Shadowy Saints: Saint Christopher
What the "dog-headed" saint reveals to the modern Christian
Some saints are ubiquitously known within Christianity. Saint George, Saint Augustine, Saint Joan of Arc. The images and stories of these saints are known by most Christians. They are often extoled as central models of courage and wisdom for young believers. But there are some saints who live on the fringe, who are seen in the shadows of the faith. These saints, in modernity, appear strange and are passed over as the product of superstition in a more ancient, mystic church. Many modern Christians, however, are being awakened to the need for a thick and mysterious Christianity. A thin Christianity leaves a man hungry, disillusioned, and without wonder. The church becomes the assortment of people in a building on a given Sunday, not an eternal communion of saints always present through union with Christ. The world becomes empty and meaningless, and hope becomes a bleak escapism.
As Christians sojourn through a flat and monochrome modernity, the enchanted tradition of the church is a beacon of beauty and meaning. Christianity is increasingly seen as absurd and even dangerous—and the absurd and dangerous saints therefore are treasured forerunners. Shadowy saints become hopeful companions; guides in the midst of “a perverse and crooked generation.”[1] Saint Christopher is one such guide, who offers wisdom for reconstituting masculinity in the malaise of modern gender confusion.
Saint Christopher (martyred roughly 251 AD), also known as the “dog-headed saint,” is the patron saint of pilgrims and travelers. At various points in Eastern iconography he has been depicted as having the head of a dog, horse, or wolf. In the surviving hagiographies of his life he is described as a Canaanite, Saracen (tribal desert dweller), or “one of the dogheads.”[2] His height is said to be at least eighteen feet tall, and his visage described as “terrible and fearful.”[3] These descriptions immediately invoke the idea of a giant, who’s features and strength stand out from the normal human proportions. Throughout church history Saint Christopher has also been portrayed as a merely human Canaanite giant, without being dog-headed.
As an unbaptized pagan, Saint Christopher “seeks the greatest prince that was in the world,” that he may “serve and obey” him with his great strength.[4] Upon finding the most powerful king in the world, Saint Christopher dwells with him for a time. However, he is confused when he sees the king make the sign of the cross upon hearing the devil’s name. Learning the fear the king has for the devil, Saint Christopher abandons him, and seeks the one who inspires such fear. Finding the devil and seeing “his great following” and “great power,” Saint Christopher submits to the devil’s rule.[5] Glimpsed in this opening description is a foundational element of proper masculinity—the duty to serve in submission to the highest power, and the necessity of a “hunger and thirsting” in pursuing it.[6] Saint Christopher will be satisfied with nothing else than the greatest authority, he searches the world for it, leaving all behind. However, there is great danger in such a journey, for the deception of worldly powers and appearances leads to service of the devil and his demons.
One day, the devil and Saint Christopher happen upon a cross standing beside the road they are travelling down. The devil immediately takes Saint Christopher off the road, and the two avoid the cross by another way. When pressed by Saint Christopher as to his aversion, the devil replies “There was a man called Christ which was hanged on the cross, and when I see his sign I am sore afraid, and flee from it wheresoever I see it.”[7] Saint Christopher, recognizing the power of the cross, abandons the devil and goes in search for this crucified Christ. Not only does this image beautifully communicate the power of the cross, but also the blindness of a disenchanted worldview. The man who sees in a cross the mere reminder of a previous historical event is ignorant of the meaning and spiritual nature of that sacred tree—the devil himself better perceives its power.
Saint Christopher, while attempting to find Christ, meets a desert hermit, who baptizes him and instructs him to pray and fast. Saint Christopher replies that he is unable to and begs the hermit for another task. The hermit tells Saint Christopher of a deep river nearby, which is difficult for men to cross. The Hermit commands him, “Because thou art noble and high of stature and strong in thy members, thou shalt be resident by that river, and thou shalt bear over all them that shall pass there, which shall be a thing right convenable to our Lord Jesu Christ whom thou desirest to serve, and I hope he shall show himself to thee.”[8] Saint Christopher obeys and ferries many people across the river on his shoulders—staff in hand to support him.
