Hopefully, not all of this has been covered in this great post and there is something new.
D. Ian Dalrymple:
Good Christians, let us praise the noble Phoenix, and mourn his tragic loss.
Pythagoras named him first, then Herodotus, that father of history (or father of lies, as he’s sometimes called, keeping poor company). Pliny mentions him, as does Ovid, and he earns a place in the second-century Physiologus. In Jewish folklore he is the only creature not to follow our first parents into exile. In traditional Russian tales (and Stravinsky's ballet) he is the Firebird. In China he is Fengshuan, guarding the entrance to the Forbidden City. He appears also in Shakespeare (a brief note in The Tempest and a title role in that sorry poem, The Phoenix and the Turtle). And I need hardly mention his appearance in more contemporary company (e.g. with a certain young H. Potter).
But though his roles have varied, the Phoenix for over a millennium labored most notably for us Christians in the position of Natural Tutor, a ready tool for preachers and theologians seeking in nature an illustration of the doctrine of the resurrection. It was St Clement of Rome who was the first to employ him. In the latter years of the first century, he wrote a famous letter to the church in Corinth, in which he stated (Chapter XXV):
Let us consider that wonderful sign [of the resurrection] which takes place in Eastern lands, that is, in Arabia and the countries round about. There is a certain bird which is called a phoenix. This is the only one of its kind, and lives five hundred years. And when the time of its dissolution draws near that it must die, it builds itself a nest of frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices, into which, when the time is fulfilled, it enters and dies. But as the flesh decays a certain kind of worm is produced, which, being nourished by the juices of the dead bird, brings forth feathers. Then, when it has acquired strength, it takes up that nest in which are the bones of its parent, and bearing these it passes from the land of Arabia into Egypt, to the city called Heliopolis. And, in open day, flying in the sight of all men, it places them on the altar of the sun, and having done this, hastens back to its former abode. The priests then inspect the registers of the dates, and find that it has returned exactly as the five hundredth year was completed.
A century after Clement, Tertullian also took up the Phoenix for the same purpose (De Resurr. 13), and as others followed suit the bird was definitively co-opted into Christian service. By the time of the mediaeval bestiaries, a thousand years later, the Phoenix had settled quite comfortably into his new role. In T.H. White’s wonderful translation of a 12th century Latin bestiary (published as The Book of Beasts), we read that the Phoenix
builds itself a funeral pyre after collecting some spice branches, and on this, turning its body toward the rays of the sun and flapping its wings, it sets fire to itself of its own accord until it burns itself up. Then, verily, on the ninth day afterward, it rises from its own ashes!
The bestiary's anonymous compiler proceeds to draw the by-then familiar parallel:
Now our Lord Jesus Christ exhibits the character of this bird, who says: I have the power to lay down my life, and the power to take it up again. If the phoenix has the power to die and rise again, why, silly man, are you so scandalized at the Word of God – who is the true Son of God - when he says that he came down from heaven for men and for our salvation, and who filled his wings with the odors of sweetness from the Old and New Testaments, and who offered himself on the altar of the cross to suffer for us and on the third day rise again?
So comfortable is the compiler with the old Phoenix-illustration, the factuality of the creature, and the bird’s ancient description, that he unadvisedly indulges himself, as above, in such a way as to expose himself and the faith to easy ridicule once the existence of the Phoenix is cast in doubt. Despite this, however, the compiler makes the curious statement that it is the symbolism of this bird - not the bird itself, mind you, but the symbolism associated with it - that teaches us to believe in the resurrection. He then proceeds to mine in this direction somewhat awkwardly but with a measure of hortatory genius:
Who tells the simple Phoenix the day of its death – so that it makes its coffin and fills it with spices and gets inside and dies in a place where the stink of corruption can be effaced by agreeable smells?
How much the more should you, Man, both make your coffin of faith and –putting off the old man- put on the new coffin? Christ is your coffin: the sheath which protects you and hides you in the day of trouble. Should you wish to be assured that the coffin means protection, it is written, in which I have protected him. Verily, your faith is your coffin. Fill it then with the good spices of your virtues – which are chastity, compassion, and justice - and thus enter safe into the sweet innermost chambers, with the odor of noble deeds.
May your departure from this life find you clothed in that same faith, so that your bones may wax fat and be like a well-watered garden, whose seeds are quickly raised.
Know, therefore, the day of your death, just as St Paul knew it when he said: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith, the crown of justice is restored to me. He, like the good Phoenix, entered thereafter into his coffin which he fills with the pleasant smell of a martyr.
This passage offers, I think, a marvellous sample of the Phoenix at the height of his powers. In this fashion the noble bird served the Church in his role of Natural Tutor, as I have said, for over a thousand years. But finally as the Renaissance bled into the Age of Reason and all our sure presumptions were summoned to a Trial by Microscope, the Phoenix lost his job. Few remember the service he rendered us; fewer still hallow his memory. But like a mythical precursor to his cousin the Dodo, the Phoenix met an untimely extinction by the unsentimental hand of Man, about five hundred years ago. Faith kept the vision, you might say, but Science cooked the bird.
I, for one, prefer to imagine that the noble Phoenix simply grew weary of his tutorial position, or his poor compensation, or his faithless students, and so retired to smoulder in some dim Arabian cave until such time as men should learn again to value a proper symbol of the resurrection. Perhaps our children’s children – in a future foreign to our history - will live to see the Phoenix rise again, triumphant over the ashes of his own implausibility.
[Originally posted at the now-defunct web log The Scrivener by D. Ian Dalrymple]
