Christopher

ON ST. CHRISTOPHER, MARTYR,

PERHAPS IN LYCIA.

Under Decius.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

St. Christopher, Martyr, perhaps in Lycia.

BY THE AUTHOR J. P.

§ I. His cult from the sacred Calendars, Missals, and Breviaries; the singular veneration in Spain; the shrines there sacred to him.

If anywhere the memory of any holy Martyr shines celebrated throughout the whole Catholic Church, as far and wide as it extends, such certainly ought to be reckoned today's memory of St. Christopher the martyr, most well known everywhere for the celebrity, the antiquity, and the extension of his cult. The memory of the Saint is inscribed on this day in the Latin Calendars; His name the most ancient Martyrologies register on this 25th day of July, on which he is venerated in the West. There is no doubt that the Hieronymian copies mention him, however much both his name and the position of his combat appear somewhat deformed in them: for thus they have: "In the city of Salmon in Lycia, the birthday of holy Christopher." The lesser Roman more correctly: "In the city of Samos, of Christopher the martyr." Ado: "In Lycia, in the city of Samos, of St. Christopher, who, worn down by iron rods, and saved by the power of Christ from the flames of a raging fire, at the last, pierced through with blows, completed his martyrdom by the beheading of his head." Usuard writes "Samon" (see the various readings on this day in the Martyrology of that author edited by us), in the rest conformable to Ado. Wandelbert too wove our Martyr into his metric Martyrology, to say nothing of Rabanus and Notker, who also mention him. There is no need to append here a catalogue of the more recent writers: it will suffice to produce the announcement of today's Roman Martyrology, which runs thus: "In Lycia, of St. Christopher the martyr, who under Decius was worn down by iron rods": the rest agrees almost word for word with Ado and Usuard.

[2] The Latins, therefore, celebrate the annual memory of the Saint on this 25th day of July; but the Greeks on the 9th of May. but the Greeks not so; who dedicate the 9th day of May to his cult, as may be seen in the Typicon accustomed to be cited under the name of St. Sabas, in the Basilian Synaxary, in the Calendar of the Greeks in Genebrard, in the Horologion of the year 1607, in the Anthology, in the Menology which Canisius edited from the version of Sirletus; and there indeed he is given the title of great martyr, as also in his eulogy in Maximus, bishop of Cythera, printed after the great Menaea; by whom he is honored with the following verses:

Τὸν χριστοφόρον οἶδά σε Χριστοφόρε Χριστῷ συνθέντα τῷ Θεῷ διὰ ξίφους. Χριστοφόρον δὲ ἐνάτῃ σύγχροος ἔκταμε χαλκός. That is: "I know you, Christopher, to be a Christ-bearer, joined by the sword as a martyr to Christ God. And on the ninth the like-hued blade cut down Christopher."

"We know you, Christopher, the Christ-bearer; and at the same time whom the sword joined as a martyr to Christ God. On the ninth a like-colored sword slew Christopher."

To these may be added both the Greek-Muscovite Ephemerides before the first volume of May; and a copy which we preserve of the Slavo-Russian Menology, the Menaeon of Chifflet, the Menology of Florence among the Dominican Fathers, shelf 10, codex 2. And from these it is concluded that the cult of our Athlete was by far most celebrated both in the West and in the East. To which may be added that Christopher is inscribed in a Litany, found at Frankfurt on the Main, and edited in the year 1555 by George Wicel the elder among the Incitements of sincere piety; and which he says was in use in the churches in the times of the emperor Louis the Pious.

[3] That his cult was greatly propagated in the West, is clear from the Breviaries But of the cult we have said enough in general; now let us descend to particulars, about to bring forward from the Missals and Breviaries those things which conduce to illustrating the cult of particular places. In the Directory of the church and diocese of Venice, which was published in print in the year 1683, at the 25th of July is noted "the feast of St. Christopher in the Roman Church, on the Island." The Proper of the city and diocese of Trent of the year 1627, on the said 25th or 27th day, places "St. Christopher the martyr, double." The Order of the divine Office for the year of the Lord 1665, according to the rite of the Roman Breviary and the custom of the Vatican basilica, on the 27th of July places him as a semidouble. We said some time ago, in the omitted matters at the 29th of January, that the Saint is then venerated in the church of Arras with a double Office, the Breviary of that church being cited; which rite our copy of the Calendar of Nocera, which is drawn from the Directory of the year 1637, also prescribes at the 27th of July. In the Order of reciting the divine Office and celebrating Masses, etc., with the feasts which are generally celebrated in Spain, for the year 1718, in which that Order came out printed at Madrid, I read the following: "The 25th of July, of Christopher M., double, in the mother church of Compostela, on account of the relic; but it is transferred to the first unimpeded day." Of the Breviary of the Mozarabs it will be spoken below.

[4] and from the Missals Very many Missals, too, published in print, are at hand, from which the propagated veneration of our holy Martyr may abundantly be established; namely that of Mainz of the year 1493; that of Speyer of the year 1497; the "Speciale," as it is called, printed at Strasbourg in the year 1512; that of Verdun 1554; that of Utrecht 1514; that of the Order of St. John, Knights of Malta, 1505; those of Tournai and Würzburg 1509; that of Milan 1522; that of Cambrai 1527; that of Speyer, which is noted as printed before the year 1540; of which Missals some indeed assign a proper prayer, some also a proper Mass of St. Christopher; to recount which severally would be long and tedious. Yet it will be of service to produce a single example for the sake of a specimen, from the cited Missal of Milan: "Over the people: O God, who by ineffable mercy, through thy most blessed martyr Christopher, didst recall the souls of many from the error of unbelief to the light of faith: grant to thy peoples, by the intercession of his merits, to remain stable in the same faith, and to be effective in work. Through."