One day, he hears a small voice calling for assistance in crossing the river. Leaving his home, he finds no one beside the river. The voice is heard asking again, and Saint Christopher returns to the river to find no one present. A third time the voice summons, and Saint Christopher diligently goes to the river. This time he finds a small child beside the river, who asks to be ferried to the other side. Saint Christopher obliges, but as they travel through the waters, the child begins to weigh more and more, and the waters swell, so much so that he is afraid of drowning. At last, “with great pain” Saint Christopher reaches the other side of the river.[9] Saint Christopher inquires as to the identity of the weighty child, and is told “No wonder, Christopher, if I was heavier / Than all the world, for truly I am more than all the world.”[10] Such a picture is almost too splendid for words. The saintly giant’s search for the greatest and mightiest king led him to a small child; his thirst to serve the strongest led him to the ostensibly weakest. Yet the one he bore on his shoulder is the one who’s hand holds the heights and depths of the universe.[11] Masculinity is more than brute strength and resilience; it is wisdom and humility directing natural ability to reverential service of the world of values. Men must use their natural aggression and strength in service of Christ and His bride the Church. To invoke a universal story, all men must slay the dragon (the world, the flesh, and the devil) to marry the virgin princess (the pure beauty of being one with Christ in His Church).
The child then commands Saint Christopher (who’s very name, which means “Christ-bearer,” is fulfilled) to fix his staff in the ground as a sign, and upon the next day the staff blooms with flowers and fruit. Soon after this encounter, Saint Christopher departs to a nearby pagan city, but finds he is unable to converse with or understand the speech of the people. He prays to God for a “gift of speech” that he should “make plain thy might, that those who persecute thy people may be converted.”[12] God grants his requests, and he converts many people through his words and the miracle of his staff, which continues to bloom when planted in the ground. The local pagan ruler is angered by this, and dispatches knights to arrest him. Saint Christopher, upon refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods, is thrown in prison. The king devises a plot to tempt Saint Christopher by sending a pair of beautiful women into his cell. The women find Saint Christopher praying and are struck with fear “of his cheer and clearness (or in other accounts the “brightness”) of his visage.”[13] The women repent and beg Saint Christopher to pray for them, that God may forgive their sins.[14]
When news of this conversion reaches the king, he is enraged, interrogates the two women, and both are martyred. He then summons Saint Christopher and demands that he sacrifice to the pagan gods or face death. Saint Christopher refuses and is bound in iron and lit on fire. However, the fire does not touch him, and he remains entirely unharmed. The king then commands two hundred of his knights to shoot the bound Saint Christopher with arrows. However, “no arrow touched him, for all stayed in the air / Hanging around him, as though waiting.”[15] The wrathful king approaches Saint Christopher and is struck by an arrow in each eye. Saint Christopher praises God and tells the king “It is my Lord’s will that tomorrow you shall martyr me. Smear your eyes with my blood and good sight will quickly return to you.”[16] Saint Christopher is beheaded the next day. The king follows the word of Saint Christopher, and it is recorded that he “took a little of his (Saint Christopher’s) blood and laid it on his eye, and said: “In the name of God and Saint Christopher! And was anon healed.”[17] The king, upon receiving his sight, repents of his sin and is baptized with his knights.
Saint Christopher’s life is strange, no doubt. It includes obvious biblical parallels: being called by the Lord three times (1 Samuel 3:1-15), the flowering rod as a miraculous sign (Numbers 17:1-10), the brightness of a saint’s face (Exodus 34:29-30, Acts 6:15), blindness smitten upon the wicked by a saint of God (Acts 13:11), and miraculous speech (Acts 2:11-12). These details in the life of Saint Christopher are not given as mere odd, meaningless tidbits of information. Rather, they disclose something about the nature of the masculine and saintly life.
Saint Christopher is driven away from his first master and the devil by their fear of someone greater. Saint Christopher, in contrast to these previous masters, fears only when he is bearing Christ across the raging stream. His fear is of his inability to complete his divine service, not of earthly or demonic powers. In the name of Christ his natural strength is directed toward serving others. He lifts others to places they are unable to traverse on their own, he does not seek to dominate and control the world through his strength. Beginning with sacrificing his natural strengths to God, the true man approaches the world through humility.
