Today's outfit is inspired by St. Eustace whose story appears in the immensely popular but highly unreliable medieval book of saints' lives, "The Golden Legend." Eustace was a Roman soldier who really liked hunting. One day as he was chasing after a stag, he saw a vision of Jesus between the stag's antlers. He immediately converted to Christianity along with his wife and sons.
Poor Eustace was then subjected to a horrible series of bad luck:
1) a plague killed all of his servants, knights and livestock
2) robbers stole all of his money and valuable possessions
3) When the family decided to sail to Egypt, their sea captain demanded that Eustace give him his wife as payment for the voyage. Eustace didn't want to, but when the captain threatened to throw him overboard, Eustace totally abandoned his wife.
4) After they arrived, Eustace's sons were carried off by wild animals (although not killed, but Eustace didn't know that part)
After this Series of Unfortunate Events, Eustace went back and rejoined the Roman army. In the meantime, his wife escaped the clutches of the sea captain and randomly stumbled upon her two sons who had been rescued from the wild animals by kindly villagers. They then heard that Eustace was in the army and went to find him. There was a joyous reunion which lasted about 24 hours. The next day, the emperor commanded them all to make sacrifices to the Roman gods. Eustace and his family, of course, refused, and they were subsequently roasted alive inside a copper statue of a bull.
Whew! That's quite a whopper.
Eustace is the patron saint of hunters, so I chose green and brown as my color palette:
1 comment:
My favorite is when you make faces like that. <3
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