Salamanders in folklore

The salamander is an amphibian of the order Urodela which once, like many real creatures, often was suppositiously ascribed fantastic and sometimes occult qualities by pre-modern authors, as in the allegorical descriptions of animals in medieval bestiaries. The legendary salamander is often depicted as a typical salamander in shape, with a lizard-like form, but is usually ascribed an affinity with fire, sometimes specifically elemental fire.

European lore

Ancient and medieval commentators ascribed many fantastical abilities to the natural salamander. Many of these qualities are rooted in verifiable traits of the natural creature but often exaggerated. A large body of legend, mythology, and symbolism has developed around this creature over the centuries. Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae of 1758 established the scientific description of the salamander and noted the chief characteristics described by the ancients: the reported ability to live in fire, and the oily exudates.
The salamander were discussed allegorically in the writings of Christian fathers as well as in the Physiologus and bestiaries.

Classical

Aristotle, Pliny, Nicander, Aelian
The standard lore of the salamander as a creature enduring fire and extinguishing it was known by the Ancient Greeks, as far back as the 4th century BC, by Aristotle and his successor Theophrastus who gave such description of the σαλαμάνδρα. The salamander's mastery over fire is described by Aristotle in his History of Animals, while his Generation of Animals offers the explanation that since there are creatures belonging to the elements of earth, air and water, salamander must be such a creature that belongs to the element of fire. Theophrastus refers to the salamander as a lizard whose emergence is a sign of rain.
The Ancient Greek physician Nicander, in his Therica, provides another early source of the lore of fire-resistance. In his Alexipharmaca, he describes the product of the salamander, referred to as the "sorcerer's lizard" in the form of poisonous potion. The aftereffects of ingestion included symptoms of "inflammation of the tongue, chills, trembling of the joints, livid welts, and lack of mental lucidity". A person who consumed this beverage was thus enfeebled and reduced to crawling on all fours, as illustrated in the Paris manuscript of the work. It is puzzling why people would so frequently ingest the debilitating salamander potion such as to merit a warning. One conjecture is that a person could have been secretly administered a dose of poison or charm by another. Another possibility is the accidental introduction of it into food or drink. Pliny the Elder warns of its effects of hair loss, though other sources hint at its controlled use for the "removal of unwanted hairs".
Pliny described the salamander "an animal like a lizard in shape and with a body specked all over; it never comes out except during heavy showers and goes away the moment the weather becomes clear." Pliny's description of physical markings suggest possible identification with the fire salamander, perhaps one of its subspecies. Pliny even made the important distinction between salamanders and lizards, which are similar in shape but different in other respects, which was not systematized until modern times, when biologists classified lizards as reptiles and salamanders as amphibians.
Pliny offers the frigidity of their bodies as an alternate explanation to why the salamander can extinguish fire, considered implausible. Note that Pliny offers this explanation in one part of his work, while elsewhere he disbelieves the premise that the salamander has such fire-quenching capability, pointing out that if such an idea were true, it should be easy to demonstrate. Pliny also reports that his contemporary Sextius Niger denied the idea that salamanders could extinguish fire, though Sextius also believed honey-preserved salamander acted as an aphrodisiac when combined with food after it was properly de-headed, gutted, etc.
Pliny also notes medicinal and poisonous properties, which are founded in fact on some level, since many species of salamander, including fire salamanders and alpine salamanders, excrete toxic, physiologically active substances. These substances are often excreted when the animal is threatened, which has the effect of deterring predators. The extent of these properties is greatly exaggerated though, with a single salamander being regarded as so toxic that by twining around a tree it could poison the fruit and so kill any who ate them and by falling into a well could slay all who drank from it, and also infect bread baking on the kiln by touching the wood or stone underneath it.
Roughly contemporary with Pliny is a bas-relief of a salamander straddling the cross-beam of a balance scale in an anvil-and-forge scene found in the ruins of the Roman town of Pompeii. Liliane Bodson identifies the animal as Salamandra salamandra, the familiar fire salamander, and suspects that it might have been a sign for a blacksmith's shop.
Dioscorides in De materia medica also repeats the lore of the salamander extinguishing fire but refutes it. Miniature paintings of salamander engulfed in flame occurs in illuminated manuscript copies, such as the Vienna Dioscurides ms. and Morgan Library ms.. The salamander purportedly had septic abilities, allegedly useful in the treatment of leprosy.
A few centuries later, Greek-speaking Roman author Aelian describes salamanders as being drawn to the fires of forges and quenching them, to the annoyance of the blacksmiths. Aelian is also careful to note that the salamander is not born of fire itself, unlike the pyrausta.

