Transfer of panel paintings
The practice of conserving an unstable painting on panel by transferring it from its original decayed, worm-eaten, cracked or distorted wood support to canvas or a new panel has been practised since the eighteenth century. It has now been superseded by improved methods of wood conservation; the practice evolved in Naples and Cremona in 1711–1725, reached France by the middle of the eighteenth century. It was widely practiced in the second half of the 19th century. Similar techniques are used to transfer frescos. Oil paintings on canvas receive additional support or are transferred to a new backing; the process is described by Henry Mogford in his Handbook for the Preservation of Pictures. Smooth sheets of paper were pasted over the painted surface of the panel, a layer of muslin over that; the panel was fixed, face down, to a table, the wood planed away from the back until it was "as thin as a plane may safely go", the remainder scraped off with a sharp instrument such as a razor. The ground of the painting was removed by solvents or scraping, until nothing remained but a thin skin of colour, pasted over with paper and held together by the muslin.
A prepared canvas was attached to the back of the paint layer, using the same method as was used for lining pictures. When the glue had dried, the paper and muslin was removed by careful damping; the leading workshop carrying out the process in Paris in the eighteenth century was that of Jean-Louis Hacquin, who transferred many works in the French royal collection. Transfers from the workshop have sometimes been found to have a layer of pieces of silk, or of sheets of paper between the paint layer and the new canvas; the workshop was continued after Hacquin’s death by his son, François-Toussaint Hacquin, who transferred many paintings taken to France from Italy during the Napoleonic period. Another method, used by Hacquin's contemporary, Jean-Michel Picault, dissolved the ground layer chemically with fumes of nitrous oxide, allowing the panel to be removed intact from the paint. A restorer, Marie-Jacob Godefroid is recorded as having achieved similar results by the use of steam. A less dramatic "partial transfer" tended to be used in Germany and Austria, in which a thin layer of the original wood was retained, glued onto a new panel.
Dardes, Kathleen. The Structural Conservation of Panel Paintings: Proceedings of a symposium at the J. Paul Getty Museum. 3. Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute
Herod the Great
Herod known as Herod the Great and Herod I, was a Roman client king of Judea, referred to as the Herodian kingdom. The history of his legacy has polarized opinion, as he is known for his colossal building projects throughout Judea, including his expansion of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, the construction of the port at Caesarea Maritima, the fortress at Masada, Herodium. Vital details of his life are recorded in the works of the 1st century CE Roman–Jewish historian Josephus. Herod appears in the Christian Gospel of Matthew as the ruler of Judea who orders the Massacre of the Innocents at the time of the birth of Jesus. Despite his successes, including singlehandedly forging a new aristocracy from nothing, he has still garnered criticism from various historians, his reign polarizes opinion amongst scholars and historians, some viewing his legacy as evidence of success, some as a reminder of his tyrannical rule. Upon Herod's death, the Romans divided his kingdom among three of his sons and his sister—Archelaus became ethnarch of the tetrarchy of Judea, Herod Antipas became tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, Philip became tetrarch of territories north and east of the Jordan, Salome I was given a toparchy including the cities of Jabneh and Phasaelis.
It is accepted that Herod was born around 73 BCE in Idumea, south of Judea.. However, some authors think that he was born in about 72/71 BCE, he was the second son of Antipater the Idumaean, a high-ranking official under ethnarch Hyrcanus II, Cypros, a Nabatean. Herod's father was by descent an Edomite. Herod was raised as a Jew. Herod's rise to power is due to his father's good standing relation with Caesar, who entrusted Antipater with the public affairs of Judea. Herod, Antipater's son, was appointed provincial governor of Galilee in ca. 47 BCE when Herod was about either 25 or 28 years old, where he faithfully farmed the taxes of that region for the Roman emperor, where he met with success in ridding that region of bandits. Antipater's elder brother, served in the same capacity as governor of Jerusalem. During this time, the young Herod cultivated a good relationship with Sextus Caesar, the acting Roman governor of Syria, who appointed Herod as general of Coelesyria and Samaria expanding his realm of influence.
