Vultures and buzzards

Europe doesn't have all the kinds of vultures and condors found in the New World, no turkey vultures or black vultures, no California condors or Andean condors.  But medieval people certainly had birds, as I have discussed previously, and that included vultures and buzzards (buzzards and vultures are actually different  kinds of birds, but the names are often used interchangeably).

The European buzzard (pictured above), although now rare, may still be seen in the Pyrenees.  It, like the turkey vulture of the Americas, soars high on air currents looking for dead things to eat.  This is of course a useful function.  Dead animals lying around help nobody.  Different birds and animals have developed a readiness to eat dead things at different stages of decay.

For example, when scientists were trying to live-trap California condors for captive breeding, they would put out a dead goat, then hide in the bushes for four days.  First the ravens would come, then the turkey vultures, then the golden eagles, and finally the condors.  Time to spring the trap!

European buzzards are especially fond of the marrow inside bones.  This is hard to get out when you've only got claws and a beak to work with.  They will thus carry bones high in the air and drop them on a rocky surface, so that they split open, allowing access to the tasty marrow.

The vultures of the Mediterranean, also carrion eaters, were considered a suitable subject for theological speculation, as of course were all aspects of the physical world.  It was widely believed (falsely) that female vultures were able to produce eggs and raise chicks without the intervention of male vultures.  For some early Church Fathers, therefore, the Virgin Birth of Christ was preceded by the virgin birth of vultures, "proving" that such an event was entirely possible and need not be dismissed as imaginary.

Even more so, "Christ as vulture" was, for these theologians, an indication that God had planned out the natural world to give humans a foretaste and understanding of important religious issues.  Just as vultures took care of the dead, Christ came to raise the dead.  It all made sense.  God was thinking of us ahead of time, providing a handy metaphor in the animal kingdom to help us understand the heavenly Kingdom.

Noah Neiber of the University of Iowa is studying vultures as theological beings.

Okay, some early medieval theology is weird.  (Noah knows this.)

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

For more on animals in medieval thought, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.