Bishop Patrick, from the Salisbury missal and other Romish
service-books, cites the supplications to St. Anthony for relief from
this disease. Catholic writers affirm it to have been cured by the
saint’s relics dipped in wine, which proved a present remedy. “Neither,”
says Patrick, who quotes the Romish writers, “did this benefit by the
intercession of St. Anthony accrue only to men, but to cattle also; and
from hence we are told the custom arose of picturing this saint with a
hog at his feet, because, the same author (Aymerus) says, on this animal
God wrought miracles by his servant.” Patrick goes on to say, that in
honour of St. Anthony’s power of curing pigs, “they used in several
places to tie a bell about the neck of a pig, and maintain it at the
common charge of the parish,” from whence came our English proverb of
“_Tantony pig_,” or t’Antony, an abridgement of the Anthony pig.
“I remember,” says Stow, “that the officers charged with the oversight
of the markets in this city did divers times take from the market
people, pigs starved, or otherwise unwholesome for man’s sustenance;
these they did slit in the ear. One of the proctors for St. Anthony’s
(Hospital) tied a bell about the neck, (of one of them,) and let it feed
on the dunghills: no man would hurt or take it up; but if any gave to
them bread, or other feeding, such they (the pigs) would know, watch
for, and daily follow, whining till they had somewhat given them:
whereupon was raised a proverb, ‘_Such an one will follow such an one,
and whine as it were_ (like) _an Anthony pig_.’” If such a pig grew to
be fat, and came to good liking, (as oftentimes they did,) then the
proctor would take him up to the use of the hospital.
St. Anthony’s school in London, now gone to decay, was anciently
celebrated for the proficiency of its pupils. Stow relates, that, in his
youth, he annually saw, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, the scholars of
the different grammar-schools assembled in the churchyard of St.
Bartholomew, Smithfield, and then St. Anthony’s scholars commonly were
the best, and carried the prizes; and that when the boys of St. Paul’s
school met with those of St. Anthony’s, “they would call them St.
Anthony’s pigs, and they again would call the others pigeons of Paul’s;
because many pigeons were bred in Paul’s church, and St. Anthony was
always figured with a pig following him.”
The seal of St. Anthony’s Hospital in London was about the size of a
half-crown; it represented the saint preaching to a numerous
congregation, with his pig beneath him. The Rev. Mr. Orton, rector of
Raseby in Leicestershire, was supposed to have been its possessor by the
late Mr. S. Ayscough, who adds (in the Gent. Mag.) that the hospital of
St. Anthony had a grant of all the stray pigs which were not owned. He
presumes that, from thence, originated the emblem of the saint’s pig. In
this he seems to have been mistaken; it clearly did not originate in
England. Patrick’s solution of it is more probable, and very likely to
be correct.
St. Anthony is always represented by the old painters with a pig by his
side. He is so accompanied in the wood-cut to his life in the Golden
Legend. There are many prints of him, by early masters, in this way.
Rubens painted a fine picture of the Death of St. Anthony, with his pig,
or rather a large bacon hog, lying under the saint’s bed: there is a
good engraving from this picture by Clouwet.
* * * * *
In the British Museum there is a MS. with a remarkable anecdote that
would form an appendix to St. Anthony’s day. The names of the parties
are forgotten; but the particulars, recollected from accidental perusal,
are these:
A tailor was met out of doors by a person who requested to be measured
for a suit of clothes, to be ready on that spot by that day week; and
the stranger gave him a piece of cloth to make them with. From certain
circumstances, the tailor suspected his new customer to be the devil,
and communicated his conjectures to a clergyman, who advised him to
execute the order, but carefully to save every piece, even the minutest
shred he cut from the cloth, and put the whole into a wrapper with the
clothes; he further promised the tailor to go with him on the appointed
day to the place where they were delivered. When all was ready and the
day arrived, they both went thither, and the person waiting justified
the tailor’s suspicions; for he abused the tailor because he brought a
divine, and immediately vanished in their presence, leaving the clothes
and pieces of cloth in the possession of the tailor, who could not sell
the devil’s cloth to pay himself for the making, for fear of the
consequences:
And here ends the history
Of this wonderful mystery;
from which may be drawn, by way of moral, that a tailor ought not to
take an order from a stranger without a reference.
~January 18.~
_St. Peter’s Chair at Rome._ _St. Paul and Thirty-six Companions in
Egypt._ _St. Prisca._ _St. Deicolus._ _St. Ulfrid._
The _Feast_ of St. Peter’s chair is kept by the Romish church on this
day. Lady Morgan says that it is one of the very few functions as they
are called (funzioni) celebrated in the cathedral of St. Peter, at Rome.
She briefly describes this celebration, and says something respecting
St. Peter’s chair. “The splendidly dressed troops that line the nave of
the cathedral, the variety and richness of vestments which clothe the
various church and lay dignitaries, abbots, priests, canons, prelates,
cardinals, doctors, dragoons, senators, and grenadiers, which march in
procession, complete, as they proceed up the vast space of this wondrous
temple, a spectacle nowhere to be equalled within the pale of European
civilisation. In the midst of swords and crosiers, of halberds and
crucifixes, surrounded by banners, and bending under the glittering
tiara of threefold power, appears the aged, feeble, and worn-out pope,
borne aloft on men’s shoulders, in a chair of crimson and gold, and
environed by slaves, (for such they look,) who waft, from plumes of
ostrich feathers mounted on ivory wands, a cooling gale, to refresh his
exhausted frame, too frail for the weight of such honours. All fall
prostrate, as he passes up the church to a small choir and throne,
temporarily erected beneath the chair of St. Peter. A solemn service is
then performed, hosannas arise, and royal votarists and diplomatic
devotees parade the church, with guards of honour and running footmen,
while English gentlemen and ladies mob and scramble, and crowd and
bribe, and fight their way to the best place they can obtain.
“At the extremity of the great nave behind the altar, and mounted upon a
tribune designed or ornamented by Michael Angelo, stands a sort of
throne, composed of precious materials, and supported by four gigantic
figures. A glory of seraphim, with groups of angels, sheds a brilliant
light upon its splendours. This throne enshrines the real, plain,
worm-eaten, wooden chair, on which St. Peter, the prince of the
apostles, is said to have pontificated; more precious than all the
bronze, gold, and gems, with which it is hidden, not only from impious,
but from holy eyes, and which once only, in the flight of ages, was
profaned by mortal inspection.
“The sacrilegious curiosity of the French broke through all obstacles to
their seeing the chair of St. Peter. They actually removed its superb
casket, and discovered the relic. Upon its mouldering and dusty surface
were traced carvings, which bore the appearance of letters. The chair
was quickly brought into a better light, the dust and cobwebs removed,
and the inscription (for an inscription it was) faithfully copied. The
writing is in Arabic characters, and is the well-known confession of
Mahometan faith,--‘_There is but one_ GOD, _and_ MAHOMET _is his
prophet_!’ It is supposed that this chair had been, among the spoils of
the crusaders, offered to the church at a time when a taste for
antiquarian lore, and the deciphering of inscriptions, were not yet in
fashion. This story has been since hushed up, the chair replaced, and
none but the unhallowed remember the fact, and none but the audacious
repeat it. Yet such there are, even at Rome!”
_St. Prisca._
This saint’s festival stands in the calendar of the church of England
this day, as well as in that of the Romish church. Nothing is certainly
known of her except that she was a Roman, and martyred about 275.