The Physiologus

The Physiologus begins with the lion, king of beasts. Jacob blessed Judah as a lion's cub. The Physiologus says the lion has three natures: when he walks the mountain and smells hunters he covers his tracks with his tail; when he sleeps in the cave his eyes stay open; when the lioness bears, the cub is born dead until the father breathes in its face on the third day and raises it. Each nature is mapped to Christ: hidden divinity, the body asleep on the cross while the Godhead watches, the Father raising the firstborn on the third day.

Then come the solar lizard that recovers sight at an east-facing crack, the charadrius that takes a sick man's disease and burns it in the sun, the pelican that kills its young and raises them with its own blood, the eagle that renews itself in a spring, the phoenix of India that burns on the altar at Heliopolis and is found a worm, a chick, and a full bird on the third day.

The work is a Christian bestiary, not the work of a naturalist author named "the Physiologus."