SYMEDLISM DF THE HOVE. The dove has taken a large place in legend, folk-lore, and poetic and religious symbolism. Proper names derived from the dove have always been used in the Orient as descriptive of loveliness, and were espe cially applied to beautiful women. The name Semiramis is said to mean 'mountain dove,' and the bird became the ensign of her army. 'Air. Charles De Kay relates in his Bird Gods (New York. IS981 how extensively the dove was woven into the pagan worship of ancient Europe, and its place in early Christian art and religious symbolism is prominent. The people of north ern Europe used to say that the ring-dove or cushat perched near the cross when Jesus was expiring, and wailed its sorrow to alleviate His agony. To the Jews, from an immemorial time, it had been a type of innocence, and elsewhere it had been associated since the Olympian age with the higher idea of Venus as a symbol of natural' human affection—the love that goes with, or proceeds from, purity and simplicity of heart. It had a part in marriage scenes, and was naturally introduced by early painters into pictures of the Madonna and Child and of female saints. These qualities. combined with their mournful notes. made dove- equally appropriate to moods of sor row, and they were a part of furniture of most pagan funerals. This passed on into Chris tian usage, and their likenesses. generally with an olive branch, were carved on thousands of tombs in the catacombs beneath Home and else where. emblematic of eternal peace. Various meanings seem to have been attached to these mortuary carvings. hut the prevalent idea was that of portraying the departure of the soul from the body: and. later, artists often represented a white (love issuing front the lips of dying martyrs, as occurs in old pictures of Santa Soho lastica, the sister of Saint Benedict. and of Santa Eulalia, the Spanish girl martyr who expired under tortures inflicted by the Emperor Diocle tian. Hereby the human soul is represented as purified by suffering.
A ‘ery natural specialization of this idea was to make an approaching dove symbolize di vine soul or holy Spirit, first in tile general sense of heatenly messenger ( i.e. inspirer), and next as the third person of the Trinity. In the former sense it is almost invariably placed in old pic tures near certain saints who are supposed to have been particularly inspired. as Sahli Thomas Aquinas. Saint Hilary, and others. Few, if any, early paintings of Pope (Saint) t;regory the Great exist in which a dove is not resting upon his shoulder or hovering at his ear. whispering
messages from on high. In this sense, but espe t hilly in that of signifying, the Holy (Most, the dove appears in most of the early representations rounded with a golden nimbus, which is frequent ly cruciform. Seven rays proceed from it. ter minating in seven stars, signifying, the 'seven gifts of the Iloly Spirit.' In her Symbols anti Emblems of Christian Art, Louisa Twining gives varied examples of its treatment. Sometimes seven doves are attributes of the Virgin, occa sionally within a resica piseis. An English manu script poem of the fourteenth century is illus trated by a series of scrolls inscribed: "Ye gyfte of Wisdome; Ye of pile: Ye gyfte of of scenes in Christ's life—most frequently, per haps, in pictures of Ills baptism. literally ren dering Saint John's words (i. 3.2) : "I saw the Spirit lletirelldilig from heaven like a dove." The earliest instance of it in Christian art known to Mrs. Jameson is a bas•reliel from a tomb dated A.D. 359. "The next instance." she cites, "is from a mosaic in the Church of Santa Maria 'laggiore, Mime, lifth century, and is the earliest representation of the Annunciation," In the early pictures the dove's head is sur Strengthe; Ye gyfte of eounsaill; Ye gyfte of l'nderstandinge; Ye gyfte of vonnyuge; Ye gyfte If Ilivede [a misprint for flreelle, meaning dread, fear)." Around the page are the lines below, in Old English text: " In this desert will and waste, Seven fowls are flying with night.
That are ,,even gifts of the Holy Ghost, That nowhere hut in clean hearts will light And dwell there it they find them chaste, And give them ghimtly strength and might .`7o big and hold that they then haste To pray to Gm] both day and night." A dove with six wings is a type of the Church of Christ. Sometimes the pyx is in the form of the dove. suspended above the altar, the covers of fonts often bear the same image. and it is •om mon as a symbolic decoration of baptisteries. 'Twelve doves represented the Twelve Apostles, and the bird is the emblem of any believer what ever.
The dove belongs to various legends more or less remote from the present line of thought. Thus, the emblem of Saint Remigius is a dove with an oil-cruse in its beak, "recalling that at the anointing of Clovis a cruse of oil was brought from heaven by a dove at the prayer of this saint." In other cases it represents a visual benediction descending upon a cross or upon the sacred monogram. Thus the significance of the bird came to be so broad as to mean simply Christian.