[5] "Over the assembly: Almighty everlasting God, who didst deign to reveal the knowledge of thy Son, our Lord Jesus which are set forth. Christ, by a wondrous showing, to thy blessed martyr Christopher: grant propitiously that, by his intervention, the abundant bounty of thy clemency may purify our minds, the darkness of sins being wiped away. Through the same thy Son, etc. Over the offerings: O God, to whom by the palm of martyrdom the most blessed martyr Christopher willed to offer himself as a sacrifice, mercifully sanctify the victim of thy people, and grant that we may worthily present it for the salvation of the souls of those who receive it. Through." There follows the Preface from the Acts, of which in its place. "Postcommunion: Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that thy family, celebrating the triumph of thy blessed martyr Christopher, refreshed by the sacrament of thy body, may, by the intercession of his martyrdom, deserve to enjoy the sweetness of the heavenly banquets. Who with the Father, etc." But among so many and so various regions of the West, to which the veneration of the Saint has been spread far and wide, Spain snatches away the palm in this kind before the others.

[6] In the first place the Mozarabic Missal, printed at Toledo in the year 1500 by command of the most eminent Cardinal Francisco Ximenez, Among the Mozarabs at Toledo archbishop of Toledo, most clearly indicates that there, in the chapel of the body of Christ, in which the sacred Offices are performed daily by that rite by the special foundation of the praised Cardinal, the annual memory of St. Christopher is celebrated with singular veneration. To form some rough idea, a very few things will suffice, which I myself, while residing at Toledo, extracted from the said Missal, in which are prescribed the Office, prayer, and Mass of the Saint and his Companions. Another prayer. And it is said: "For from the sacred laver Christopher was washed and so named, because, having put on Christ, and now filled with the grace of Christ, and strengthened by the power of Christ, he was glorious even by the example of Christ …" There follows After the names: a prayer at the peace. The Illation, or preface: "Who dost show this thy holy martyr Christopher both terrible by his bodily appearance, and eminent by the grace of his gift, and powerful by the glory of thy name … Whom (the emperor) he so terrified by his life-giving aspect, that he hastened to fall from his throne; truly beholding a great worshiper of Christ: whose countenance the enemy, terrified, confounded within himself, had shrunk from." Then at the Lord's Prayer it is thus said: "Who thy holy martyr Christopher, while, according to that which in all things the accustomed appearance remains, he stands unlike, etc." And these prove the singular cult of the Saint there, although they need correction, insofar as they seem to build up or suppose the gigantic stature of the Saint.

[7] Indeed, if we believe Tamayo at this 25th day of July, and elsewhere in Spain the Saint is honored with singular veneration. the glorious memory of our holy Martyr among the Spaniards has so effectively grown up, that there will scarcely be a town in whose church either his tallness is not preserved depicted, or a hermitage to so great a Martyr is not found built. So he, magnificently enough, if not hyperbolically. How much more simply and correctly Baronius in the notes to the Roman Martyrology! "Frequent," he says, "and religious was the cult of Christopher the martyr in the Spains"; which he proves from a monastery and a church; concerning which, and others built to the honor of the Saint both there and elsewhere in various regions of the West, we are now about to treat.

[8] "There was," says Baronius in the same place, "at Cordova a noble and ancient memory of St. Christopher, A church there and a monastery at Cordova under his name, a church and a monastery named from him, of which St. Eulogius makes mention, when he treats of another Christopher, an alumnus of the same monastery; who, as he imitated him in name, so also in deed, attained the crown of martyrdom in the time of the persecution of the Saracens." In volume 4 of Spain Illustrated are contained the Works of St. Eulogius, elucidated with the scholia of Ambrosio de Morales of Cordova; where in the Memorial of the Saints, book 2, chapter 4, is noted the monastery of St.

Christopher, "which is situated in the show-place of the city (of Cordova), on the southern side, above the further bank of the Baetis; which the most blessed Habentius is said to have inhabited there." And in chapter 9 there recurs "the basilica of St. Christopher the martyr, which is beyond the river on the southern side."

[9] concerning which place a few things are observed. But in chapter 10 he places "the hall of St. Christopher, which is beyond the river." Yet up to now we have no alumnus of that monastery of the same name; whom we likewise do not find there in chapter 11, which Baronius doubtless wished to hint at, since it has for its title "Christopher and Leovigild, monk martyrs"; but this Christopher is there written as having entered "the monastery of St. Martin, which is in the mountains of Cordova, in a place which is called Roiana." Where, then, did Baronius find that alumnus in St. Eulogius? The monastery of St. Christopher, of which he will have the Martyr of the same name slain by the Saracens to have been an alumnus, was wrongly placed by him here for the monastery of St. Martin. Furthermore, in the Scholia on chapter 4, which we have cited, concerning the monastery of St. Christopher it is thus said: "A temple of St. Julian, of very ancient workmanship, almost opposite the city, is now to be seen. It may have changed that name. Certainly there appear no vestiges of any other." But let us, leaving aside minutiae of this kind, pursue the veneration of the Saint among the Spaniards.

