Diffusion in later culture
In time, the motif and concept of the phoenix extended from its origins in ancient Greek folklore. For example, the classical motif of the phoenix continues into the Gnostic manuscript On the Origin of the World from the Nag Hammadi Library collection in Egypt, generally dated to the 4th century:
[...] a soul-endowed living creature called "phoenix". It kills itself and brings itself back to life as a witness to the judgement against them, for they did wrong to Adam and his race, unto the consummation of the age. There are [...] three phoenixes in paradise—the first is immortal, the second lives 1,000 years; as for the third, it is written in the sacred book that it is consumed. [...] And the phoenix first appears in a living state, and dies, and rises again, being a sign of what has become apparent at the consummation of the age.
The anonymous 10th-century Old English Exeter Book contains a 677-line 9th-century alliterative poem consisting of a paraphrase and abbreviation of Lactantius, followed by an explication of the Phoenix as an allegory for the resurrection of Christ.
In the 14th century, Italian poet Dante Alighieri refers to the phoenix in Canto XXIV of the Divine Comedy's Inferno:
The phoenix was one of many emblems associated with Queen Elizabeth I. The queen "never married or had children, and linking her to a phoenix made a virtue of the situation; she, like the mythic Arabian bird, was above gender distinctions, but possessed the best qualities of both sexes."
In the 17th-century play Henry VIII by English playwrights William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer says in Act V, Scene v:
The clear implication is that Elizabeth had, as the phoenix, the capacity to produce an heir by herself in spite of her virginity.
In the 19th-century novel Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh uses the phoenix as a metaphor for the cyclical pattern of history, remarking upon the "burning of a World-Phoenix" and the "Palingenesia, or Newbirth of Society" from its ashes:
When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks flying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a Napoleon, have already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like moths consumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious beards will get singed.
For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix-cremation will be completed, you need not ask. The law of Perseverance is among the deepest in man: by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his old house till it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus have I seen Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred Symbols as idle Pageants, to the extent of three hundred years and more after all life and sacredness had evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what time the Phoenix Death-Birth itself will require, depends on unseen contingencies.—Meanwhile, would Destiny offer Mankind, that after, say two centuries of convulsion and conflagration, more or less vivid, the fire-creation should be accomplished, and we to find ourselves again in a Living Society, and no longer fighting but working,—were it not perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain?
Phoenixes are present and relatively common in European heraldry, which developed during the High Middle Ages. They most often appear as crests, and more rarely as charges. The heraldic phoenix is depicted as the head, chest and wings of an eagle rising from a fire; the entire creature is never depicted.
