St. Christopher: the Dog-Headed Saint

Ágios Christóforos

Kynokephalos

Until I read the 'Sinister Writings of Abel Tiffauges' [1], I had no idea that St. Christopher - the Christ-bearer - was widely believed in Byzantium to belong to the savage race of dog-headed people known as the cynocephali ... 

 

Obviously, the Orthodox Church didn't like to acknowledge this and disapproved of depictions of the saint that showed him as semi-human; it was only from the 17th-century on that artists began to paint Christopher in his full therianthropic glory (though these images were prescribed in 18th-century Russia during the reign of Peter the Great).        

 

The ancient Greeks, of course, were long familiar with canine-headed Egyptian dieties, such as Duamutef (son of Horus) and Anubis (ruler of all things associated with death) and believed that there was a race of dog-headed people living in the mountains of India who wore the skins of animals and communicated by barking.     

The cynocephali afford such a marvellous combination of magic and animality, that they have become archetypal figures within the human imagination, as we can see, for example, in medieval art and literature. Early Christian scholars wrestled with the question of their origin; how could they be descendants of Adam? And, if they weren't descendants of Adam, then how could they be considered human?     

It really is a fascinating topic; one which certainly makes me more interested in the life of St. Christopher, who was not only canine of feature, but described by some as a giant. I do wish he'd dropped the accursed Christ-child in the river, however, and left him there to drown. For if he had, then perhaps the latter's moral legacy would not continue to weigh so heavily upon us all ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Part I of Michel Tournier's brilliant novel The Erl-King, trans. Barbara Bray, (Atlantic Books, 2014). See pp. 35-37. The account given here of the life of St. Christopher is adapted from Jacapo da Varazze's Golden Legend - a collection of hagiographies originally compiled c. 1259-66 and widely read in late-Medieval Europe.