L’uccello che non sa volare. Simbologie cristiane dello struzzo.

Proverbial for his stupidity, for its morphological characteristics, the ostrich was considered a sort of hybrid, halfway between a bird and a quadruped beast, with the defects of the one and the other, as shown by its greek name, στρουθοκάμηλος, namely sparrow‐camel. They give a negative rating of him even the few references of the Old Testament (Jb 30, 29; 39, 13‐17; Is. 34, 13; Lam. 4, 3), probably influenced by the natural habitat of the bird, the desert and isolated areas associated with demons of idolatry. Therefore Christian exegetes consider him a symbol of the heretics, the hypocrites, the proud and boastful men. It differs only the author of a commentary on Job, once attributed to Girolamo, of which we only know that his name was Philip, who interprets positively the ostrich ‘distracted’ of Job, making it the symbol of the Mother Church. The voice of Philip remains isolated throughout the patristic age. But later, in the Middle Ages, it is possible to trace two separate lines of exegesis in reference to the ostrich, in malam partem (especially in the Encyclopedists) et in bonam partem (for example in the Book of the Animal Nature).