He enjoyed the backing of Rome. When yet a private man, Herod had determined to punish Hyrcanus the king, who had once summoned Herod to stand trial for murder, but was restrained from doing so by the intervention of his father and his elder brother. In 41 BCE, Herod and his brother Phasael were named as tetrarchs by the Roman leader Mark Antony, they were placed in this role to support Hyrcanus II. Antigonus, Hyrcanus' nephew, took the throne from his uncle with the help of the Parthians. Herod fled to Rome to plead with the Romans to restore Hyrcanus II to power; the Romans had a special interest in Judea because their general Pompey the Great had conquered Jerusalem in 63 BCE, thus placing the region in the Roman sphere of influence. In Rome, Herod was unexpectedly appointed King of the Jews by the Roman Senate. Josephus puts this in the year of the consulship of Calvinus and Pollio, but Appian places it in 39 BCE. Herod went back to Judea to win his kingdom from Antigonus. Toward the end of the campaign against Antigonus, Herod married the granddaughter of Hyrcanus II, a niece of Antigonus.
Herod did this in an attempt to gain some Jewish favor. However, Herod had a wife, a young son and chose therefore to banish Doris and her child. Herod and Sosius, the governor of Syria, at the behest of Mark Antony, set out with a large army in 37 BCE and captured Jerusalem, Herod sending Antigonus for execution to Mark Antony. From this moment, Herod took the role as sole ruler of Judea and the title of basileus for himself, ushering in the Herodian Dynasty and ending the Hasmonean Dynasty. Josephus reports this as being in the year of the consulship of Agrippa and Gallus, but says that it was 27 years after Jerusalem fell to Pompey, which would indicate 36 BCE. Cassius Dio reports that in 37 BCE "the Romans accomplished nothing worthy of note" in the area. According to Josephus, Herod ruled for 34 of them after capturing Jerusalem; as some believe Herod's family were converts to Judaism, his religious commitment was questioned by some elements of Jewish society. When John Hyrcanus conquered the region of Idumaea in 140–130 BCE, he required all Idumaeans to obey Jewish law or to leave.
While Herod publicly identified himself as a Jew and was considered as such by some, this religious identification was undermined by the decadent lifestyle of the Herodians, which would have earned them the antipathy of observant Jews. Herod executed several members of his own family, including his wife Mariamne I. Herod's rule marked a new beginning in the history of Judea. Judea had been ruled autonomously by the Hasmonean kings from 140 BCE until 63 BCE; the Hasmonean kings retained their titles, but became clients of Rome after the conquest by Pompey in 63 BCE. Herod overthrew the Hasmonean Antigonus in a three-year-long war between 40 and 37 BCE, ruled under Roman overlordship until his death ca. 4 BCE, passed on the throne to his sons
Salome
Salome was the daughter of Herod II and Herodias. According to the New Testament, the step daughter of Herod Antipas demanded and received the head of John the Baptist. According to Josephus, Salome was first married to her uncle Philip the Tetrarch who reigned over Ituraea and Batanaea. After Philip's death in 34 AD she married her cousin Aristobulus of Chalcis and became queen of Chalcis and Armenia Minor; as Salome is not named in the gospel, she is sometimes referred to as "the daughter of Herodias", for example in the titles of paintings showing her. Salome is identified with the daughter of Herodias who, according to the New Testament, danced for Herod. In his Jewish Antiquities, Josephus mentions marriages and children of the daughter of Herodias named Salome. According to Mark 6:21–29 a daughter of Herodias danced before Herod and her mother Herodias at the occasion of his birthday, in doing so gave her mother the opportunity to obtain the head of John the Baptist. Though the New Testament accounts do not mention a name for the girl, this daughter of Herodias is identified with Salome.
