Saint Hubert of Liège, bishop and patron of hunters († 727)

Origin and family

Hubert is born between 656 and 658, according to the chroniclers who place his birth at Toulouse. He belongs to the Frankish high nobility and he is probably related to the Pippinids, the powerful family that holds power around Pippin of Herstal and Charles Martel. Genealogists also attach him to the Hugobertids, a lineage linked to Plectrude, wife of Pippin of Herstal.^[5]

He marries Floribanne, whom the chroniclers present as the daughter of King Dagobert. From this marriage is born Florbert, later venerated as a saint. The death of Floribanne, in the sources, opens the way to Hubert's vocation: the widower turns to the religious life.^[6][7]

At the court of Pippin of Herstal

Before his conversion, Hubert leads, according to Nominis, the worldly life of a great of the realm: “foolish joys of his worldly life”, the hunt, the court, honours. In 688, he gives up the duchy of Aquitaine to his brother in order to devote himself to another ambition. The sources do not agree on the exact length of these years at court; they agree on their rank.^[8]

This is a world of late Merovingians, where the boundary between political power, family and ecclesiastical office remains thin. Hubert is an example of it: a noble of high lineage, he will become a bishop, as many sons of great families do in those days.

The counsels of Saint Lambert

Hubert's conversion is attributed, in the sources, to two joint causes: a grace and the counsels of Saint Lambert, bishop of Maastricht, to whom he is close. Nominis sums up the path thus: grace, then Lambert's spiritual guidance, compel Hubert to change his life.^[9]

After the death of his wife, he prepares for the monastic life. Several stages are then reported: retreat, ordination, then pastoral charge. The detail varies from one vita to another; the common thread is clear: a lord who leaves the court for God.

The vision of the stag

The most famous episode takes place, according to tradition, on a Good Friday, during a hunt. Hubert pursues a stag; the animal turns and appears with a radiant cross between its antlers. A voice asks him: “Hunting on such a day? Why do you not go to pray?”. The vision decides his definitive conversion.^[10][11]

One must here honestly distinguish legend and history:

The similar account of the conversion of Saint Paul (Acts 9) has also fed the Christian shaping of this vision. None of this disproves Hubert's conversion; it indicates only that the stag with the cross is an image of tradition, and not an official report.^[12]

A living local tradition

Local tradition has marked the landscape: the chapel of Saint-Hubert at Tenneville, and the cross known as “Rouge-Croix”, perpetuate the memory of the vision in the Ardennes. This popular cult grew around Hubert after his establishment as patron of hunters, attested from the 11th century.^[13][14]

Successor of Saint Lambert

At the death of Saint Lambert, c. 705, Hubert is chosen to succeed him on the see of Tongres-Maastricht-Liège. He is thus the disciple and successor of Lambert, and he bears the charge of a Church still taking root in the Meuse valley.^[15][16]

He erects at Liège a church of Notre-Dame, which will become the base of the future cathedral of Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Lambert, and he transfers there the remains of Saint Lambert. This gesture fixes at Liège the religious centre of the diocese: the city, which was still only a set of clearings, rivers and villages, becomes the seat of a local Church.^[17]

A bishop close to the faithful

Nominis describes him as a great bishop close to the faithful, who stands in the clearings, the rivers, the villages, where the people live. He helps the wretched and the prisoners, and he evangelises Brabant and the Ardennes. The portrait is that of a missionary bishop of the late 7th and early 8th century, who advances in a country still largely to be christianised.^[18]

Death at Tervuren (727)

Hubert dies from the effects of a wound: a workman is said to have crushed his left hand. He passes away at Tervuren, in Brabant, on 30 May 727, according to the date retained by the chronicle and by Wikipedia FR. Other, older, sources place his death at Fouron-le-Comte. He is about seventy years old.^[19][20]

Nominis presents him as the successor of Saint Lambert, who died “in 727”, after having evangelised Brabant and the Ardennes and built at Liège a church where he transferred the remains of Lambert. The notice specifies: “(on 30 May in the Roman Martyrology)”.^[21]

Relics at Saint-Hubert (Ardennes)

A century after his death, the bishop Walcaud decides, in 825, with the agreement of the monks of Saint-Pierre, of the metropolitan of Cologne, of the emperor Louis the Pious and of the 5th Council of Aachen, to allow the Benedictines of the monastery of Ambra or Andage, in the Ardennes, to carry away with them the whole and intact body of Hubert. The village then takes the name of Saint-Hubert, and the abbey becomes the abbey of Saint-Hubert.^[22]

It is in this high place of the hunt, the Ardennes forest, that the legend of the saint develops, who from bishop was transformed into a young lord hunter. In the monastery, a breed of dogs was raised that took his name; as he had cured rabid people in his lifetime, he was invoked against rabies. He becomes the undisputed patron of the Ardennes and of the trades of that region: lumberjacks and foresters, tanners and hunters, then more broadly furriers, butchers, metalworkers, armourers, opticians, mathematicians and makers of mathematical instruments. At Villedieu-les-Poêles, he is celebrated as the patron of the dinandiers.^[23]

Feast and calendar

The feast of Saint Hubert falls on 3 November in the Belgian, Luxembourg and Orthodox use; the Roman Martyrology fixes it on 30 May, the day of his death. Nominis, which retains 3 November for the notice of the day, itself signals 30 May as the date of the Roman Martyrology.^[24][25]

On the day of Saint Hubert's feast, in Wallonia, in Luxembourg and in Alsace, one blesses salt, bread and water to protect against bites; one also lays the keys of Saint Hubert on the dogs, horses and birds of prey of hunters, to protect them against rabies. Since the mid-9th century, one offered to my lord Saint Hubert the first fruits of the hunt. These popular usages have nourished a broad piety, which goes far beyond hunters.^[26]

The Key of Saint-Hubert

The Key of Saint-Hubert, which pope Constantine is said to have given to the future Saint Hubert on a pilgrimage to Rome, was once kept at the collegiate church of Saint-Pierre in Liège, then at the collegiate church of Sainte-Croix; it is today in the treasury of the cathedral of Liège. The object is part of the material memory of the cult, on the same footing as the basilica of Saint-Hubert.^[27]

Iconography

The canonical attribute of Hubert is the stag with the cross of Christ between its antlers. Representations abound: the statue of Jean Delcour at the collegiate church of Saint-Pierre in Liège, the exhumation of Saint Hubert painted by Rogier van der Weyden, the visions painted by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens, or again the Vision of Saint Hubertus by Franz von Stuck (1890). He is invoked against rabies and insomnia, and he is the patron of hunters, foresters, the Ardennes and Liège.^[28]

• Saint Willibrord (658-739): a contemporary of Hubert, apostle of the Frisians, of the same generation of evangelisation of northern Europe.
• Saint Remi of Reims (c. 437-533): the bishop of the baptism of Clovis, in whose tradition the spiritual lineage of Hubert is ranged.
• Saint Leonard of Noblac (6th century): another saint of compassion and of the freeing of captives, venerated on the road to Compostela.