Jewish and Early Christian

Talmud, Augustine, Physiologus
The legendary salamandra mentioned in the Talmud was a creature engendered in fire, and according to the Hagigah 27a, anyone smeared with its blood allegedly became immune to fire. A fire salamander appears where a fire is sustained at a spot for seven days and seven nights according to the Midrash, but the fire needs be maintained 7 years according to Rashi, the primary commentator on the Talmud, describes the salamander as one which is produced by burning a fire in the same place for seven consecutive years.
The Byzantine St. Gregory of Nazianzus referred to a creature that could dance in fire, which destroys other creatures, referring to the salamander, as indicated by his commentator Pseudo-Nonnus, who said it was the size of a lizard or a small crocodile, though land-dwelling.
Saint Augustine in the City of God based the discussion of the miraculous aspects of monsters largely on Pliny's Natural History. Augustine used the example of the salamander to argue for the plausibility of Purgatory as a stage of purification of the dead, where human souls live but are not consumed by fire.
The Physiologus thought to have been originally written in Greek by an author in Alexandria was a treatise on animals in the Christian context, and the antecedent of the later medieval bestiaries. It is possible the inclusion of "salamander" reflects the author's familiarity with the author's native fauna. In the Physiologus the salamander was allegoric for the three men cast into Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace and survived.
An early surviving illustrated example is the Bern Physiologus of the 9th century, with the illustration described as "a satyr-like creature in a circular wooden tub".

Early medieval Hermeticism

The 5th century Hieroglyphica attributed to Horapollo also mentions the salamander entering the furnace and putting out its flames; it is pointed out this work draws from Greek classical authors as well as the Physiologus.
The entry occurs in Hieroglyphica, Book 2, Ch. LXII. This "alleged hieroglyph" is probably dubious. An editor of the text finds it "strange" that a "A Man Burned by Fire" is represented by the symbol of the salamander, which is incapable of being burnt. As for the fragment saying it "destroys" with "each of its two heads", this is thought to be a contamination with the lore of the two-headed amphisbaena.

High Middle Ages

After the end of the Classical era, depictions of the salamander became more fantastic and stylized, often retaining little resemblance to the animal described by ancient authors.
The medieval European bestiaries contain fanciful pictorial depictions of salamanders. The oldest such illustration of the salamander, according to Florence McCulloch's treatise on bestiaries, occurs in the Bern 318 manuscript, but this actually the so-called Bern Physiologus of the 9th century, discussed above. Other iconographic examples come from bestiaries of the post-millennium, e.g., "a worm penetrating flames", "a winged dog", and "a small bird in flames".
The so-called second family group of bestiaries describe the salamander as not only impervious to fire, but the most poisonous of all poisonous creatures. And its presence in a tree infects all its apples, and renders the water of the well poisonous to all who drink it. It dwells and survives in fire, and can extinguish fire as well.
The bestiary of MS Bodley 764 has different incipit which reads "There is an animal called the dea, in Greek 'salamander' or 'stellio' in. Latin", yet it still is followed by a separate chapter on the stellio newt.
German polymath Albertus Magnus described the incombustible asbestos cloth as "salamander's plumage" in his work.

Love/anti-love symbolism

There seems to be a confused use of the salamander, as the symbol of passionate love and its opposite, its dispassionate restraint. The salamander in Christian art represents "faith over passion", according to one critic, or a symbol of chastity in religious art, a view by Duchalais seconded by Émile Mâle. In the rose windows of Notre Dame de Paris, the figure of Chasity holds a shield depicting a salamander.
In medieval Arthurian literature, the salamander who dwells in the fire of Agrimont is invoked by the character Tschinotulander in professing his love for Sigune. Tschinotulander owns an oriental made shield, which "contains a living salamander" whose "proper" fiery heat enhances the powers of the surrounding gemstones" but, it is explained by Lady Aventiure, it is the heathens who take the salamander as a love symbol, when it fact, it represents the opposite, unminne or "un-love".
In the poem by Petrarch, the salamander is used to represent "infinite, burning desire".