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Do a quick whizz round some internet sites. A very brief initial search brings up stuff like this and this. One of those 'meanings behind the symbols' sites says: Poetic harmony and learning, or lover thereof; light, love, grace, sincerity, perfection, but this sounds a bit iffy to me.
There certainly are symbolic meanings attached to animals, in heraldry as in other forms of art. However, caution is advisable, because of the large variety of origins of coats of arms - often you find that arms are canting (i.e. punning) and that the symbolic meaning is probably subordinated to the rebus (e.g. the pike, or luce, for the Lucy family).
To get an insight into the kinds of meanings attached to animals, birds, etc. in medieval times your best bet will be a bestiary. There is a good translation of one by TH White (avail. in Dover pbk), and a lovely online translation with imgaes of the original MS here. This site seems to be a sort of concordance. The academic jury is out on how allegoric some of these texts actually are (White makes the case that they were genuine works of natural history, based on the information available at the time, but I know many others regard the bestiaries as primarily didactic works). |
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