Always Be Kind to Cats!

Φοῖβος [Phoîbos] the Cat

 

 

When the Little Greek found a kitten trapped in the engine of an old car abandoned on the streets of Athens, she had no choice but to rescue him, take him home, clean him up, feed him, and generally provide him with care. 

I say she had no choice, but, of course, she could have just walked on by, ignored his cries, and left him to perish. But that wouldn't have been very kind. Nor would it have been the Christian thing to do - one is reminded of this teaching from St. Francis:

 

All things of creation are children of the Father and thus brothers of man. God wants us to help animals if they need help. Every creature in distress has the same right to be protected. 

 

Not that the patron saint of animals is much cared for in the Orthodox tradition in which the Little Greek was raised as a child [1]; in fact, some within this tradition view Francesco as a rather suspect character, given to a model of spirituality that veers towards a form of humanistic paganism. 

 

And even an animal-loving Quaker friend of mine found something objectionable in the above quotation, suggesting that this, from the American writer and naturalist Henry Beston, is preferable, as it recognises and respects the otherness of the animal:

"For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not bretheren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." [2]

Ultimately, with or without scripture or other textual support, we need to rethink our relation to animals - and always be kind to cats! 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] As far as I know, the only Orthodox church which venerates St. Francis of Assisi is the monastery at New Skete (Cambridge, NY).   

[2] Henry Beston, The Outermost House, (Doubleday/Doran, 1928).  

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.