And in the St Eustace window of the early years of the 13th c. in the Cathédrale Notre Dame, Chartres:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/albums/72157623179632854
Gordon Plumb
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From: John Dillon <
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Sent: Tue, Sep 20, 2016 9:28 am
Subject: [M-R] FEAST: A Saint for the Day (September 20): St. Eustace of Rome
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Unknown to early martyrologies and with no known really ancient cult, Eustace of Rome (Eustachius, Eustathius, etc.; d. ca. 118, supposedly) is the subject of an extraordinarily popular romance-like Passio whose original version was thought by Delehaye to be best represented by BHG 641 (the latter or a text like it was quoted from by St. John Damascene in ca. 730) and that exists in many languages other than Greek. One of those other languages is Latin: a translation into this tongue (BHL 2760), widely available from the early ninth century onward and an ancestor of numerous treatments in several "western" languages, has been assigned conjecturally to the pontificate of St. Gregory II (715-731), from whose final years Rome's early medieval _diaconia_ dedicated to Eustace is first attested.
According to this tale, in the reign of Trajan the Roman general Placidas (or Placidus), one of nature's noblemen, was out hunting one day when he saw a stag of surpassing beauty bearing between its horns a luminous cross with the figure of Jesus Christ. This marvelous beast announced its identity to Placidas as Jesus Christ, asked why it/He was being pursued, and invited Placidas and his family to accept baptism. Which they did, Placidas taking the name Eustachius (or Eustathius), his wife Theopista, and his sons Theopistus and Agapius (all significant names but Eustachius does NOT signify "Good Stag'").
Still according to the legend, Eustace became a new Job, undergoing all sorts of privations, as did also his immediate family. One of these that was important for their construction in the later Middle Ages was that they lost all their slaves and their horses and cattle to a plague; as they themselves survived, they became plague-saints. At the end of all these adventures, during which Eustace had been separated at different times from Theopista, Theopistus, and Agapius, they were reunited to take part in celebrating a military victory that Eustace had won for Trajan. This of course required the offering of ritual sacrifice. When Eustachius refused to do this, he and his family were condemned to death. Exposure to wild beasts having proved ineffectual, all four perished rapidly when placed in a bronze bull made red-hot by a fire beneath it. Their miraculously unburnt bodies were buried by fellow Christians; when Constantine had ended the persecutions an oratory was built over their grave. Thus far the Passio.
The earliest known dedication to Eustace is that of the aforementioned Roman _diaconia_, a predecessor of today's Sant'Eustachio in Campo Marzio (a.k.a. Sant'Eustachio in Platana). Eustache, Theopiste, Theopistus, and Agapius were entered by Usuard under 2. November in the second edition of his late ninth-century martyrology; this quickly became their usual feast day in the Latin West. The feast, which had been moved to today (20. September) in accordance with the practice of the Greek church, was removed from the general Roman Calendar in the latter's revision promulgated in 1969. Theopista, Theopistus, and Agapius were dropped from the Roman Martyrology in its revision of 2001; Eustace was retained as the saint of the diaconia (as though the latter were somehow evidence of a truly ancient cult; the modern scholarly consensus is that, in contradistinction to its early titular churches, Rome's _diaconiae_ are unlikely to have antedated the seventh century). In Byzantine-Rite churches Theopista and the others are still celebrated on 20. September along with Eustace.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Eustace of Rome:
a) as depicted (Eustace and the Stag) in a later ninth-century psalter from Constantinople (Paris, BnF, ms. grec 20, fol. 5v):
http://tinyurl.com/2e537bkb) as portrayed in relief (at right; at left, St. George of Lydda) on a leaf of the mid-tenth-century ivory Harbaville Triptych in the Musée du Louvre in Paris:
http://tinyurl.com/3m3sj6c) as depicted (with his family; martyrdom) in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 53):
http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1613/075d) as depicted (four scenes, starting with Eustace and the Stag and ending with the martyrdom of Eustace and his family) in an eleventh-century copy of the September portion of the Metaphrastic Menologion (London, BL, MS Add 11870, fol. 151r):
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_11870_f151re) as portrayed in relief (Eustace and the Stag) on an earlier twelfth-century nave capital (ca. 1125) in the basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine at Vézelay:
1) left side:
http://tinyurl.com/jnsedmk2) right side:
http://tinyurl.com/hqh77yw f) as portrayed in a late twelfth-century silver gilt head reliquary (ca. 1180-1200 [alternatively, ca. 1210]; from the cathedral treasury in Basel) in the British Museum in London:
http://tinyurl.com/j4q6qrvhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/seriykotik/3898876085During its cleaning in 2010:
http://tinyurl.com/jsxbn3ng) as depicted (carrying one son into a river while other is taken by a lion) in one of four panels of a full-page illumination in the so-called Bible of Saint Bertin (ca. 1190-1200; Den Haag, KB, ms. 76 F 5, fol. 39r):
http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_76f5%3A039r_min_a2 The caption indicates that the scene was intended to represent the loss of both sons: _Eustas natorum viduatur gente suorum_.
