unicorns and religious references in HP (was checking out the library book / Love -- massively OT, mostly)

[pippin_999]

@yahoogroups.com, "Penny & Bryce" <pennylin at s...>
wrote:
> Hi --
> 
> I decided to change the subject line at long last!  :--)  
> 
> David asked about whether unicorns are a Christian symbol of some
sort.  Indeed, the  unicorn has long been a symbol of Christ (allegory
 -- the hunted unicorn with its head on the lap of a virgin as
depicted  in medieval tapestries is said to represent the Virgin Mary 
with the Christ child).  My daughter has a recent fascination with
unicorns and we've been  reading the tale "The Unicorn and the Lake," 
which also has some pretty clear Biblical 
overtones in the battle between the serpent and the unicorn.  
>

Pippin:
The first reference to a one-horned animal  is in the writing of
Ctesias, a Greek physician who lived around 400 BC. The animal he 
describes resembles a wild ass, is fleet and fierce, and has the
power to neutralize poisons.
 
The translators of the Septuagint used the term monoceros (Greek: 
one horn) to translate the Hebrew re'em. This was then latinized 
as unicornis in the Vulgate. 

Tertullian, a pagan philosopher who became a Christian about 193, 
quotes a passage from Deuteronomy "his horns are like the horns of 
unicorns" and explains that "Christ is meant by this [animal], and 
the horn denotes Christ's cross." Saint Ambrose (340-397) wrote, 
in his commentary on the  Psalms, "Who then is this unicorn but the 
only begotten Son of God?"

Saint Basil (c. 330-379) interpreted the symbolism at length,
explaining how the horn was a symbol of power throughout the
scripture and "Christ is the power of God, therefore he is called the 
unicorn on the ground that He has one horn, that is, one common 
power with the Father."

The unicorn became a popular symbol of Christ through the 
Physiologus, originally a Greek work which developed into the 
collections known by  later centuries as bestiaries. It is to these 
collections that we trace the legend that the unicorn can only 
be caught by a virgin,  through which the unicorn became  a 
symbol of innocence.

 Later on,  the unicorn became vested with erotic and secular
symbolism, without, strangely, losing its Christian connotations,
which survive even into the present. 



O unicorn among the cedars,
to whom no magic charm can lead us,
White childhood moving like a sigh
Through the green woods unharmed in thy
Sophisticated innocence,
to call thy true love to the dance...

from New Year Letter, W.H. Auden


Pippin
sources, The Unicorn Tapestries, Freeman, Margaret B., 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1976

The Unicorn, Hathway, Nancy, Penguin Books, 1982