The gate of the year

Illustration representing Saint Eustace, from a manuscript of the XIII century in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, Italy. According to the legend, which is recorded by Jacobus de Varagine in his Legenda Aurea, Eustace was a pagan who, going to hunt, was chasing a deer. Suddenly, the animal turned showing a brilliant cross among its antlers, while Jesus’ voice intimated him to stop persecuting him. Frightened by this episode, the hunter decided to convert himself to Christianity, along with all his family. A similar episode is attributed by another tale to Saint Hubert.
In these hagiographic legends transpire the memory of ancient Celtic and German beliefs, which regarded the deer as a sacred animal, associated with the sun, whose bright rays were symbolized by the animal’s antlers. It was, thus, an intermediary being between the heaven and earth. Its antlers, which fell and grew again every year, were a talisman against the evil forces. The fight between the deer and the serpent, which the medieval treatises took from ancient authorities, had an archaic cosmological meaning. The conflict of the deer, animal associated with the celestial and solar world, against the serpent, chthonic animal, sealed off the conjunction between the two worlds and favored the equilibrium of nature, which manifested itself in the continuous alternation of the seasons (Lombard-Jourdan 2005, p. 28).

[Image: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustachio_Placido#mediaviewer/File:Saint_eustace.jpg]




Animals

Back

Illustration representing Saint Eustace, from a manuscript of the XIII century in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, Italy. According to the legend, which is recorded by Jacobus de Varagine in his Legenda Aurea, Eustace was a pagan who, going to hunt, was chasing a deer. Suddenly, the animal turned showing a brilliant cross among its antlers, while Jesus’ voice intimated him to stop persecuting him. Frightened by this episode, the hunter decided to convert himself to Christianity, along with all his family. A similar episode is attributed by another tale to Saint Hubert. In these hagiographic legends transpire the memory of ancient Celtic and German beliefs, which regarded the deer as a sacred animal, associated with the sun, whose bright rays were symbolized by the animal’s antlers. It was, thus, an intermediary being between the heaven and earth. Its antlers, which fell and grew again every year, were a talisman against the evil forces. The fight between the deer and the serpent, which the medieval treatises took from ancient authorities, had an archaic cosmological meaning. The conflict of the deer, animal associated with the celestial and solar world, against the serpent, chthonic animal, sealed off the conjunction between the two worlds and favored the equilibrium of nature, which manifested itself in the continuous alternation of the seasons (Lombard-Jourdan 2005, p. 28). [Image: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustachio_Placido#mediaviewer/File:Saint_eustace.jpg]