Christ the Falcon’

Beginning from Thomas Hill’s comments in Notes & Queries (1975) on the verb iouken, in which Hill points out the special suitability of this term from hawking in the context of the Incarnation, this article calls attention to a sermon from London, British Library, MS Harley 2268 wherein the topos of the leaps of Christ — the first leap being the leap into the womb — is offered as flights of the falcon. Given that the sermon casts mankind in the role of prey to Christ as falcon, the article further notes reversals of the hawk/prey relationship in the angel choir at Lincoln Cathedral, a sermon in Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.vi.16, and the falconer poem from British Library, MS Additional 37049. It concludes with a close reading of PPl C.18.123–36 in light of the Incarnational and Eucharistic associations of such falcon imagery, with particular attention to the passage’s focus on plenitudo temporis. (CMC)