174

The Conversion of St. Hubert. (French miniature, 1500)

kneeling, in the hunting costume of the fifteenth century, with his horn and couteau-de-chasse suspended at his side, and wearing the furred cap and the knightly spurs; his horse is near him, and his panting dogs

in the foreground. On a wooded eminence stands the visionary hart, with the crucifix between his horns. This celebrated composition, having no title, has sometimes been styled St. Eustace; but I believe that in the French and German works of Art the subject may be understood to refer to the legend of St. Hubert the Hunter; in Italian pictures, it is generally St. Eustatius.1

In our National Gallery are two pictures from the story of St. Hubert. 1. His conversion by the miraculous stag. 2. The angel descending with the stole.2

Among the early Spanish bishops, ST. LEANDER and ST. ISIDORE, two brothers who were successively bishops of Seville, and became the patrons of the city, are found represented in the pictures of the Seville school. Both these saints were chiefly distinguished as the determined opponents of Arianism in Spain. St. Leander is styled the "Apostle of the Goths;" St. Isidore, the "Egregius Doctor of Spain."

In the dissensions between the Catholics and the Arians, Hermengildus, son of King Leovigild, relinquished the Arian faith, and was put to death by his father: he has been regarded as one of the famous martyrs of Spain. The arms of the city of Seville exhibit St. Ferdinand, king of Castile and Leon, on a throne with St. Leandro on one side, and St. Isidore on the other. And, in the pictures of Roelas and Herrera, we often find the princely martyr, St. Hermengildo, attended by the two bishops; or sometimes St. Justa and St. Rufina, St. Leander and St. Isidore, the four patrons of Seville, are in the same picture.

Among the chefs-d'œuvre of Murillo, are counted the San Leandro

The life of St. Hubert, in a series of eight bas-reliefs, has been lately executed by Wilhem Geefs, a Belgian sculptor of great reputation, for the shrine in the church of St. Hubert in Ardennes. They are designed with much poetic feeling in the picturesque style of the early Renaissance. There are fine casts in the Crystal Palace (No. 109, French Court); and for a full description, see the Handbook to the Modern Sculpture, p. 41.

These are attributed to the Meister von Werden (252.). In another picture by the same old German (250.) St. Hubert is attired as bishop, with the stag on his book.

and the San Isidoro, each enthroned, robed in white, and wearing their mitres, noble and characteristic heads, now in the Cathedral at Seville. The masterpiece of Roelas is the fine picture of the death of S. Isidore (el Transito de San Isidoro), where he is expiring on the steps of the altar, after dividing his substance among the poor: and the masterpiece of Herrera is the apotheosis of St. Hermengild, where, after his martyrdom, the Gothic prince is seen carried into glory, arrayed in a cuirass of blue steel and a red mantle, and holding a cross. St. Isidore stands on the left, St. Leander on the right; and the son of Hermengild, a beautiful fair-haired boy, is gazing rapturously upwards, as his sainted father mounts to heaven.'

The other Spanish bishops who are most remarkable as subjects of Art for example, St. Ildefonso, St. Thomas of Villanova, &c. belonged to the regular Monastic Orders.2

For a farther account of these pictures, see Mr. Stirling's "Annals of the Artists in Spain." He thus describes the death of St. Isidore: "Clad in pontifical robes and a dark mantle, the prelate kneels in the foreground expiring in the arms of a group of venerable priests, whose snowy hair and beards are finely relieved by the youthful bloom of two beautiful children of the choir, who kneel beside them; the background is filled up with the far-receding aisle of the church, some altars, and a multitude of sorrowing people. At the top of the picture, in a blaze of light, are seen our Lord and the Virgin enthroned on clouds." He adds: "For majesty of design, depth of feeling, richness of colour, and the various beauty of the heads, and for the perfect mastery which the painter has displayed in the use of his materials, this altar-piece (in the church of St. Isidore at Seville) may be ranked amongst the greatest productions of the pencil ;" and he compares it with Domenichino's "Communion of St. Jerome" in the Vatican. Juan de las Roclas was one of the earliest and greatest painters of the Spanish school. I cannot but remember that a most admirable and interesting picture by Roelas was sold in the Soult collection for less than one half of the sum which the former (not the present) managers of the National Gallery thought fit to give for a coarse, bedaubed, fifth-rate Titian. For the story of Hermengild, see Gibbon, c. 37. * See "Legends of the Monastic Orders."

