St. Hubert

Hubert of Liège is the patron of hunters, of mathematicians, and of those bitten by dogs, and he was one of the eighth-century bishop-missionaries of the Frankish church whose historical existence is well established even when the most famous story attached to his name is almost certainly a later invention. He was born around 656, was a courtier in the Frankish court of Pepin of Herstal, and underwent a conversion — probably connected with the death of his wife — that turned him toward the religious life. He became a disciple of Lambert, bishop of Tongres-Maastricht, and on Lambert's martyrdom in 705 succeeded him, eventually transferring the see to Liège in 720. He died in 727 after a long pontificate spent evangelizing the still-pagan Ardennes and organizing the nascent diocese of Liège.

The vision of the stag with a crucifix between its antlers which has been the characteristic image of Hubert's iconography since the late medieval period does not appear in his early biography. It belongs to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, borrowed from the similar story attached to the legend of Eustace and applied to Hubert in a reworking of his life. The original conversion narrative is simpler and more credible: a young nobleman, perhaps humbled by grief at his wife's death, becomes a serious Christian.

What the early sources do confirm is the quality of the bishop's evangelical work. The Ardennes was one of the last regions in western Francia to receive systematic Christian mission, and Hubert's long episcopate pressed that mission into areas that had been Christian in name only or not at all. The association with hunting came naturally from his Ardennes mission territory and was reinforced by the legend, producing the iconography of the bishop with the stag that became one of the most recognizable in northern European religious art.