Folio 31r - the hawk, continued. De turture; Of the turtle dove
you, O God, have conferred on all the elect the insight so that by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they may spread the wings of their thoughts in order to cast off the weight of their old way of life, and take on the plumage of virtue to fly anew. From this, evidently, Job is to infer that the man has no alertness of perception within himself, who can by no means transfer it from himself to others.
Of domestic and wild hawks
There are two kinds of hawk, domestic and wild. It is the same bird, however, but at different times it can be wild or domestic. The wild hawk is accustomed to prey on tame birds; the domestic hawk on wild. The wild hawk eats the prey it catches immediately; the domestic hawk keeps what it catches to leave for its master. Furthermore, its master opens the stomachs of the captured birds and takes their hearts to give them as food to his hawk. He throws away the intestines with the ordure, which produces putrefaction of the flesh with a stench if it remains inside.
In a moral sense, the wild hawk seizes and devours the birds it catches as an evil man ceaselessly frustrates the actions and thoughts of ordinary people. The domestic hawk, in contrast, is like a spiritual father. As the hawk seizes wild birds, so the spiritual father leads worldly men to conversion by his preaching. As the hawk kills what it captures, so the spiritual father forces worldly men die to the world, through mortification of the flesh.
The master of the domestic hawk, that is, the Lord Almighty, opens the stomachs of its prey when he cleanses weakness of the flesh by rebuking it through the Scriptures. He takes out the hearts when he exposes the thoughts of worldly men through confession. He throws out the intestines and ordure of the stomach when he makes the memory of sin offensive to us. As birds taken by the hawk come in this way to its master's table, so sinners, ground by the teeth of teachers, turn into the body of the Church.
How the hawk should moult
To allow domestic hawks to moult more easily, you need a mew that is secure and warm. Secure mews are like cloisters. When a wild hawk is placed there, in order to be tamed, it must be locked up. There it lets fall its old feathers and