The Hermit Saints.

ST. PAUL, ST. ANTHONY, AND THE HERMITS OF SYRIA AND EGYPT IN THE 3D AND 4TH CENTURIES.

AMONGST the most interesting, most picturesque, most imaginative productions of the early ages of Art, are the representations of the Hermits of the Desert. Every one who has looked at pictures recognises at once the image of their chief and leader, St. Anthony the abbot, with his long white beard, his crutch, his bell, and his pig: but we must look back to the contemporary state of society, and to a most curious and most interesting period of Church history, to comprehend the large circle of suggestive association which such effigies, however rude in themselves, may excite in the thinking mind.

Towards the end of the third century, the Roman Empire, though it still held together, was fast crumbling to dissolution. It was in a state analogous to that of the decrepid human frame when we say it is breaking up; the vital functions go on for a time, but weak and intermitting; neither potions nor physicians can do more than postpone the evil hour.

The throes of the perishing Colossus were, however, fearful. A glance at the countries which composed the vast heterogeneous mass of the Roman Empire will show us rottenness and corruption at the centre, and utter disorganisation towards the extremities. In the distant governments there was no security for life or for property: wars, famines, tyrannies, had desolated the provinces. The religious persecutions which had broken out in the days of the last heathen emperors, and the dissensions caused by that very religion which preached peace, added to the horrors of the time.

In this state of things, the promises of the Millennium had seized on the imaginations of the Christians. Many of them believed that the end of the world was near, that there was no help for man in his fellow man, nor profit in the labour of his hands;-no good anywhere, no hope, no rest, no peace, but in heaven.

In the persecution under the Emperor Decius, PAUL of Thebes, a Christian youth of noble family, terrified less by the tortures which were threatened, than by the allurements which were tried, to induce him to deny his faith, fled to the desert to the east of the Nile; and, wandering there alone, he found a cavern, near to which was a datetree and a fountain of clear water, and he chose this for his dwellingplace, eating of the fruit of the date-tree, drinking from the stream which bathed its roots, and, when the raiment which he wore had fallen to rags, clothing his wasted frame in a sort of mat formed of the palmleaves woven together.

Thus he lived for the space of ninety-eight years, far from the haunts of men, and having, in all that time, only casual communication, and at long intervals, with his kind. But it was the Divine will that his long penance, and his wondrous virtues, as they were then deemed, should be made known for the edification of men, through the medium of another saint even more renowned, the blessed St. Anthony. As Paul is regarded as the founder of the anchorites or solitary hermits, so Anthony is regarded as the founder of the Cenobites, or hermits living in communities: in other words, the founder of Monachism. Under his immediate disciple, Pachomius, the first cloister was erected in an island surrounded by the Nile. Hilarion, a native of Gaza, in Palestine, who had been sent by his parents to study philosophy at Alexandria, was also converted by St. Anthony, and became the founder of the first monastery in Syria: Basil, his disciple, founded the first in Asia Minor. Jerome, who had visited Anthony in his desert, carried the fashion into Italy and Gaul; and thus, Monachism, which originated in the hermit-life in Egypt, spread, in a short time, over the whole of Eastern and Western Christendom.

The hermits were at first bound by no very strict rules. They took no vows; and many wandered about in companies, mingling with the people; like certain modern fanatics, they held in scorn all human learning, and founded their notions of orthodoxy on some obscure feeling of what was, or was not, true piety. Thus, while they turned away the exercise of human intellect and reason from all objects of utility, from all elevating, all strengthening purposes, their traditional theology shut out all