"stood
Still, fix'd toward the gryphon, motionless.
As the sun strikes a mirror, even thus
Within those orbs the twyfold being shone;
For ever varying, in one figure now
Reflected, now in other. Reader! muse
How wondrous in my sight it seem'd, to mark
A thing, albeit steadfast in itself,
Yet in its imaged semblance mutable."
Cary's Dante, _Purgatory_, c. xxix.
"Some commentators of Dante," says M. Dideron,[16] "have supposed the
griffin to be the emblem of Christ, who, in fact, is one single person
with two natures; of Christ in whom God and man are combined. But in
this," says M. Dideron, "they are mistaken. There is, in the first place,
a manifest impropriety in describing the car as drawn by God as a beast of
burden." "Commentators," it is added, "have been misled by the two-fold
nature of the gryphon, but that difficulty is removed by recollecting that
the Pope resembles the eagle in his spiritual character, and in his
temporal authority the lion. The Pope is one person, but of two natures
and two distinct forms. Thus considered the allegory of Dante becomes
clear and intelligible."
The gryphon is very frequently seen sculptured in Gothic churches, more
especially in those of the Lombard and early Norman style, and is
evidently intended to refer to the union of the divine and human natures.
A curious example of this compound form of bird and beast occurs on an
Italian bronze medal of the fifteenth century, about 3-1/2 in. in diameter
(No. 57.51 in the fine collection in South Kensington Museum). On one side
it bears a portrait of Niccolo Picininus of Perugia, a celebrated
mercenary soldier--and on the reverse a griffin, the eagle's head, wings,
and feet united to the Roman she-wolf, with Romulus and Remus suckling.
Dante's emblem of the Popedom is here apparently adapted to the peculiarly
Roman national symbol--the nursing mother of nations and the Catholic
religion.
[Illustration: Carved panel, a Griffin segreant.]