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

Indeed it was common practice to give the hawk the heart of the bird it had caught as
reward, but to see that and the rest of the butchering of the prey as symbolizing the
conversion of sinners is unusual to say the least. Hugh continues in this vein in the rest
of the chapters on hawks. There is more on the casting aside of old feathers, then he
discusses the method of carrying the hawk (on the left hand so that it may fly towards the
right-from worldly goods towards the spiritual good). The hawk's perch and the cord
that binds it to the perch have.meaning as well: the perch symbolizes the monastic life,
and it is sustained by two walls-the active and contemplative life. The cord that binds
the hawk to the perch is the mortification of the flesh, which holds lay-brothers to the
monastic life (Chapters 19-22).
If indeed Hugh wrote this text to instruct lay-brothers in the ways of living a
Christian life by monastic rules, it stands to reason that he would employ images from
contemporary life, to which these new brothers could easily relate, to achieve his goal.
Falconry is an excellent source from which such examples could be mined, since it is
highly likely that its practices were familiar to those brothers coming out of the secular
world.
Another clerical writer who demonstrates a very close familiarity with the sport of
falconry is Albert the Great. His work, De animalibus, written in the mid-thirteenth
excrement, which, if it remains within, produces a stinking rot of tissues. Interpreted
allegorically the wild hawk both seizes and eats the birds taken, because any wicked person continually
disturbs the actions and thoughts of simple folk. But the tame hawk is any spiritual father, who seizes the
wild birds whenever he draws laymen to conversion through preaching. It kills the prey while he compels
laymen to die to the world through the mortification of the flesh. Moreover, the