Deer in Mythology - Christianity

Christianity

Saint Giles, a Catholic saint especially revered in the south of France, is reported to have lived for many years as a hermit in the forest near Nîmes, where in the greatest solitude he spent many years, his sole companion being a deer, or hind, who in some stories sustained him on her milk. In art, he is often depicted together with that hind.

In the founding legend of Le Puy-en-Velay, where a Christian church replaced a healing a megalithic dolmen. A local tradition had rededicated the curative virtue of the sacred site to Mary, who cured ailments by contact with the standing stone. When the founding bishop Vosy climbed the hill, he found that it was snow-covered in July; in the snowfall the tracks of a deer round the dolmen outlined the foundations of the future church.

Saint Hubertus (or "Hubert") is a Christian saint, the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians and metalworkers, and used to be invoked to cure rabies. The legend of concerned an apparition of a stag with the crucifix between its horns, effecting the worldly and aristocratic Hubert's conversion to a saintly life.

In the story of Saint Hubertus, on Good Friday morning, when the faithful were crowding the churches, Hubertus sallied forth to the chase. As he was pursuing a magnificent stag the animal turned and, as the pious legend narrates, he was astounded at perceiving a crucifix standing between its antlers, which occasioned the change of heart that led him to a saintly life. The story of the hart appears first in one of the later legendary hagiographies (Bibliotheca hagiographica Latina, nos. 3994–4002) and has been appropriated from the earelier legend of Saint Eustace (Placidus).

Later in the 6th century, the Bishop Saint Gregory of Tours wrote his Chronicles about the Merovingian rulers, were appeared a Legend of the King Clovis I who prayed to Christ in one of his campaigns so he could find a place to cross the river Vienne. Considered as a divine sign, a huge deer appeared and showed were could the army pass across.

In the 14th century, probably keeping some relation with Saint Eustace's legend, the deer again appears in the Christian Legends. The Chronicon Pictum contains a legend, where the later King Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary and his brother the King Géza I of Hungary were hunting in a forest and appeared to them a deer with numerous candles on his antlers. As the saint Knight said to his brother, that wasn't a deer but an angel of God, and his antlers were wings, the candles were shining feathers. And as Ladislaus added, the place where the deer was standing was where it was meant to be built a cathedral in honor of the Holy Virgin.

The deer is considered by some Christians to be a symbol of Christ. The Bible book Song of Solomon, chapter 2, verses 8–10 reads:

The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains,

skipping upon the hills.

My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall,

he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. (KJV)

Many Christians interpret the Song of Solomon to represent the longing of Christ for his Church, and vice versa.