St. Leonard Liberating a Child from Prison

Naples, circa 1460
Manuscript Illumination (MS. Ludwig IX 12, fols. 332v-333)
Getty Center, Los Angeles, California

St. Leonard's left hand holds the leg irons that are his attribute, while with his left he assists a person emerging from a barred window in a tower. Above the main image another person folds hands in prayer.

The Getty's title takes the person exiting the prison to be a child, and the label identifies the person praying above as his mother. I can find no episode in this saint's vitae involving a child, nor any in which the person praying for Leonard's intercession is other than the prisoner himself. It is more likely that the exiting person's short tunic and small size compared to Leonard are merely markers of his subordinate relation to the saint – as it is, for example, in this statue outside a German church – and that he is merely a generic prisoner of the type who pray to the saint in so many of his miracle stories.

But what does it mean to pray to a saint? The answer in traditional theology is that one is asking for the saint's intercession with God and that "their intercession is their most exalted service to God's plan."1 The symbolic details in the margin bring home this intimate relation between prayer to God and prayer to a saint. The motto at the bottom is spera in dio, "hope in God." The hares conventionally symbolize the "weak people" of Proverbs 30:28 whom the commentators interpret as the Church, which has "learned to look for safety in the help of her Redeemer."2 The Church's hope of salvation is reflected in the bird's green hue. Green is the color of the vestments worn in the season leading up to Advent, because "green, the hue of plants and trees, bespeaks the hope of life eternal."3 Thus the person praying in the upper margin with eyes cast on St. Leonard most likely represents not a character in the narrative but all those who place their hope in God precisely by praying to the saints.

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Photographed at the site by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

















































1 Catechism of the Catholid Church, ¶2683, c.f. ¶956.

2 For exegetical commentary on hares, see this section of my page on hare symbolism.

3 Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Liturgical colors."