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---------- | THE PELICAN ~ EUCHARISTIC SYMBOLThe long beak of the pelican is furnished with a sack which serves as a container for small fish that it feeds its young. In the process of feeding them, the bird presses the sack against its neck in such a way that it seems to open its breast with its bill. The reddish tinge of its breast plumage and the redness of the tip of its beak fostered the folkloristic notion that it actually drew blood from its own breast.So it became the apt symbol of Christ the Redeemer; familiar to St Augustine, the pelican has had a wide usage in Christian literature. As important and typical examples of medieval use, see the hymn Adoro te devote, and in Dante’s Paradiso. In Christian art it is used from the late Middle Ages, but especially in the Renaissance and in the baroque period. From the late Middle Ages the pelican is employed as a symbol of the Eucharist. In art, particularly baroque art, the pelican is found frequently as an ornament on altars, pyxes, chalices, tabernacle doors, antependia and humeral veil.
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