According to Mark's gospel, Herodias bore a grudge against John for stating that Herod's marriage to her was unlawful. Mark's account reads:A convenient day arrived when Herod spread an evening meal on his birthday for his high officials and the military commanders and the most prominent men of Galilee; the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, pleasing those dining with him. The king said to the girl: "Ask me for whatever you want, I will give it to you." Yes, he swore to her: "Whatever you ask me for, I will give it to you, up to half my kingdom." So she went out and said to her mother: “What should I ask for?” She said: “The head of John the Baptizer." She rushed in to the king and made her request, saying: "I want you to give me right away on a platter the head of John the Baptist." Although this grieved him, the king did not want to disregard her request, because of his oaths and his guests. So the king sent a bodyguard and commanded him to bring John’s head. So he beheaded him in the prison and brought his head on a platter.
He gave it to the girl, the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard of it, they laid it in a tomb; the parallel passage in the Gospel of Matthew:But on Herod's birthday, the daughter of Herodias danced before them: and pleased Herod. Whereupon he promised with an oath, to give her whatsoever she would ask of him, but she being instructed before by her mother, said: Give me here in a dish the head of John the Baptist. And the king was struck sad: yet because of his oath, for them that sat with him at table, he commanded it to be given, and he sent, beheaded John in the prison. And his head was brought in a dish: and it was given to the damsel, she brought it to her mother; some ancient Greek versions of Mark read "Herod's daughter Herodias". To scholars using these ancient texts, both mother and daughter had the same name. However, the Latin Vulgate Bible translates the passage as it is above, western Church Fathers, tended to refer to Salome as "Herodias's daughter" or just "the girl".
Because she is otherwise unnamed in the Bible, the idea that both mother and daughter were named Herodias gained some currency in early modern Europe. Herod's daughter is arguably not Salome the disciple, a witness to the Crucifixion of Jesus in Mark 15:40. Salome is mentioned as a stepdaughter of Herod Antipas in Josephus's Jewish Antiquities:Herodias, was married to Herod, the son of Herod the Great, born of Mariamne, the daughter of Simon the high priest, who had a daughter, Salome; the story of her dance before Herod with the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter led medieval Christian artists to depict her as the personification of the lascivious woman, a temptress who lures men away from salvation. Christian traditions depict her as an icon of dangerous female seductiveness, notably in regard to the dance mentioned in the New Testament, thought to have had an erotic element to it, in some transformations it has further been iconized as the Dance of the Seven Veils. Other elements of Christian tradition concentrate on her lighthearted and cold foolishness that, according to the gospels, led to John the Baptist's death.
There is however hardly a shred of evidence for these views: Bryant G. Wood Ph. D supplies a quote from David Flusser, a leading expert on early Christianity, that her "biographical profile suggests a normal, moral personality". A similar motif was struck by Oscar Wilde in his Salome, in which she plays the role of femme fatale; this parallel representation of the Christian iconography, made more memorable by Richard Strauss' opera based on Wilde's work, is as consistent
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer sometimes spelt in English as Durer or Duerer, without umlaut, was a painter and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe when he was still in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints, he was in communication with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, from 1512 he was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I. Dürer is commemorated by both the Episcopal Churches. Dürer's vast body of work includes engravings, his preferred technique in his prints, altarpieces and self-portraits and books; the woodcuts, such as the Apocalypse series, are more Gothic than the rest of his work. His well-known engravings include the Knight and the Devil, Saint Jerome in his Study and Melencolia I, the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation, his watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium.
Dürer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, has secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatises, which involve principles of mathematics and ideal proportions. Dürer was born on 21 May 1471, third child and second son of his parents, who had at least fourteen and as many as eighteen children, his father, Albrecht Dürer the Elder, was a successful goldsmith who in 1455 had moved to Nuremberg from Ajtós, near Gyula in Hungary. One of Albrecht's brothers, Hans Dürer, was a painter and trained under him. Another of Albrecht's brothers, Endres Dürer, took over their father's business and was a master goldsmith; the German name "Dürer" is a translation from the Hungarian, "Ajtósi". It was "Türer", meaning doormaker, "ajtós" in Hungarian. A door is featured in the coat-of-arms. Albrecht Dürer the Younger changed "Türer", his father's diction of the family's surname, to "Dürer", to adapt to the local Nuremberg dialect.
