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Per milvus et vultures fures significantur, et latrones et omnes rapaces19,
and again:
Milvus, rapaces: ‘Illuc congregati sunt milvi, alter ad alterum’. Diabolus:
‘Habebant altis, quasi alas milvi’20.
Isidore devotes a few lines to the milvus:
Milvus mollis etviribus etvolatu, quasi mollis avis, unde et nuncupatus; rapa-
cissimus tamen et semper domesticis avibus insidiator21.
Much longer is the description in Hugo de Folieto’s Aviarium22,
where the author, taking the Isidoran etymology as a starting point,
lists a long sequence of negative attributes:
... Est igitur milvus mollis viribus, illosque significat quos mollities voluptatis
tentat. Cadaveribus milvus vescitur, quia carnalibus desideriis voluptuosi de-
lectantur...Circa coquinas et macella milvus assidue volitat, ut si quid crudae
camis ab eis projiciatur foras, velociter rapiat. Per hoc autem milvus eos nobis
innuit, quos cura ventris sollicitos reddit...Milvus timidus est in magnis,
audax in minimis; silvestres volucres rapere non audet, domesticis autem
19 J. B. Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense Sanctorum Patrum, 4 vols., Paris 1852-58, II,
p. 474.
20 Ibid., pp. 497-98. The echo of these distinctiones is evident in Hrabanus Maurus’s
Allegoriae in Sacram Scripturam-, ‘Milvus est diabolus, ut in Zacharia: »Et habebant alas
quasi milvi,« quod reprobi ad instar diaboli in superbiam se extollunt. Milvi, rapaces, ut
in Levitico: »Milvum et vulturem non comeditis,« id est rapaces et invidos non debetis
imitari’ (PL 112, col. 999). For the equadon milvus I diabolus see also Gamerus, In
Scriptura sacra milvi nomine diabolus intelligitur (Gregorianum, PL 193, cols. 82-83) and
later allegorical works as Hieronymus Lauretus, Sylva allegoriarum Sacrae Scripturae,
Barcelona 1570 (repr. of the lOth edition, Koln 1681, Miinchen 1971), p. 440: ‘Milvus
avis rapacissima... Significare potest daemones et latrones et usurarios, et caeteros, qui
aliorum bona devorare nituntur... Milvi cadaveribus pascuntur...Designant invidos,
qui calamitatibus proximi gaudent, solicitate dolent’, and Aldrovandi, Ornithologiae, I,
pp. 405-6. On the psychic weakness of milvus see also Eudes de Cheriton, ‘De falcone et
milvo’, in L. Hervieux, Les Fabulistes Latins, Paris 1896, p. 225.
21 W. M. Lindsay (ed.), Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarvm sive originvm
libri XX, 2 vols., Oxford 1911, Book XII, vii, 58.
22 On the subject, cf. N. Håring, ‘Notes on the Liber Avium of Hughes de Fouilloy’,
Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale, 46, 1973, pp. 53-83; W. B. Clark, ‘The
illustrated medieval Aviary and the lay Brotherhood’, Gesta ,21,1982, pp. 63-74 and B.
Yapp, ‘A new Look at English Bestiaries’, Medium Ævum, 54, 1985, pp. 1-19, at 1.