The Lives of the Saints through 100 Masterpieces

Eustace

The Lives of the Saints 94 Eustace September 20 The story of this Roman general demonstrates how Christian piety has been able to recycle tales and old legends of pagan antiquity for the greater glory of God. Once when hunting, this righteous soldier came to a halt upon encountering a stag with a shining cross caught between its antlers. The animal said to him, “I am Christ whom you already honor without knowing.” Eustace converted with his entire family, and after many adventures , was martyred, roasted to death inside an incandescent bronze statue of a bull. The same stag would later appear to Saint Hubert; the burning bull had already served its purpose. Before the sixth century, a tyrant of Acragas named Phalaris enclosed his victims in such a statue, and their cries of pain passing through the bronze nostrils sounded like gentle bellowing. “This one is Phalaris, who caused men to be baked alive in a brazen bull that he might hear the bull bellow,” charged Victor Hugo in his pamphlet Napoléon le Petit. The scene of Eustace’s torture has been depicted less often than the encounter of the soldier with the stag, which is found most famously in the church of Saint Eustace in Paris. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) Lucas Paumgartner and Saint Eustace Alte Pinakothek, Munich ...