[10] Likewise a church at Valencia; a monastery in Castile. That St. Vincent Ferrer, the greater part of the Jews of the city of Valencia having been converted to Christ in the year 1412, caused their synagogue to be changed into a church, dedicated under the name of St. Christopher on the 10th of July, a recent French Legendist relates in the Life of the Saint, which he published at this 25th day of July; but he cites no author. It is strange that Tamayo passed this over in silence, if he found it anywhere; especially since he treats of the relics translated to Valencia. The deeds of St. Vincent Ferrer were illustrated at the 5th of April; but nothing concerning that church could we find in them, either there, or in the preliminary Commentary, ibid. page 482, no. 16: where nevertheless was the proper place for treating of that matter. It is indeed said in the Life, page 495, that "in the various cities of both Spains he brought above twenty-five thousand of the Jews to receive the Christian religion, and caused their temples to be dedicated into churches of Christ"; among which perhaps was the aforesaid synagogue of the Jews; although this can no more determinately be elicited from those words than from the genus, among the Philosophers, this or that determinate species. Meanwhile, however, we do not deny the matter, but desire a fitting authority for the truth of it. A monastery of SS. Vincent and Christopher in Castile Mabillon mentions in the Benedictine Annals, volume 2, page 324.

§ II. Other places sacred to him in the West, as also in the East; relics in Italy and Spain.

Italy too contributed its share in sacred places dedicated under the name of St. Christopher, which are as it were certain tokens of a singular veneration toward him. [A monastery in Sicily in the time of St. Gregory the Great; likewise a shrine at Milan;] St. Gregory the Great, Pope, writing in the Epistles from the Register, book 8, chapter 33, to Secundinus, bishop of Taormina in Sicily, mentions a monastery of St. Christopher, "which," he says, "is established in your diocese." Sigonius, book 3 on the Kingdom of Italy, at the year 743, names a basilica of blessed Christopher "at the fiftieth milestone from Ravenna." A temple, too, at Milan is noted in the Antiquities of that city, which John Anthony Castiglione collected from its parishes, part 1, section 2, fascicle 9, from page 252; but those things which are afterward there set forth at length we contract into a compendium, to be read more diffusely there by him whom it may concern; namely, the shrine of St. Christopher, where, when, and by whom it was founded; reduced by vow into a more august form by the citizens of Milan. Moreover, it seems opportune to transcribe here those things which he recounts thus concerning the hospital erected there, from page 264: "Now it remains to be noted that formerly, at this new shrine of St. Christopher, certain of our citizens attached to this sacred building exercised hospitality, to the honor and glory of the most blessed John the Baptist, James, and Christopher, and Christina, and for the help and support of the poor and wretched; but afterward, their counsel being changed, they instituted a confraternity under the same patron Saints, and provided for the sacred rite to be performed there from the oblations of pious men, and especially of Philip Maria, Duke (of Milan), distributing to the needy whatever was left over from the annual revenues which they possessed; they also sought from the prince the confirmation of the confraternity, and of certain of its statutes."

[12] From this munificence of Duke Philip, both the name of Ducal chapel was given to the new building already erected, concerning which several notices here and he himself was held and named its founder: although neither anything of that is attested by public eulogy, nor anything of it found founded on truth, as, he says, appeared most openly above even from the very letters of the aforesaid archiepiscopal vicar. Yet that the annual revenues of this richer shrine were then, both from the Ducal liberality, with the addition especially of other most abundant subventions of pious citizens, and from the quantity of the proceeds which in the course of time were paid to this religious place, in which, besides the ministers, so many poor were fed, after the manner of a proper hospice, it is easy to conjecture. But that, with the various misfortunes of our fatherland, both of war and of barrenness, succeeding, the revenues decreased and were diminished, is clearly established from the aforesaid letter of the archiepiscopal vicar; in which it is read that this shrine of St. Christopher has in annual revenues 227 pounds and twelve imperial shillings. But that about the year 1500 revenues of this kind increased up to 312 pounds 9 imperial shillings, and that the immovable goods, from which they were received, were valued at eight thousand two hundred and ninety pounds; and it is probable that thereafter they were always augmented, even as the prices of other things.

[13] are given. The care and duty of exacting the revenues, as also of disbursing them for various uses, fell upon the society of St. Christopher long since erected, and, with the aforesaid Duke of Milan approving, was committed to it. Of this Society are twelve honorable citizens; into which number some also of the equestrian and senatorial order have been enrolled. They distribute yearly certain alms to the poor, the birthday of our Savior approaching, perhaps in place of the food which was formerly furnished to the needy in that hospice. Then, having subjoined a few things both concerning two houses in the region of this sacred building, a vineyard, garden, and open plot, and the aforesaid society's rent, and concerning the annual tribute to be paid to the abbot of St. Vincent there (concerning which, lest we be longer, the praised author may be consulted), he proceeds thus: "It is duly consecrated after the ecclesiastical manner, as the Acts of St. Charles surveying it attest; and it has a length of 24 cubits, but a breadth of 23. It was likewise divided and parted into two parts, a wall and an iron grating being formerly interposed: but now, these being removed and taken from the midst, it has been reduced and restored into one larger building." There was also a custom of preserving the Eucharist in it from the feast of Easter to the feast of St. Martin, according to the same author; where he also treats of the boys and girls who are there instructed in the Christian precepts; and of the right of the cure of St. Vincent over the same building, which was confirmed by decree of the archiepiscopal vicar.

