Eustace

Eustace (Eustachius, Eustathius), Roman martyr of unknown date, patron of hunters and one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. There are churches dedicated to Eustace in Rome (from the 8th century) and Constantinople; also three ancient dedications in England. He is probably most familiar from pictures of him meeting a stag between whose antlers was a crucifix (an incident which also figures in the Legend of Hubert). There is no early cult nor clear place of origin, which may well be Eastern.

The historically worthless legend tells of a Roman general called Placidas under Trajan, who was converted through seeing the stag with the crucifix, changed his name and that of his wife and children, lost his fortune and his family, was recalled to command the army at a critical time, was reunited with his family, and with them suffered martyrdom through being roasted to death in a brazen bull after refusing to sacrifice. This legend attained wide diffusion in several vernacular versions and inspired many works of art.

In England, as elsewhere in Christendom, Eustace was a popular saint. At Wells cathedral (NW. tower of West Front) he is depicted carrying his children across a river (sculptured c.1240), while in the British Museum is a head-reliquary of him which contained a head-bone and various other relics with labels in a 12th-century hand. These were all restored to the Swiss cathedral from which they were originally looted by the armies of Napoleon. This reliquary is an interesting example of how similar artefacts often contained both more and less than is usually expected. It contained less than a whole skull, but more relics of other saints, kept safe with the principal one. Feast: 20 September in the East, 2 November in the West.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• AA.SS. Sept. VI (1757), 106–37; Propylaeum, pp. 407–8; H. Delehaye, ‘La Légende de S. Eustache’ in Mélanges d'hagiographie grecque et latine (Subsidia Hagiographica, xlii, 1966), pp. 212–39; B.T.A., iii. 606–7; Bibl. SS., v. 281–91