Dürer the Elder married Barbara Holper, daughter of his master when he himself qualified as a master in 1467. Dürer's godfather was Anton Koberger, who left goldsmithing to become a printer and publisher in the year of Dürer's birth, became the most successful publisher in Germany owning twenty-four printing-presses and built a number of offices in Germany and abroad. Koberger's most famous publication was the Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493 in German and Latin editions, it contained an unprecedented 1,809 woodcut illustrations by the Wolgemut workshop. Dürer may have worked on some of these; because Dürer left autobiographical writings and became famous by his mid-twenties, his life is well documented by several sources. After a few years of school, Dürer started to learn the basics of goldsmithing and drawing from his father. Though his father wanted him to continue his training as a goldsmith, he showed such a precocious talent in drawing that he started as an apprentice to Michael Wolgemut at the age of fifteen in 1486.
A self-portrait, a drawing in silverpoint, is dated 1484 "when I was a child", as his inscription says. Wolgemut was the leading artist in Nuremberg at the time, with a large workshop producing a variety of works of art, in particular woodcuts for books. Nuremberg was an important and prosperous city, a centre for publishing and many luxury trades, it had strong links with Italy Venice, a short distance across the Alps. After completing his apprenticeship, Dürer followed the common German custom of taking Wanderjahre—in effect gap years—in which the apprentice learned skills from artists in other areas, he left in 1490 to work under Martin Schongauer, the leading engraver of Northern Europe, but who died shortly before Dürer's arrival at Colmar in 1492. It is unclear where Dürer travelled in the intervening period, though it is that he went to Frankfurt and the Netherlands. In Colmar, Dürer was welcomed by Schongauer's brothers, the goldsmiths Caspar and Paul and the painter Ludwig. In 1493 Dürer went to Strasbourg, where he would have experienced the sculpture of Nikolaus Gerhaert.
Dürer's first painted self-portrait was painted at this time to be sent back to his fiancée in Nuremberg. In early 1492 Dürer travelled to Basel to stay with another brother of Martin Schongauer, the goldsmith Georg. Soon after his return to Nuremberg, on 7 July 1494, at the age of 23, Dürer was married to Agnes Frey following an arrangement made during his absence. Agnes was the daughter of a prominent brass worker in the city. However, no children resulted from the marriage, with Albrecht the Dürer name died out; the marriage between Agnes and Albrecht was not a happy one, as indicated by the letters of Dürer in which he quipped to Willibald Pirckheimer in an rough tone about his wife. He made other vulgar remarks. Pirckheimer made no secret of his antipathy towards Agnes, describing her as a miserly shrew with a bitter tongue, who helped cause Dürer's death at a young age, it is speculated by many scholars Albrecht was bisexual, if not homosexual, due to several of his works containing themes of homosexual desire, as well as the in
Delilah
Delilah is a woman mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible. She is loved by Samson, a Nazirite who possesses great strength and serves as the final Judge of Israel. Delilah is bribed by the lords of the Philistines to discover the source of his strength. After three failed attempts at doing so, she goads Samson into telling her that his vigor is derived from his hair; as he sleeps, Delilah orders a servant to cut Samson's hair, thereby enabling her to turn him over to the Philistines. Delilah has been the subject of both Christian commentary. Scholars have noted similarities between Delilah and other women in the Bible, such as Jael and Judith, have discussed the question of whether the story of Samson's relationship with Delilah displays a negative attitude towards foreigners. Notable depictions of Delilah include John Milton's closet drama Samson Agonistes and Cecil B. DeMille's 1949 Hollywood film Samson and Delilah, her name has become associated with voluptuous women.