[14] Various other places in the West Various monasteries in the West, distinguished by the Saint's name, the indexes of Mabillon to the Benedictine Annals supply; upon recounting which severally we do not linger. "At Auvergne," says Saussay, "an ancient church is to be seen, illustrious by his patronage; and also at Paris another, conspicuous even by a parochial title." In a book published in French in the year 1668, whose title is The metropolitan and primatial church of St. Andrew of Bordeaux, among the ecclesiastical benefices of that archbishopric are noted "St. Christophle de Castillon," page 393; "St. Christophle de Donzac," page 400. In our French Manuscript concerning the Saints of Auxerre, which is prefixed as extracted from the Martyrology of that church, on this day he is marked as patron of the churches commonly called Sessy les Bois, Coulanges-les-Vineuses, Nitry, Fontenay near Mailly. Of his relics there are some in Charbuy, and in Mailly le Chateau. In the history of the captured and liberated city of Auxerre, by the very illustrious J. Lebeuf, canon and precentor of the church of Auxerre, published in French not long since, page 161, he is placed as patron of Marciac, commonly le Val de Merci. The holy French-Latin Onomasticon of Simon de Peyronet, printed at Toulouse in the year 1658, at the end among the omitted places: "Christal, Christopher, celebrated martyr, who under this appellation has a church, not far distant from Toulouse; and from him not a few women are named Christailles in baptism." But an altar in honor of the same our Saint in the church of Reims, consecrated by St. Leo IX, Pope, you have in the preliminary Commentary to his Life, at the 19th of April, page 644. As for what pertains to our own Belgium: the cathedral church of Roermond, which is at the same time the only parochial one in that city, is dedicated under the title of St. Christopher; on the summit of whose very lofty tower a statue of the same Saint is to be seen set forth. At Brussels, opposite our college, is an old men's home under that name; at Bruges a chapel in the great market, into which on fixed days the girls come together, to be instructed by ours in Christian doctrine.

[15] The parish of St. Christopher at Mainz is noted in volume 1 of Affairs of Mainz, published in the year 1722 distinguished with the name of St. Christopher. at Frankfurt on the Main; but the apparition concerning the founding of a monastery occurs in Leibniz on the Writers of Brunswick, volume 1, page 580 (which we shall narrate below). And in the same place, from page 703, occur these things: "It pleased three brothers, counts, and Mathilda … to assign specially to St. Christopher the martyr their principal place, whence they had taken their origin … Whence, because they were four, they ordained as many canon priests there, and appointed over them a provost named Sibold; which place was afterward changed into a monastery of the Order of St. Benedict, called Rheinhausen; which was built not far from the town of the same name, in the diocese of Mainz," as from Trithemius Mabillon relates in the Benedictine Annals at the year 1096 at the end. Bucelinus too may be seen, in the second part of Sacred Germany, page 75. Likewise a parochial church is to be seen at Cologne, from Gelenius on the Greatness of that city, book 3, syntagma 33; where also of its origin and progress; and in §3, among the feasts, it is said that "they celebrate the patron's day yearly on the 25th of July"; in §4 is placed among the fraternities that which is of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of St. Christopher. Add the chapel of SS. Christopher, Erasmus, and Sebastian, book 3, syntagma 116. In the same place, in the Calendar, book 4, at the said 25th day of July it is said: "on the same day, in the parochial church, its patronal celebrations and procession." There will perhaps be those who think that we are excessive in heaping up

so studiously so many minutiae, scarcely worthy of relation; but we think that even small things are not to be neglected, provided that the glory of our most celebrated Martyr can to some extent be illustrated by them, when greater things are lacking which may be recorded of him from elsewhere sufficiently according to his merit.

[16] Nor does it seem to be doubted that in the East he once attained the highest celebrity of cult; At Constantinople the dedication-feast and one shrine, but only a very few of those things have come to our knowledge, the rest being doubtless buried in the oblivion of many years. A shrine and dedication-feast of St. Christopher on the 16th of December at Constantinople are found in Du Cange's Christian Constantinople, book 4, page 121, from the Menaea; which shrine was beside the shrine of St. Polyeuctus; but the Menaea on the 9th of May place the shrine sacred to him as having existed near the holy great-martyr George ἐν τῷ Κυπαρισσίῳ (that is, in the Cypress-grove), in which the synaxis of our same Saint is said to be held. Is that shrine the same in both places, or different? Du Cange confesses that he does not know. Tillemont mentions only one chapel out of the Menaea at Constantinople, where his feast was celebrated. To the recent French Legendist it seems that a double shrine existed there; and so that the one was different from the other. In the topographical map of the city of Constantinople, divided into three parts, such as is said to have been described by an anonymous author who lived in the time of Alexius Comnenus, and is given before volume 2 of the Eastern Empire in Banduri; in that map, I say, I find two churches of St. George; and one indeed at the gate of Polyander, or, as the Menaea at the 23rd of April, in Deuteron (see Banduri page 484); but the other plainly opposite to it, and different in the whole city, in Mangana (see again Banduri page 606).

