Birds of Prey and the Sport of Falconry in Italian Literature through ...

gentlewoman with hawk on hand is the most concise representation of the sport of
falconry, and carries with it the connotations of nobility, love, and courtly society.'
In literature, birds of prey and the sport of falconry carry the same significance as
in art. Wild birds symbolize people who are being celebrated or condemned for their
fierceness; domesticated ones symbolize noblemen. Both kinds, but particularly the
domestic predators, are protagonists in hunting images that evoke the love pursuit. The
association between the two meanings of venery is transparent, and used in literature
since antiquity. Only in Medieval texts, however, are falcons and hawks used in this
manner. The bird may represent Love, who seizes the prey, the lover, or it may be the
lover, who is pursuing his beloved, or it may be the beloved, who is in the process of
being trained by the lover/falconer.
In addition, the training of the falcon is occasionally used as a symbol of the
spiritual training of the mind to reach for the Divine. This is seen in the Aviarium of
Hugh de Fouilloy and in Dante's Divine Comedy.
As the old aristocracy faces obsolescence in the midst of the rise of the merchant
class in the late Duecento and the Trecento, and the concept of nobility itself is
questioned, the association of birds of prey with nobility becomes problematic; it is either
a nostalgic ideal divorced from reality, or a symbol for the wastefulness and self-
centeredness of the nobility. As can be seen in the Decameron, merchants fly hawks for
sport as well as nobles, so the sport is no longer in itself a sign of courtly status. In
northern countries, however, social change is yet far away, and the feudal connotations of
hawks and falcons remain uncompromised.
' An excellent treatment of the subject of falconry in art and Medieval love is by Mira Friedman, "The
Falcon and the Hunt: Symbolic Love Imagery in Medieval and Renaissance Art," in Poetics ofLove in the
Middle Ages (Fairfax: George Mason University Press, 1989), 157- 180.