Cardinal Trent: "Ut vivat" ("That it may live").
Linacre: "Vivat post funera virtus" ("Virtue survives death").
"De mi muerte ma vida" ("From my death my life").
"De mort à vie" ("From death to life").
"Et morte vitam protulit" ("And by death has prolonged his life").
"Ex morte, immortalitas" ("Out of death, immortality").
"Murio y nacio" ("I die and am born").
"Ne pereat" ("That it should not perish").
"O mors, ero mors tua" ("O death, I shall be thy death").
"Se necat ut vivat" ("Slays himself that he may live").
"Trouva sol nei tormenti il suo gioire" ("It finds alone its joy in
its suffering").
"Vivre pour mourir, mourir pour vivre" ("Live to die, die to live").
"Uror, morior, orior" ("I am burnt, I die, I arise").
The phœnix in heraldry is never represented in other than in one position,
_rising from flames_, that is, with expanded wings and enveloped in flames
of fire in which it is being consumed. It is usually represented exactly
as an eagle in shape, but may be of any of the heraldic tinctures.
The phœnix is of frequent use in heraldry, and borne by many families in
the United Kingdom. A phœnix issuing from a ducal coronet is the crest of
the Duke of Somerset.
Linacre, founder of the College of Physicians, and honorary physician to
four sovereigns has on his tomb in Westminster Abbey the device of the
phœnix, with the motto, "Vivat post funera virtus" ("Virtue survives
death").
From the association of this fabulous bird with alchemy, Paracelsus wrote
concerning it, and several alchemists employed it to symbolise their
vocation. It was adopted by the Apothecaries' Company as crest, and is a
frequent sign over chemists' shops.
_A phœnix in flames proper, gorged with a mural coronet_, is the
allusive crest of the Fenwicks; the motto over the crest is the _cri de
guerre_, "A Fenwick! a Fenwick!" They were a family noted in border
warfare. "The house of Percy," says Mrs. Bury Palliser, "ever ranked the
Fenwicks among the most valiant of its retainers, and in border warfare
the banner of the gorged phœnix in the burning flame always appeared
with that of the silver crescent of the Percys."
The bird of paradise is interesting as having for a time been accepted as
the veritable phœnix, a fact which has escaped Gibbon. That luxurious
Emperor, Heliogabalus, having eaten, as he thought, of every known
delicacy, bethought him one day of the fabled phœnix. What mattered it
that only one bird existed at a time; _that one_, the imperial gourmand
must have, and was inconsolable that he had not thought of it before. The
zeal of proconsuls was equal to the great occasion, and from all parts of
the earth came strange and wondrous birds, each affirmed with confidence
to be "the sacred solitary bird, that knows no second, knows no third."
The cankerworm of doubt remains! At last, one day there was brought to
Rome from the far islands of the Eastern seas a bird, the like of which
for the glory of its plumage had never been seen out of paradise, the
veritable phœnix, "Bird of the Sun!" The sight of the magnificent
creature carried conviction with it. Heliogabalus ate in faith, and went
to his fathers contented.
[Illustration: A Harpy, wings disclosed.]