[17] Between the two the church of St. Polyeuctus is shown in the middle. nay, even another: a monastery in Galatia. But whether, and which of those two shrines of St. George, was situated in the Cyparissia, is unascertained by us; but whichever it was, since the shrine of St. Polyeuctus, beside which the shrine of St. Christopher was placed, and both shrines of St. George, stand at so great an interval apart on either side, it follows that it should be said that a double shrine of our Martyr existed at Constantinople; and one indeed beside the shrine sacred to St. Polyeuctus, but the other beside that sacred to St. George. That in the time of St. Theodore of Sykeon, who died in the year 613, there existed in Galatia a monastery of St. Christopher, in which dwelt women and virgins consecrated to God, you have from the Commentary preliminary to his Life at the 22nd of April, page 32; concerning which consult there the Life itself, pages 38, 43, and 57. Now let us for a while return to the way we left, about to survey various regions of the West for the sake of the relics, which under a true or an assumed name of St. Christopher are said to be preserved there in several places. And first let us begin from Italy.

[18] Relics in Italy, Panciroli, in the Hidden Treasures of the city of Rome, places a shoulder in the Vatican temple of St. Peter; an arm in St. Mary at the Aemilian gate, commonly del Popolo, and in St. Peter in Chains; and relics in others; as may be seen in the Index of relics at the end of the said book. Charles Bartholomew Piazza, in the sacred Hemerology of Christian and pagan Rome, part 2, page 82, mentions relics at St. Sabina. Masini, in Bologna Surveyed, also notes relics; as also our own Papebroch, in his manuscript Roman Journey, page 220, an arm at Ravenna. A bone from the body of St. Christopher the martyr you have among the relics of the shrine of Trani, in us at the 2nd of June, page 258. In the Index of relics of the church of Brindisi, which is appended to the Offices of the holy patron Saints of that church, printed at Rome in the year 1583, are noted the arm-bones of St. Christopher the martyr. The above-alleged Castiglione affirms, among the sacred pledges of the shrine of St. Christopher of which we have treated, that a jaw of St. Christopher is preserved, page 266. And a little after, in the same place, "There is to be seen," he says, "in a tabernacle of brass that great tooth of St. Christopher, which was given as a gift to the confraternity of SS. John the Baptist, James, Christopher, and Christina, under certain statutes amply and fully set out in a certain public eulogy among the Acts of Joannolus Piscina the notary, recorded on the 6th of the Ides of November in the year 1400. That all the aforesaid sacred relics were anciently in this shrine was made plain, then especially when St. Charles had come hither to visit, from several ancient inventories, and from some public documents also, guaranteed by a notary's faith; and by right and merit the same holy Archbishop approved them, and praised them as worthy of all honor." The same author, page 259, commemorates relics of the same Saint among the people of Lodi. That a part of the shoulder is preserved at Rossano, you have in Ughelli's Sacred Italy, volume 9, column 380. In the index of the relics of Verona, which is placed at the end of the book entitled Ancient Monuments of the holy bishops of Verona, etc., published at Venice in the year 1576, the name of Christopher recurs several times; but that is singular, that among the sacred remains of the church of St. Christopher, or of the monastery of nuns, it is noted, folio 78, concerning a bone of his throat and his tongue.

[19] and in Spain; concerning which a few things Now Spain calls us. That the venerable relics of the same Martyr are preserved at Toledo, from the Toledan Breviary according to the rule of St. Isidore, Baronius relates in his notes. "I would believe," says Tamayo, "that the relics were translated thither a little after the holy Martyr's combat." But why does the good Tamayo believe this? On the authority, forsooth, of the ill-employed pseudo-chronicles, ground down in six hundred places in our work, which here I forbear both to report and to refute. That forge of falsehoods is by now more well known to all learned men everywhere than that it ought to detain us here for even a little by any right of its own. But he affirms that in the year 828 they were thence translated to Valencia; but it merits just as much belief, since he proves it from the sole pseudo-Julian chronicle. It may be believed, from the Catalogue of relics of the holy Toledan Church, drawn up by the most eminent Don Bernardo de Rojas y Sandoval, archbishop of Toledo, no. 44, which he cites, that even now in the shrine of the aforesaid holy Toledan Church some relics under the name of St. Christopher are preserved. He adds that in the metropolitan greater basilica of Valencia a molar and other pledges rest, from Gaspar Escolano's history of Valencia, volume 1, column 954, no. 2 and following; but see, I pray, how accurate Tamayo is, after his manner; for Escolano there treats of the monastery, apparition, and image of the Saint; but of the molar or jawbone or maxilla he makes not even a word's mention.

[20] Bivar, in the Commentaries on the year 496 of the pseudo-Maximus Chronicle, are corrected by us. after he had said that the relics of the Saint were translated to Astorga, affirms that there a certain portion of a jawbone, clearly demonstrating the tallness of the man, is honorably preserved in the cathedral church. "I saw it," he says, "reverently in the year of Christ 1631 …, and I perceived that the half jawbone weighed thirteen common pounds of 16 ounces." Away with trifles worthy of the author, and unworthy of the Saint. That in the church of St. James of Compostela one arm of St. Christopher is held, Gil Gonzalez Davila notes in the Treasury of that church, volume 1 of the Ecclesiastical Theater, page 20; but Molina renders the matter suspect in the Description of Galicia, folio 5 verso, when, treating of the relics of the said church, he reckons among them that arm, and a whole one indeed, which, as we have from his notes, "by its size and quantity manifests correctly, if we believe him, of what body it is." Of similar flour is the columellar tooth, which Tamayo attributes to the church of Coria from the same Gil Gonzalez; whom see, volume 2, folio 441. And of these more than enough; to linger longer upon which would be nothing else than to waste time on things by no means honorable to the Saint, and to abuse the reader's patience. Among the monks of the monastery of the Escorial various parts of bones are preserved, which are described in the reliquary-list or inventory of relics, communicated to us when we were there. But now let us pass to other sacred pledges, bearing the Saint's name, and preserved elsewhere among the nations.