h) as portrayed in relief (with his family; martyrdom) in a late twelfth- or earlier thirteenth-century sculpture, now rather worn, on the left pillar of the left portal of south porch of the west face of the basilique cathédrale Notre-Dame in Chartres:
http://tinyurl.com/d3ql3x3i) as depicted (scenes, starting with Eustace and the Stag and ending with the martyrdom of Eustace and his family) in the earlier thirteenth-century St. Eustace window (bay 21; ca. 1210-1220) in the cathédrale Saint-Étienne in Sens:
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Sens/21_Pages/Sens_Bay21_key.htm j) as depicted (Eustace and the Stag) in a later thirteenth-century psalter of English origin (ca. 1260-1280; Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, ms. lat. I, 77 [2397], fol. 6v):
http://tinyurl.com/otp67xe k) as depicted in the very late thirteenth- or very early fourteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1290-1305) attributed to Manuel Panselinos in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
http://www.myriobiblos.gr/museum/gallery/panselinos/54.jpgl) as twice depicted with his family in an earlier fourteenth-century French-language Life of St. Eustace (betw. 1301 and 1325; London, BL, MS Egerton 725, fols. 1r and 9r):
1) baptism (fol. 1r):
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=9852 2) martyrdom (fol. 9r):
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=9860 For other illuminated pages from this cycle, see:
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=9860 m) as depicted (lower register; with his family; martyrdom) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of the mave of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/36myah3 Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/327gy6r n) as depicted (at right in panel at lower left; with his family; martyrdom) in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 10r):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/10r.jpgo) as depicted (Eustace and the Stag) in an earlier fourteenth-century French-language legendary of Parisian origin with illuminations attributed to the Fauvel Master (ca. 1327; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 183, fol. 231v):
http://tinyurl.com/mc667a p) as thrice depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy of books 9-16 of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (ca. 1335; Paris, BnF, ms. Arsenal 5080):
1) Eustace and the Stag (fol. 124v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b7100627v/f254.item.zoom2) losing, while crossing a river, one son to a wolf and the other to a lion (fol. 125r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b7100627v/f255.item.zoom3) with his family; martyrdom (fol. 135r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b7100627v/f275.item.zoomq) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the nave of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/352glx9 Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/28kb7pf r) as depicted (with his family; martyrdom) in a September calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/2eqy6cy s) as depicted (register below the windows; scenes, starting with Eustace and the Stag and ending with the martyrdom of Eustace and his family) by Vitale da Bologna in the mid-fourteenth-century frescoes (1351) in the apse of the basilica di Santa Maria at the abbey of Pomposa in Codigoro (FE) in Emilia-Romagna:
http://tinyurl.com/nkmhh9t http://tinyurl.com/pldryuk t) as thrice depicted in a later fourteenth-century copy of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (ca. 1370-1380; Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 15941):
1) Eustace and the Stag; losing, while crossing a river, one son to a wolf and the other to a lion (fol. 18r; two illuminations):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449688c/f43.item.zoom2) with his family; martyrdom (fol. 25r, right-hand column):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449688c/f57.item.zoomu) as depicted (with his family) in panels from a now dismembered late fourteenth-century altarpiece of Eustace (ca. 1380; the latter was reported stolen in 1902 from his church in Campo di Giove (AQ) in Abruzzo; these panels were returned from the United States late in 2008 and are now in L'Aquila in the Museo nazionale d'Abruzzo):
Illustrated, English-language account:
http://tinyurl.com/5a8u92 Illustrated, Italian-language account:
http://tinyurl.com/po3htta v) as depicted (losing, while crossing a river, one son to a wolf and the other to a lion) in a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Rennes, Bibliothèque de Rennes Métropole, ms. 266, fol. 300r):
http://tinyurl.com/hn7ecp9w) as depicted (Eustace and the Stag) by Pisanello in an earlier fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1440) in the National Gallery in London:
