Saint Anthony

The small black wild animals are the trademark of the wilderness. Medieval imagination did not consider the Egyptian desert an uninhabited wasteland, but rather a barren yet populated place, home to various wild creatures. Among these were ravens, which, by the Lord’s command, fed Saint Anthony the Hermit and Saint Paul with bread; deer that nourished other hermits with milk; lions from whose paws merciful hermits extracted thorns, binding them in lifelong gratitude

In the feast of Saint Anthony in Sa Pobla of Mallorca, besides the blessing of the animals, the fire, the pig-roasting and the common banquet, the demons come on the scene as well who, while the saint lived a life of hermit in the desert, “appeared in the form of various beasts, and with their claws and corns were cruelly tearing him.”