Delilah was a woman of Sorek. She is the only woman in Samson's story, named; the Bible says not that she loved him. The two were not married and the idea that they had a sexual relationship is, in the words of Josey Bridges Snyder, "at most implicit in the biblical text"; the lords of the Philistines bribed her to discover the source of Samson's great strength, each offering to give her 1,100 silver coins. Three times she failed. First, at his own suggestion, she bound him with "seven green withes," but these he snapped asunder, she tied him with new ropes: these failed. She fastened the locks of his hair to the loom but with the same result. After many complaints that Samson did not trust her, he told her that his strength lay in his hair; when he was asleep, she ordered a servant to cut Samson's hair. She awoke him, delivered him into the hands of the waiting Philistine chiefs; the Bible does not mention her fate, and, as James D. G. Dunn and John William Rogerson note in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, it never discusses whether Delilah felt guilt for her actions.
Josephus and Pseudo-Philo both view Delilah as a prostitute. Pseudo-Philo writes that Delilah was Samson's wife; the Talmud says that Delilah used sex to get Samson to reveal his secret, in spite of the fact that the biblical text does not state that the two had a sexual relationship, while midrash state that Delilah harassed Samson verbally and physically during sex to get him to tell her the source of his strength. Midrashim on Delilah reveal negative attitudes toward non-Jewish women and are supposed to "demonstrate the havoc that a foreign woman could wreak"; the midrash says that Samson lost his strength because of his relationship with Delilah, a foreign woman, not because his hair was cut, that the angel who foretold Samson's birth to his mother knew that Delilah would cause him to break his Nazirite vow. The Jewish sages said; because Samson allowed his spiritual state to become diminished, he was vulnerable to losing his strength by having his hair cut. Before Delilah is mentioned, the length of Samson's career is described.
The length of someone's life or career in the Old Testament is mentioned last for a character to signify the end of his relevance to the narrative. David Kimhi notes; this might explain why Samson told Delilah of his weakness though she betrayed him before. It is possible he was not aware that cutting his hair would cause God to allow him to lose his strength. Late aggadah say that Delilah had sons together who were strong like their father. Medieval midrash propose that Delilah was the mother of Micah from the biblical narrative of Micah's Idol; this theory rests on the fact that, in Judges 17, Micah's mother gives her son 1,100 silver coins to construct his idol, similar to how Delilah was promised 1,100 silver coins to betray her lover by the Philistine leaders. This tradition explains the conflation of Delilah and Micah's mother by noting that Bible introduces the narrative of Micah's Idol after the narrative of Samson and Delilah. Rashi disputes this theory, as the Seder Olam Rabbah states that Micah and Samson were not contemporaries and that Micah lived during the time of Othniel.
Most Christian commentary on Delilah condemns her. Saint Ambrose represents Delilah as a Philistine prostitute and declares that "men should avoid marriage with those outside the faith, instead of love of one's spouse, there be treachery." Marbodius of Rennes uses the examples of Delilah, Lot's daughters, Herodias and Procne to illustrate that women are a "pleasant evil, at once a honeycomb and a poison". Christian commentators have viewed Samson as a type of Jesus Christ, based on similarities between Samson's story and the life of Jesus
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He wrote three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, are sometimes attributed to him. Virgil is traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets, his Aeneid has been considered the national epic of ancient Rome since the time of its composition. Modeled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid follows the Trojan refugee Aeneas as he struggles to fulfill his destiny and reach Italy, where his descendants Romulus and Remus were to found the city of Rome. Virgil's work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most notably Dante's Divine Comedy, in which Virgil appears as Dante's guide through Hell and Purgatory. Virgil's biographical tradition is thought to depend on a lost biography by Varius, Virgil's editor, incorporated into the biography by Suetonius and the commentaries of Servius and Donatus, the two great commentators on Virgil's poetry.
