[Illustration:  Fig. 135.—­“How to take a Cart to allure Beasts.”—­Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).]

The Gallic Cernunnos, which we also find among the Romans, since Ovid mentions the votary stags’ horns, continued to be worshipped to a certain extent after the establishment of the Christian religion.  In the fifth century, Germain, an intrepid hunter, who afterwards became Bishop of Auxerre, possessed not far from his residence an oak of enormous diameter, a thorough Cernunnos, which he hung with the skins and other portions of animals he had killed in the chase.  In some countries, where the Cernunnos remained an object of veneration, everybody bedecked it in the same way.  The largest oak to be found in the district was chosen on which to suspend the trophies both of warriors and of hunters; and, at a more recent period, sportsmen used to hang outside their doors stags’ heads, boars’ feet, birds of prey, and other trophies, a custom which evidently was a relic of the one referred to.

On pagan idolatry being abandoned, hunters used to have a presiding genius or protector, whom they selected from amongst the saints most in renown.  Some chose St. Germain d’Auxerre, who had himself been a sportsman; others St. Martin, who had been a soldier before he became Bishop of Tours.  Eventually they all agreed to place themselves under the patronage of St. Hubert, Bishop of Liege, a renowned hunter of the eighth century.  This saint devoted himself to a religious life, after one day haying encountered a miraculous stag whilst hunting in the woods, which appeared to him as bearing between his horns a luminous image of our Saviour.  At first the feast of St. Hubert was celebrated four times a year, namely, at the anniversaries of his conversion and death, and on the two occasions on which his relics were exhibited.  At the celebration of each of these feasts a large number of sportsmen in “fine apparel” came from great distances with their horses and dogs.  There was, in fact, no magnificence or pomp deemed too imposing to be displayed, both by the kings and nobles, in honour of the patron-saint of hunting (Fig. 136).

[Illustration:  Fig. 136.—­“How to shout and blow Horns.”—­Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).]

[Illustration:  Ladies Hunting

Costumes of the fifteenth century.  From a miniature in a ms. copy of Ovid’s Epistles No 7234 bis. Bibl. nat’le de Paris.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 137.—­German Sportsman, drawn and engraved by J. Amman in the Sixteenth Century.]