In my list of saints who are represented with a dragon or serpent beneath their feet, I omitted St. Hilary:
"He is usually represented with three books. In Callot's Images he is treading on serpents, and accompanied by the text Numb. xxi. 7. Both these emblems allude to his opposition to Arianism; the books signifying the treatises he wrote against it, and the serpents the false doctrines and heresies which he overthrew." Calendar of the Anglican Church Illustrated: London, 1851, p. 37.
In Didron's splendid work (the Iconographie) we have several references to ancient representations of our blessed Lord treading the dragon under foot; and sometimes the lion, the asp, and the basilisk are added. (See Ps. xci. 13.)
The Conception is usually represented in Christian art by a figure of Mary setting her foot, as second Eve, on the head of the prostrate serpent (in allusion to Gen. iii. 15.), and thus we find it in Callot's Images.
"Not seldom, in a series of subjects from the Old Testament, the pendant to Eve holding the apple is Mary crushing the head of the fiend: and thus the bane and antidote are both before us." (See Mrs. Jameson's Legends of the Madonna.)
Eirionnach.
Footnote 5:[(return)]
The title of this curious book is, Geschichte der Mission der evangelischen Brüder unter den Indianern in Nordamerika, durch Georg H. Loskiel: Barby, 1789, 8vo., pp. 783. Latrobe's translation of this book was published Lond. 1794.
This reminds one of the notion respecting
"The scorpion girt with fire,"