The church of Notre Dame, at Paris, rebuilt by “devout king Robert,” was conspicuously honoured by a statue of the chief of the angelic hierarchy, with his scales. “On the top, and pinnacle before the said church,” says Favine, “is yet to be seene the image of the arch-angell St. Michael, the tutelaric angell, and guardian of the most christian monarchie of France, ensculptured after the antique forme, holding a ballance in the one hand, and a crosse in the other; on his head, and toppe of his wings, are fixed and cramponned strong pikes of iron to keepe the birds from pearching thereon.”
Favine proceeds to mention a popular error concerning these “pikes of iron,” to defend the statue from the birds. “The ignorant vulgar conceived that this was a crowne of eares of corne, and thought it to be the idole of the goddesse Ceres.” He says this is “a matter wherein they are much deceived; for Isis and Ceres being but one and the same, her temple was at S. Ceour and S. Germain des Prez.”[359]
Louis XI. instituted an order in honour of St. Michael, the arch-angel, on occasion of an alleged apparition of the saint on the bridge at Orleans, when that city was besieged by the English in 1428.
St. George.
It has been intimated in vol. i., col. 500, that there are grounds to imagine “that St. George and the dragon are neither more nor less than St. Michael contending with the devil.” The reader who desires further light on this head, will derive it from a dissertation by Dr. Pettingall, expressly on the point. It may here, perhaps, be opportune to introduce the usual representation of St. George and the dragon, by an impression from an original wood-block, obligingly presented to this work by Mr. Horace Rodd.
St. George and the Dragon.
To-morrow morning we shall have you look,
For all your great words, like St. George at Kingston,
Running a footback from the furious dragon,
That with her angrie tail belabours him
For being lazie.
Woman’s Prize.