May 30th. St. Hubert.

Standing all by itself on rising ground in a wide field between Rowland’s Castle and Finchdean, and clearly visible from the train on the London to Portsmouth line, is the little St. Hubert’s chapel. This is not a very common church dedication, so who was he? He was born some time in the late 7th century and was a pioneer evangelist to Flanders and in particular to the Ardennes region of what is now southern Belgium. In 705 he became bishop of Maastricht (of Common Market treaty fame, now in Holland) in succession to St. Lambert, and in 716 transferred Lambert’s relics to nearby Liège (Belgium) where he built a cathedral; he is therefore regarded as the first bishop of that city.

The most famous story of St. Hubert concerns his conversion, although it is a tale not known before the 14th century and found in the so-called ‘Acts’ (i.e. biography) of St. Eustace, who is attributed with something similar. While hunting on Good Friday he was stopped in his tracks by seeing an image of the crucified Christ between the antlers of a stag he was pursuing, and this is the scene most frequently used by medieval artists to portray the saint. He is the patron of huntsmen, which may account for the arrival of his cult in England with its ‘hunting shires’, though the story suggests that he should, on the contrary, be seen as the patron of the anti-blood sports movement. He died in 727. Experts tell us in a killjoy way that ‘Hubert’s Chapel’ is actually a chapel in honour of St. John the Baptist, but let us leave the traditional dedication to prevail.