Although the commentaries no doubt record much factual information about Virgil, some of their evidence can be shown to rely on inferences made from his poetry and allegorizing. The tradition holds that Virgil was born in the village near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul. Analysis of his name has led to beliefs. Modern speculation is not supported by narrative evidence either from his own writings or his biographers. Macrobius says, he attended schools in Cremona, Mediolanum and Naples. After considering a career in rhetoric and law, the young Virgil turned his talents to poetry. According to Robert Seymour Conway, the only ancient source which reports the actual distance between Andes and Mantua is a surviving fragment from the works of Marcus Valerius Probus. Probus flourished during the reign of Nero. Probus reports. Conway translated this to a distance of 28 English miles. Little is known about the family of Virgil, his father belonged to gens Vergilia, his mother belonged to gens Magia. According to Conway, gens Vergilia is poorly attested in inscriptions from the entire Northern Italy, where Mantua is located.
Among thousands of surviving ancient inscriptions from this region, there are only 8 or 9 mentions of individuals called "Vergilius" or "Vergilia". Out of these mentions, three appear in inscriptions from Verona, one in an inscription from Calvisano. Conway theorized. Calvisano is located 30 Roman miles from Mantua, would fit with Probus' description of Andes; the inscription in this case is a votive offering to the Matronae by a woman called Vergilia, asking the goddesses to deliver from danger another woman, called Munatia. Conway notes that the offering belongs to a common type for this era, where women made requests for deities to preserve the lives of female loved ones who were pregnant and were about to give birth. In most cases, the woman making the request was the mother of a woman, pregnant or otherwise in danger. Though there is another inscription from Calvisano, where a woman asks the deities to preserve the life of her sister. Munatia, the woman who Vergilia wished to protect, was a close relative of Vergilia or Vergilia's daughter.
The name "Munatia" indicates that this woman was a member of gens Munatia, makes it that Vergilia married into this family. According to the commentators, Virgil received his first education when he was five years old and he went to Cremona and Rome to study rhetoric and astronomy, which he soon abandoned for philosophy. From Virgil's admiring references to the neoteric writers Pollio and Cinna, it has been inferred that he was, for a time, associated with Catullus' neoteric circle. According to Servius, schoolmates considered Virgil shy and reserved, he was nicknamed "Parthenias" or "maiden" because of his social aloofness. Virgil seems to have suffered bad health throughout his life and in some ways lived the life of an invalid. According to the Catalepton, he began to write poetry while in the Epicurean school of Siro the Epicurean at Naples. A group of small works attributed to the youthful Virgil by the commentators survive collected under the title Appendix Vergiliana, but are considered spurious by scholars.
One, the Catalepton, consists of fourteen short poems, some of which may be Virgil's, another, a short narrative poem titled the Culex, was attributed to Virgil as early as the 1st century AD. The biographical tradition asserts that Virgil began the hexameter Eclogues in 42 BC and it is thought that the collection was published around 39–38 BC, although this is controversial; the Eclogues are a group of ten poems modeled on the bucolic hexameter poetry of the Hellenistic poet Theocritus. After his victory in the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, fought against the army led by the assassins of Julius Caesar, Octavian tried to pay off his veterans with land expropriated from towns in northern Italy including, according to the traditi
Hubertus
Saint Hubertus or Hubert became Bishop of Liège in 708 AD. He is a Christian saint, the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians and metalworkers. Known as the Apostle of the Ardennes, he was called upon, until the early 20th century, to cure rabies through the use of the traditional St Hubert's Key. Saint Hubertus was venerated during the Middle Ages; the iconography of his legend is entangled with the legend of Saint Eustace. The Bollandists published seven early lives of Hubertus, he died 30 May 727 AD near a place called Fura. In the Middle Ages, this place was identified as Tervuren near Brussels, but recent scholarship considers Voeren/Fourons, between Maastricht and Liège, the likelier place, his feast day is November 3. Saint Hubertus was born about the year 656, he was the eldest son of Duke of Aquitaine. As a youth, Hubert was sent to the Neustrian court of Theuderic III at Paris, where his charm and agreeable address led to his investment with the dignity of "count of the palace". Like many nobles of the time, Hubert was addicted to the chase.
