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And then the emperor,
replenished with ire, put him his wife and his sons in a certain
place, and did to go to them a right cruel lion, and the lion ran to
them and inclined his head to them, like as he had worshipped them,
and departed. Then the emperor did do make a fire under an ox of brass
or copper, and when it was fire-hot he commanded that they should be
put therein all quick and alive. And then the saints prayed and
commended them unto our Lord, and entered into the ox, and there
yielded up their spirits unto Jesu Christ. And the third day after,
they were drawn out tofore the emperor, and were found all whole and
not touched of the fire, ne as much as an hair of them was burnt, ne
none other thing on them. And then the christian men took the bodies
of them, and laid them in a right noble place honourably, and made
over them an oratory. And they suffered death under Adrian the
emperor, which began about the year one hundred and twenty in the
calends of November. |
St Eustace meets the Stag of Christ, by Pisanello
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Out of chaos comes the birth of a star.
Charlie Chaplin, speaking of his friend, Sophia Loren, Italian actress born on September 20, 1934
Sex appeal is 50 per cent what you've got and 50 per cent what people think you've got.
Sophia Loren
Mistakes are a part of the dues one pays for a full life.
Sophia Loren
The two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty.
Sophia Loren
Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much further than people with vastly superior talent.
Sophia Loren
It's a game I never play.
Sophia Loren; on adultery
When Sophia Loren is naked, that is a lot of nakedness.
Sophia Loren, explaining why she stopped doing nude scenes
Cooking is an act of love, a gift, a
way of sharing with others the little secrets (piccoli segreti) that are simmering on the burners.
Sophia Loren
You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro
without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending
the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're
really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing
with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry … Now this
means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means
that we are saying that something is wrong…with capitalism … There
must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward
a Democratic Socialism.
Dr
Martin Luther
King, Jr, who was stabbed on September 20, 1958; Source: Frogmore, SC, November 14, 1996, speech in front of his staff
On a Saturday afternoon in 1958, I sat in a Harlem
department store, surrounded by hundreds of people. I was autographing
copies of Stride Toward Freedom, my book about the Montgomery bus boycott.
And while sitting there, a demented black woman came up. The only question
I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" I was looking down
writing, and I said "Yes." And the next minute, I felt something sharp
plunge forcefully into my chest. Before I knew it, I had been stabbed with
a letter opener by a woman who would later be judged insane, Mrs Izola
Ware Curry.
Martin Luther King, Jr; Autobiography, Ch. 12: 'Brush
with Death'
September 20
is
the 263rd
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (264th
in leap years), with 102
days remaining.
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Feast day of St Eustace (Eustachius;
Eustathius) and
Companions, martyrs
(Common meadow saffron, Colchicum
autumnale, is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Hubert of Liège (feast day November 3), is a Christian saint who came upon a stag (sometimes described as a white stag) with a crucifix between its antlers. The stag threatened him with eternal damnation if he did not mend his ways, and so moved was Hubert by his experience, that he entered the monkhood, and eventually became Bishop of Liège, and the apostle of Ardennes and Brabant. Hubert is one of a number of Christian saints associated with deers and other horned animals, of whom we provide an overview in the Christian saints and the Horned God page in the Scriptorium.
St Eustace, who changed his name from Placidus
after his conversion, is another saint who experienced conversion by
seeing just the same unusual type of creature while hunting. Consequently,
both men are patron saints of hunters; in fact, there is so little
evidence that Eustace even existed that there is conjecture that Eustace's tale, as popularized in The Golden Legend
(Aurea Legenda), compiled by Jacobus de Voragine, 1275,
(' Englished by William
Caxton, 1483'), is a retelling of Hubert's. This feast day in the Roman Catholic Church has not been
officially observed since Pope
Paul VI removed many of the less well documented saints from the canon
in 1969.
Placidus, a Christian
martyr, was a wealthy 2nd-Century
Roman general in the
service of the emperor Trajan.
Although Placidus practiced idol worship, he also showed great generosity to the poor. The figure on the
crucifix of Placidus's stag bore the inscription, "I am Christ whom
you serve without knowing it. Because of your generosity to the poor, I am
hunting you". Some versions of the legend say that the stag itself
called out to him, "Placidus, Placidus, why persecutest thou me? I am Jesus Christ."
Placidus
returned home and was baptized along with his wife, Tatiana (who had
received a similar miraculous visit) and their two sons. On the following
day, Eustace, as he was now calling himself (meaning
'good fortune' or 'fruitful'), came upon the stag again and
was told, "Your faith must be tested. Satan will fight furiously to regain
your soul. You will be like a new Job. But, when you have proven
yourself, I will restore everything to you. Do you want the test now or
at the end of your life?"
Martyrdom
Eustace
chose to be tested at once. Within a few days, his servants and horses
died of a plague and his house was robbed and his wealth stolen. Eustace and his newly converted family fled to
Egypt, but, on the way, his wife was kidnapped by sailors, and his two
sons were devoured by a wolf
and a lion. The promised divine testing was certainly upon him. For
15 years he lived in isolation and poverty, until he was found by Roman
soldiers who restored him to his former rank. He won a great battle for
the Emperor Hadrian
and found his wife and sons alive and unharmed. "Surely all my
tribulation is at an end!", Eustace is said to have cried.
However,
it was not to be. Upon his return to Rome in the year 188, a victory celebration was
held in his honour, but Eustace and his family refused to offer sacrifices
of thanksgiving to pagan idols, so they were cooked to death in a bronze bull. Or,
so it is said.
The image of Eustace kneeling before the stag became a
popular subject of medieval religious art. He may also be seen
represented with another horned animal, the bull; or with a crucifix and/or
an oven.
Patronage
Eustace's patronage includes against fire,
difficult situations,
fire prevention,
firefighters, hunters, hunting, huntsmen, Madrid, torture victims
and trappers. His feast day is November 2 in the Orthodox calendar of the Eastern (Orthodox)
Church.
Island named for Eustace
Sint
Eustatius, one of the islands making up the Netherlands Antilles, is named for this
saint. The citizens of Sint Eustatius take pride in being the first
'nation' to recognize the United
States, having fired an official salute to
the visiting American ship Andrew Doria in 1776.
The stag in myth and legend
The white stag is known in myths and legends from many places and in Europe probably harks back to early cultures that relied on hunting. The Celtic god Cernunnos (Herne, 'the horned one') bears the antlers of a deer. In Celtic myth, the white stag represents the presence of divine powers.
The 12th-Century Anglo-French tale of 'Guigemar', by Marie de France, tells of a knight who comes upon a white doe with the antlers of a stag. He wounds the strange animal, which curses him to grow up and fall in love. In Hungarian mythology, a great white stag led the brothers Hunor and Magar to settle in Scythia. Thus were established the Huns and Magyars.
In Christianity, the white stag came to symbolize
Jesus Christ,
as does its cognate, the unicorn. In
Christian iconography, the stag often appears with the sun between its
horns. The white hart was the heraldic symbol of England's King Richard II.
In Hindu
mythology, Maricha
assumes the form of a golden deer in order to attract Sitadevi; Lord Shiva was wrapped in deer
skin; and the chariot Vayus is pulled by a pair of deer. Santa Claus, who
evokes the memory of the northern gods Odin and Thor, is transported
in a sleigh drawn by reindeer. In ancient Greece, the Elaphoi Khrysokeroi
were five golden-horned deer sacred to the goddess Artemis. Of
these, the first four drew the goddess's chariot.
Stags
in sacred texts More on St
Eustace
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