§ III. The sacred remains among the French, Germans, and Belgians; likewise at Constantinople; his patronage, confraternities.

A finger in the monastery of Centula in Picardy, volume 3 of February, page 103; relics in the basilica of Trier, ibid. page 454, you will find; The Saint's relics are recounted among the French, Germans, as also among the people of Bologna, volume 5 of July, page 297. Mention of St. Christopher the martyr is made in the very numerous catalogue of relics granted by the empress Eleonora to the discalced nuns of Vienna, in us, volume 5 of May, at the 21st day, page 9. Among the sacred pledges of the monastery of Muri among the Swiss, in the Work on the Writers of German affairs, published in the year 1718, volume 2, column 419, the name of Christofer, and of Christopher, ibid. column 421, is noted. Among the various sacred remains sought out by St. Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, "the precious relics of Christopher and of St. Pantaleon …, to whom as patrons he more especially devoted himself …, he drew, by a wondrous circuit, from various places to the most holy see of his church," as was said at the 21st of January, page 348. On this matter Leibniz too may be seen, On the Writers of Brunswick, volume 1, page 283, in the Life of the praised Bruno, which he published. But in Gelenius, On the Greatness of the city of Cologne, book 3, syntagma 3, §2, to the collegiate basilica of St. Severin a shoulder-blade is ascribed; ibid. syntagma 4, §2, to the collegiate church of St. Cunibert a toe; syntagma 40, §2, to the Carthusians of Cologne a finger; syntagma 52, §2, to the nuns at the Maccabees a tooth; and several other relics are noted elsewhere. In the Vestige of pious Bohemia of our Albert Chanowsky, page 81, occurs a thumb: but in the Catalogue of the monastery of Uttenburen our Saint has a place, as may be seen in the Ecclesiastical Swabia of Francis Petri, page 843.

[22] and the Belgians: In Raissius's Belgian Hierogazophylacium the following are recounted: of the bones, at the monastery of St. Aubert of the canons regular of St. Augustine at Cambrai, page 81; a small bone of the head at our English Fathers' at Saint-Omer, page 161; at the cathedral church of Bruges, of the hand and garments, page 200; at Liège, an arm, page 280; likewise an arm at Tongres in the collegiate church of the Blessed Mary, page 330; at Denain, among the Benedictine nuns, a prodigious tooth (and therefore with reason suspect to us), page 201; at the Premonstratensians of Floreffe near Namur, a bone, page 219; at the Cistercians of Wevelgem, between Courtrai and Menen, a great arm-bone, page 549; in the metropolitan church of Cambrai, a great bone, page 334; at ours in Mechlin, a little bone from the head, page 494. From reporting others out of Raissius we forbear. Of the people of Arrouaise in Artois we made mention at the 13th of January, page 834. Now, leaving the West, let us proceed to the East.

[23] [likewise those which at Constantinople, to the abbey of St. Vincent in the diocese of Chartres] Du Cange, Christian Constantinople, book 4, 112, treating of the shrine of St. James, the Lord's brother: "Constantinople having been taken by our men (in the year 1204)," he says, "Gervase de Castelnau, a noble Frenchman, of the diocese

of Chartres (concerning whom the same author relates much in the Observations on his Geoffroy de Villehardouin, from page 256, no. 5), had granted the right hand of St. James to the abbey of St. Vincent of the same diocese; and that the head of St. Christopher, besides other relics, was added to the same right hand, is indicated by the following tetrastich, which the praised author affirms is read in the cloister of the monastery:

"In the year one thousand twice a hundred and twelve, Gervase, lord of Castelnau, died. He himself gave a finger of Nicholas, the right hand of James, the sweet wood of the cross, and the head of Christopher."

By this abbey understand St. Vincent in the Wood (St. Vincent aux Bois), of the Order of canons regular of St. Augustine; founded before the year 1212, from the chartulary of the abbey; as you may see in volume 4 of Gallia Christiana in the Sammarthani, page 949; consult also the index of abbeys prefixed to the same volume.

[24] were translated, whose inscriptions are given. Moreover, that of these sacred remains only the true cross, as it is said to be called, survives, and the head-bone of St. Christopher, Du Cange there attests, laid up, as he adds, within a double hemisphere of gilded bronze, opened in the middle into an oval form; where St. Christopher is seen depicted after the manner of an armed soldier, holding a spear in his right hand, leaning on a shield with his left, with these characters: Ο ΑΓΙΟC ΧΡΙCΤΟΦΟΡΟC (that is: "St. Christopher"). Below, these characters are read, fashioned after the manner of that age, according to the same author:

† Ο ΜΙΧΑΗΛ ΠΛΟΥΤΩ CΕ ΤΟΝ ΧΡΙCΤΟΦΟΡΟΝ: ΚΡΑΤΕΙ ΚΡΑΤΟC CΟΥ ΜΑΡΤΥC ΕCΤΕΡΙΓΜΕΝΟC: ΚΑΙ CΕ CΤΕΦΑΝΩCΩΝ Δ᾽ ΑΠΑΡΧΩΝ ΤΟ CΤΕΦΟC: That is: "I Michael enrich (adorn) thee, Christopher; keep thou thy strength, O confirmed Martyr; and I crown thee, and the crown is from thy first-fruits."