Meanwhile, the tyrannical conduct of Ebroin, mayor of the Neustrian palace, caused a general emigration of the nobles and others to the court of Austrasia at Metz. Hubert soon followed them and was warmly welcomed by Pepin of Herstal, mayor of the palace, who created him immediately grand-master of the household. About this time Hubert married daughter of Dagobert, Count of Leuven, their son Floribert of Liège would become bishop of Liège, for bishoprics were all but accounted fiefs heritable in the great families of the Merovingian kingdoms. He nearly died at the age of 10 from "fever", his wife died giving birth to their son and Hubert retreated from the court, withdrew into the forested Ardennes, gave himself up to hunting. However, a great spiritual revolution was imminent. On Good Friday morning, when the faithful were crowding the churches, Hubert sallied forth to the chase; as he was pursuing a magnificent stag or hart, the animal turned and, as the pious legend narrates, he was astounded at perceiving a crucifix standing between its antlers, while he heard a voice saying: "Hubert, unless thou turnest to the Lord, leadest an holy life, thou shalt go down into hell".
Hubert dismounted, prostrated himself and said, "Lord, what wouldst Thou have me do?" He received the answer, "Go and seek Lambert, he will instruct you." The story of the hart appears first in one of the legendary hagiographies and has been appropriated from the legend of Saint Eustace or Placidus. It was first attributed to St. Hubert in the 15th century. Saint Hubertus is honored among sport-hunters as the originator of ethical hunting behavior. During Hubert's religious vision, the Hirsch is said to have lectured Hubertus into holding animals in higher regard and having compassion for them as God's creatures with a value in their own right. For example, the hunter ought to only shoot when a humane and quick kill is assured, he ought shoot only old stags past their prime breeding years and to relinquish a much anticipated shot on a trophy to instead euthanize a sick or injured animal that might appear on the scene. Further, one ought never shoot a female with young in tow to assure the young deer have a mother to guide them to food during the winter.
Such is the legacy of Hubert who still today is taught and held in high regard in the extensive and rigorous German and Austrian hunter education courses. The legacy is followed by the French chasse à courre masters and followers, who hunt deer and roe on horseback and are the last direct heirs of Saint Hubert in Europe. Chasse à courre is enjoying a revival in France; the Hunts apply a specific set of ethics, rituals and tactics dating back to the early Middle-Ages. Saint Hubert is venerated every year by the Hunts in formal ceremonies. Be that as it may, Hubert set out for Maastricht, for there Lambert was bishop. Saint Lambert received Hubert kindly, became his spiritual director. Hubert now renounced all his considerable honors, gave up his birthright to the Aquitaine to his younger brother, whom he made guardian of his infant son, Floribert. Having distributed all his personal wealth among the poor, he studied for the priesthood, was soon ordained, shortly afterwards became one of St. Lambert's chief associates in the administration of his diocese.
By the advice of St. Lambert, Hubert made a pilgrimage to Rome in 708, but during his absence, Lambert was assassinated by the followers of Pepin. According to the hagiographies of Hubert, this act was revealed to the pope in a vision, together with an injunction to appoint Hubert bishop of Maastricht, he distributed his episcopal revenues among the poor, was diligent in fasting and prayer, became famous for his eloquence in the pulpit. In 720, in obedience to a vision, Hubert translated St. Lambert's remains from Maastricht to Liège with great pomp and ceremonial, several neighboring bishops assisting. A basilica for the relics was built upon the site of Lambert's martyrdom, was made a cathedral the following year, the see being removed from Maastricht to Liège only a small village; this laid the foundation of the future greatness of Liège, of which Saint Lambert is honored as patron, Saint Hubert as founder and first bishop. Hubert evangelised among the pagans in the extensive Ardennes forests and in Toxandria, a district stretching from near Tongeren
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