clark notes that the dove and hawk as symbols of monk and knight are not exclusive to this text but are
found in others as well (Aviarium, p. 2, n.1).
36 Clark's translation: See how the hawk and the dove sit on the same perch. I am from the clergy and you
from the military. We come to conversion so that we may sit within the life of the Rule, as though on a
perch; and so that you who were accustomed to seizing domestic fowl, now with the hand of good deeds
may bring to conversion the wild ones, that is, laymen.
37 See Chapter 2.
38 See Chapter 3.