Masculine strength is to be used to intimidate and defeat darkness. Saint Christopher represents the heights (quite literally) of natural strength. The knights dispatched to arrest Saint Christopher cannot take him by force, Saint Christopher goes willingly to his martyrdom, having converted the knights to Christ.[18] His life is not that of a helpless man taken advantage of by an evil ruler. He displays the perfection of natural masculine strength, which is not to be paraded about, but rather to bring all things into subjection under Christ.
In Holy Scripture this is demonstrated in the life of Caleb, who’s name quite literally means “dog.” Like Saint Christopher, Caleb is a Canaanite (a stranger, foreigner).[19] He is one of the twelve spies sent to observe the promise land full of giants and is one of two who return courageously ready to fight and conquer the land. Later, when his recorded age is eighty-five, Caleb requests a mountain, on the fringe of Israelite territory, full of great giants, to be given as his inheritance from the Lord. Caleb testifies that “I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me.”[20] Caleb is a picture of the vigorous and masculine strength that conquers the darkness in the hidden high places, that has been pushed to the edge of society.
In our present culture, however, darkness parades itself openly. It is shameful to speak of not just what is done in secret (in the words of Saint Paul) but what is openly celebrated. Like Saint Christopher, we are called today to enter into the cities of the pagan, and bear witness of Christ while appearing like a dog-headed man. The modern Christian man whose outward “public” life is devoted to Christ will increasingly be perceived as a fringe type of human existence. His Godly speech will be controversial, his reverential forms thought of as superstitious and backwards. Yet this life is a more compelling light and witness in a pagan culture.
The paradox of masculine strength is that it is “made perfect in weakness.”[21] Yet this weakness is not of a helpless, flabby man. The weakness of Christ is the weakness of Him who could call down “twelve legions of angels”—but does not.[22] Christian men should possess themselves so that, in self-offering they may be weak. Saint Christopher submits to imprisonment, torture, and even death, in weakness being stronger than all the pagans that surround him. He humbly adores the smallest child as God yet will not bow before the strongest and fiercest pagan deity. The fifth century heretic Nestorius famously proclaimed that he would not worship a child as God. The orthodox Christian response, embodied in Saint Christopher, is to reverentially serve the incarnate Lord, seeing with the eyes of faith. Saint Christopher’s foolishness is true wisdom, as Saint Paul declares.[23] Christians are “For thy sake killed all the day long,” yet, “In all these things are more than conquers.”[24] Saint Christopher towers above the pagan king who is attempting to martyr him and yet stoops to tell him that his blood is healing by the grace of God.
This is the final image of the Godly man. He who’s blood, his life, becomes life giving for others through self-sacrifice. This man can with strength boldly defend the weak and silently go to his martyrdom. In modernity this range of masculinity is especially and desperately needed. Men must staunchly defend the beautiful, true, and holy, while not becoming a cold and hollow reactionary. They must also humble themselves to be martyred—daily in small ways amidst a pagan culture. Saint Christopher is weird. But so must Christian men be today. There is little use in contesting that. The man who wishes to be thought of as “mainstream” will flow in the same direction as the stream. Instead, men must be like Saint Christopher and stand firm in the raging stream of modernity, bearing Christ above them.
[1] Philippians 2:15, NKJV
[2] The Passion of St. Christopher, in Revue Celtique, Vol. XXXIV, (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1913), 309.
[3] The Golden Legend, trans. by William Caxton, compiled by Jacobus de Voragine, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 48.
[4] The Golden Legend, 48.
[5] The South English Legendary, in Medieval Saints: A Reader, trans. by M.A. Stouck, ed. by Mary-Ann Stouck, (Tonawanda, NY: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 571.
[6] Matthew 5:6, KJV. All scripture quotations KJV unless otherwise noted.
[7] The Golden Legend, 49.
[8] Ibid., 50.
[9] Ibid., 51.
[10] The South English Legendary, 575.
[11] Psalm 95:4
[12] The Passion of St. Christopher, 309.
[13] The Golden Legend, 54.
[14] The Passion of St. Christopher, 317.
[15] The South English Legendary, 577.
[16] Ibid., 578.
[17] The Golden Legend, 55.
[18] The South English Legendary, 576.
[19] Numbers 32:12, Joshua 14:6, 14
[20] Joshua 14:11
[21] 2 Corinthians 12:9
[22] Matthew 26:53
[23] 1 Corinthians 3:18
[24] Romans 8:36-37