Which Du Cange thus renders into Latin: "I Michael (perhaps Ducas the emperor) adorn (πλουτῶ) thee Christopher; preserve (or possess) thy strength, O confirmed Martyr; and I crown thee: but the little crown is from thy first-fruits." Now, whether by Du Cange's conjecture it was Michael Ducas, emperor of the East in the eleventh century somewhat advanced, or perhaps some other emperor of the same name in the same century, who adorned those remains of our Saint with a reliquary; it is sufficiently clear that they are to be esteemed above many others, both on account of the place in which they were preserved, and from which they are reported to have been translated, and on account of the ancient inscription with which they are protected.

[25] That men conceived the highest hope of the most powerful patronage of this holy Champion with God, The Saint honored among the Auxiliaries; also patron against the plague, is an argument for this: that they wished him by a singular title to preside over their own miseries and straits. That among the holy Auxiliaries, honored formerly with a special Mass in the ancient Missals, and namely the Utrecht one, and the Missal of the Order of Preachers of the year 1550, we said at the 23rd of April, page 149. The above-cited Castiglione, page 261, records that the Milanese fled to the Saint in time of plague; and among the various reasons why this was done, he places that one, page 262, that St. Christopher was pierced through with arrows, and so deserved that he who in his own self experienced the wounds of arrows might be able to succor others who had recourse to him, that they might be able to turn aside and avoid the arrows of the infecting * plague. On this matter our own Theophilus Raynaud too may be consulted, in the Lyonese Hagiology, page 514. That the Saint's image was, in time of plague, set forth in several places at Valencia by the counsel of St. Vincent Ferrer, we are taught from Escolano, history of Valencia, part 1, book 5, column 959.

[26] Our own Martin Delrio, in the Magical Disquisitions, book 6, and demons. chapter 2, section 3, question 3, from John Molinet's Belgian Chronicle at the year 1490, relates that "the demons possessing those energumens of Quercetum, of whom," he says, "I have treated more than once, complained among other things that a great many spoils of souls were daily snatched from them by the Mother of mercy, and also by that Giant, the bearer of the boy, and by another the bearer of a wheel, and another of a tower": for thus, abstaining from the holy names of Mary, Christopher, Catherine, and Barbara, they alluded to the ecclesiastical painting. A most ample field of the Saint's glory is opened to us by the sacred confraternities, which we read were erected in Germany, a great argument, surely, of the confidence conceived among his clients concerning his most present patronage. It will be of service to subjoin the notices which we have on this matter, excerpted and transcribed by us on the faith of him who sent them hither:

[27] Among the manuscripts concerning St. Christopher which are at hand, A confraternity in the Pennine Alps, we have notes on the Life of St. Christopher the martyr; joined to them a letter, given the 4th of July in the year 1688 from the monastery of St. Lambert in Styria by Christopher Jäger to our Papebroch; by which he signifies that he transmits with this letter of his the little notes concerning St. Christopher which he promised and had ready to hand. Moreover, concerning that monastery may be consulted the Compendium of Gregory Ulrich of Chemnitz, published at Salzburg in the year 1604; as also the history of Salzburg, first composed by Joseph Mezger, prior at St. Peter's there, and afterward, after his death, brought to a conclusion by his own brothers Francis and Paul, who professed the same institute of the Benedictine life there, and published at Salzburg in the year 1692; in whose book 6, page 1188, is exhibited a catalogue of the lord abbots of that free and exempt monastery. The aforesaid notices, then, thus record, to our purpose: "It is not to be passed over … a confraternity … to the honor of St. Christopher the martyr in the Pennine Alps, lying near Vindelicia and the valley of the Inn, commonly Arlberg (Gabriel Bucelinus, in his topographical Rhaetia, calls it the mountain of Arula), concerning which Paul Merula treats more fully in his Cosmography, part 2, book 4, chapter 5, from Simler and Aventinus, instituted by a certain man of the lowest condition, but of ancient piety, Henry of Kempten.

[28] whose beginnings and progress "This man, being given to feeding sheep in the aforesaid Alps, and pitying the destruction of many perishing there of cold and snow, and frequently straying into the precipices, being enriched with fifteen florins which he had saved up in the whole decade of his service, and moreover aided by the largesses of the faithful collected by him with the greatest care throughout Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland, under the title and patronage of St. Christopher, whose charity in carrying pilgrims across in the name of Christ he piously emulated, began the said confraternity in the year 1386; and he attests in the very letters of foundation that in the first seven years the lives of fifty travelers were thereby saved: in which year also the same confraternity was confirmed by the ordinary authority of Frederick, bishop of Brixen, and the territorial authority of Leopold, duke of Austria, and the right of raising a house and chapel on the summit of the mountain was given. To it from the beginning up to the year 1414 four Dukes of Austria gave their name; fourteen bishops, namely of Salzburg, Chiemsee, Brixen, Freising, Trent, Chur, Constance, Cologne, Passau, Strasbourg, Passau, Bamberg, Würzburg, and Mainz.

