ST. ANTHONY’S FIRE.
St. Anthony’s fire is an inflammatory disease which, in the eleventh century, raged violently in various parts. According to the legend, the intercession of St. Anthony was prayed for, when it miraculously ceased; and therefore, from that time, the complaint has been called St. Anthony’s fire.
ST. ANTHONY’S PIG.
Bishop Patrick, from the Salisbury missal and other Romish service-books, cites the supplications to St. Anthony for relief from this disease. Catholic writers affirm it to have been cured by the saint’s relics dipped in wine, which proved a present remedy. “Neither,” says Patrick, who quotes the Romish writers, “did this benefit by the intercession of St. Anthony accrue only to men, but to cattle also; and from hence we are told the custom arose of picturing this saint with a hog at his feet, because, the same author (Aymerus) says, on this animal God wrought miracles by his servant.” Patrick goes on to say, that in honour of St. Anthony’s power of curing pigs, “they used in several places to tie a bell about the neck of a pig, and maintain it at the common charge of the parish,” from whence came our English proverb of “Tantony pig,” or t’Antony, an abridgement of the Anthony pig.
“I remember,” says Stow, “that the officers charged with the oversight of the markets in this city did divers times take from the market people, pigs starved, or otherwise unwholesome for man’s sustenance; these they did slit in the ear. One of the proctors for St. Anthony’s (Hospital) tied a bell about the neck, (of one of them,) and let it feed on the dunghills: no man would hurt or take it up; but if any gave to them bread, or other feeding, such they (the pigs) would know, watch for, and daily follow, whining till they had somewhat given them: whereupon was raised a proverb, ‘Such an one will follow such an one, and whine as it were (like) an Anthony pig.’” If such a pig grew to be fat, and came to good liking, (as oftentimes they did,) then the proctor would take him up to the use of the hospital.
St. Anthony’s school in London, now gone to decay, was anciently celebrated for the proficiency of its pupils. Stow relates, that, in his youth, he annually saw, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, the scholars of the different grammar-schools assembled in the churchyard of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, and then St. Anthony’s scholars commonly were the best, and carried the prizes; and that when the boys of St. Paul’s school met with those of St. Anthony’s, “they would call them St. Anthony’s pigs, and they again would call the others pigeons of Paul’s; because many pigeons were bred in Paul’s church, and St. Anthony was always figured with a pig following him.”
The seal of St. Anthony’s Hospital in London was about the size of a half-crown; it represented the saint preaching to a numerous congregation, with his pig beneath him. The Rev. Mr. Orton, rector of Raseby in Leicestershire, was supposed to have been its possessor by the late Mr. S. Ayscough, who adds (in the Gent. Mag.) that the hospital of St. Anthony had a grant of all the stray pigs which were not owned. He presumes that, from thence, originated the emblem of the saint’s pig. In this he seems to have been mistaken; it clearly did not originate in England. Patrick’s solution of it is more probable, and very likely to be correct.
St. Anthony is always represented by the old painters with a pig by his side. He is so accompanied in the wood-cut to his life in the Golden Legend. There are many prints of him, by early masters, in this way. Rubens painted a fine picture of the Death of St. Anthony, with his pig, or rather a large bacon hog, lying under the saint’s bed: there is a good engraving from this picture by Clouwet.