http://tinyurl.com/4prm5u x) as depicted (martyrdom; Eustace fed into an unusually realized fiery bull as his family looks on) by the court workshop of Frederick III in a mid-fifteenth-century copy (1446-1447) of the _Legenda aurea_ (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. 326, fol. 229v):
http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7006889.JPGy) as depicted in grisaille (losing, while crossing a river, one son to a wolf and the other to a lion) by Jean le Tavernier in the Suffrages of the mid-fifteenth-century Hours of Philip of Burgundy (ca. 1451-1460; Den Haag, KB, ms. 76 F 2, fol. 263r):
http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_76f2%3A263r_min z) as depicted (Eustace and the Stag) by the Master of the Benedict Passion in a later fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1465) variously said to be either in the National Museum in Kraków or else in the Holy Cross chapel of that city's cathedral (can anyone on the list say for certain where this painting now resides?):
http://artyzm.com/obraz.php?id=2182 aa) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Vincent of Zaragoza; at center, St. James major) by Antonio and Piero del Pollaiolo in a later fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1466-1468) in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence:
http://tinyurl.com/hu4or78 http://www.shafe.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/pollaiuolo_three_saints_altarpiece_1466.jpg bb) as depicted by Giovanni Boccati in a detail of his later fifteenth-century polyptych (1468) in the chiesa di Sant'Eustachio in Belforte del Chienti (MC) in the Marche:
http://tinyurl.com/z3kzk7lThe altarpiece as a whole (with four scenes of Eustace's life on the predella [to be read from right to left]):
http://tinyurl.com/ohp7noh Clicking on the predella panels in this image will bring up thumbnails leading to larger views of them:
http://politticideimontiazzurri.it/mappa-giovanni-boccati/#imgmap25cc) as depicted (scenes, starting with Eustace and the Stag and ending with the martyrdom of Eustace and his family) in a late fifteenth-century fresco (ca. 1480) in the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Christ, Canterbury:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisjohnbeckett/368385671/ Detail views (Eustace and the stag):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisjohnbeckett/369230784/ http://tinyurl.com/nkte892 Detail view (with his family; martyrdom):
http://tinyurl.com/q427nbx dd) as depicted (right margin, uppermost image) in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century _Weltchronik_ (_Nuremberg Chronicle_; 1493) at fol. CXr:
https://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/right_page/14%20(Folio%20CXr).pdfee) as depicted (at right, after St. Procopius of Caesarea / of Scythopolis and St. Nicetas the Goth) in a late fifteenth- or earlier sixteenth-century Novgorod School icon now in the State Russian Gallery in St. Petersburg:
http://www.icon-art.info/hires.php?lng=de&type=1&id=814 ff) as depicted by Albrecht Dürer on a panel of the late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century Paumgärtner Altarpiece (ca. 1498-1504) in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich:
http://tinyurl.com/pxv3ame gg) as depicted (Eustace and the Stag) in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1500) in the Museum of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco:
http://tinyurl.com/q8hcjj4 hh) as depicted (Eustace and the Stag) by Albrecht Dürer in a print from a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century engraving (ca. 1501):
1) copy in the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University:
http://www.wga.hu/art/d/durer/2/13/2/034.jpg 2) copy in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/336232 ii) as depicted (at left; at right, St. George of Lydda) by Hans Süss of Kulmbach in an early sixteenth-century pen-and-ink drawing (ca. 1511) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/376653jj) as portrayed in relief (at center; at left, St. Acacius of Byzantium / Achatius; at right, St. Blasius / Blaise with the attributes of St. Erasmus) on the early sixteenth-century tomb of the Kurfürstin Anna (1512) in the evangelisch-lutherische Pfarrkirche St. Maria in Heilsbronn (Lkr. Ansbach) in Bavaria:
http://tinyurl.com/4zl3w3 kk) as depicted by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (a.k.a. Theophanes the Cretan) in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1545-1546) in the katholikon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://www.mesageitonias.com/20_sept_eustathius.jpg Best,
John Dillon
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