I3 4 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



figure rests on his right shoulder in the magnificent statue 

 of this pope in Rome." 



This is in allusion, according to The Catholic Encyclo- 

 pedia, "to the well-known story recorded by Peter the 

 Deacon {Vita, xxviii), who tells us that when the pope 

 was dictating his homilies in Ezechiel a veil was drawn 

 between his secretary and himself. As, however, the 

 pope remained silent for long periods of time, the servant 

 made a hole in the curtain and, looking through, beheld 

 a dove seated on Gregory's head with its beak between 

 his lips. When the dove withdrew its beak the holy 

 pontiff spoke and the secretary took down his words ; but 

 when he became silent the servant again applied his eyes 

 to the hole and saw that the dove had again placed its 

 beak between his lips." Much the same incident belongs 

 to the biography of another early pope; and apropos to 

 the significance of this bird in the Romanist method of 

 demonstrating that faith to the populace, Mackenzie E. 

 Walcott contributed the following bit of history to Notes 

 and Queries in 1873: 



The dove was regarded as the symbol of the holy spirit 

 which came in the eventide of days, bringing safety and peace 

 to the ark of Christ and a world rescued from wreck, and to 

 whom Christians should be conformed in innocency. A dove 

 was suspended over the altar, as Amphilochius says of S. Basil 

 that he broke the Holy Bread and placed one third part in the 

 pendant golden dove over the altar. The Council of Constanti- 

 nople charged a heretic with robbing the gold and silver doves 

 that hung above the fonts and altars. The dove was also the 

 symbol of our Blessed Lord, as we learn from Prudentius and 

 an expression of Tertullian, "the Dove's house," applied to a 

 church, probably in allusion to Coloss. i, 20. 



The dove for reservation [that is, withholding a part of the 

 eucharist] whether for communion of infants in the baptistery, 

 or of sick under a ciborium, was suspended by a chain. One is 

 preserved in the church of S. Nazarius at Milan, and a solitary 