[29] and also its restoration is described. "Likewise Burchard and Florian; the former abbot of Pfäfers, the latter of Garsten in Upper Austria. Of the stock of marquises and counts, sixteen; of the equestrian order, twenty-nine; but of the lower nobility, above eight hundred: besides their wives, enrolled in the same confraternity in almost equal number; all of whose names and insignia are contained in the book from which these and many other things were transcribed and published in print by the Rev. Don Jacob Feurstein, chamberlain and parish priest at Zams, an excellent administrator and propagator of the same confraternity. For since, from the fourteenth century, * charity growing cold, and heresies too afterward pressing in, not only the devotion, but almost the very memory of this confraternity had vanished, he took care that the piety hitherto obliterated should be revived in the year 1627, and augmented with a great number of members, and adorned with pontifical indulgences; and also instructed with certain statutes strengthened by the ordinary authority of John, bishop of Brixen: among which a singular mark deserves the ordinance §12, by which provision is made for the poor crossing those Alps with free food and lodging; for those straying or in peril, with an escort; for needy priests, with a stipend."

[30] The same notices had premised another confraternity … which, instituted in honor of this holy Martyr in Carinthia in the year 1517, Hieronymus Megiser in the Chronicle of Carinthia, Another in Carinthia and from him Don Albert Reichart, abbot of St. Paul, in the historical Breviary of Carinthia, published at Klagenfurt in the year 1675, records at the same year 1517. Its author, Don Sigismund Dietrichstein, besides the merits of his lineage and of his other virtues, was a hero most highly praised for his piety toward God, and he circumscribed it with twenty laws, by which especially he eliminated blasphemies and the mad contests of drinkers, with the addition of the symbol of a pendant image of St. Christopher, to be worn by each of the members from the neck or the cap. Which excellent piety of Dietrichstein went as an example to very many chief men of Carinthia, Styria, and Carniola, enrolled in this society; whose names the same cited Megiser and abbot Reichart exhibit. But among the other laws of this confraternity, recited at length by Megiser, that one is worthy of observation to the present purpose, by which it is enacted that the members, having beheld the image of St. Christopher set forth in any place whatever, should recite the Lord's Prayer; but should atone for the neglect of this prayer by a certain alms to be disbursed to the poor.

[31] And it is not unworthy of memory, that in that very century, that is, the seventeenth (nay, the sixteenth), set against the rashness and drunkenness of Luther: a beginning was given to this pious society, in which Luther, impiously raging to every injury of God and of the heavenly ones, leaped forth into the arena, and declared a nefarious war upon the Church and upon Christian sobriety. Nor would I doubt that the conspicuous figure of St. Christopher was accustomed to be publicly set forth on this account too, that, striking the eyes everywhere, it might by its very sight admonish the members enrolled in that covenant of reverence toward the heavenly ones and of the sworn sobriety. Of this confraternity the Mirror of Austrian honor makes mention, published from the monuments of Don John James Fugger at Nuremberg in the year 1668, where it affirms that the occasion of erecting it is to be attributed to Caesar Maximilian I, most zealous of piety toward God and of sobriety. For these virtues of his, more closely noted by the said Don Sigismund, very familiar to the same emperor, since the examples of princes in things good and evil are equally most powerful, impelled his mind to prove himself by that pledge of religion and by an excellent beginning, and to draw the rest of the nobility into the same confraternity and zeal for virtue.

[32] So the praised Christopher Jäger teaches us, who proved himself both here an excellent worshiper of his patron, [concerning the narration of both of which confraternities, certain things are observed.] and elsewhere a distinguished esteemer of our Work, by an elegiac exhortation of no ungraceful vein, published in print, by which he exhorts our Elders that in continuing the Acts of the Saints they should despise the efforts of rivals. Nor will it be out of place to illustrate with a few words the characters interspersed in the text of the above notices. Leopold, in Rittershusius, in the table of the Roman emperors and archdukes of Austria, is noted, surnamed the Upright, slain at Sempach on the 9th of July 1386; and therefore, this reckoning of time by Rittershusius standing, the confirmation mentioned above cannot be removed beyond the day of that year. Frederick of Nenzingen, made bishop of Brixen from being bishop of Chur, is placed in Bucelinus, Sacred Germany, part 1, page 46, and is said to have died in the year 1396. The Benedictine monastery of Pfäfers, of the Swiss congregation, of the diocese of Chur, is noted in the same Bucelinus, Sacred Germany, in the second part,

page 178. But that of Garsten, of the same Order, on the bank of the river Enns, sacred to the Blessed Virgin Mary, is in the same, part 2, page 37; concerning which likewise the cited history of Salzburg, book 4, chapter 3, page 365; and in book 6, among the abbots of St. Paul, of the Benedictine Order in Carinthia, whose catalogue he weaves from page 1204, is praised Albert Reichart, a man of distinguished learning, of whom there survive several offspring of his genius, elected in the year 1677. Sigismund, in the table of the Dietrichsteins, born 1484, died 1538, the 20th of May; Maximilian I, in that which is of the emperors, etc., of the house of Austria, born 1459, the 22nd of March, elected emperor 1486, the 5th of April, died the 12th of January 1519, Rittershusius records. The Chronicle of Carinthia of Hieronymus Megiser, published in German in the year 1612, is at hand for us; in which, from page 1294, is treated of the confraternity of the Saint.

* perhaps "infestæ" (hostile) * is it the 16th?

§ IV. The apparitions; the ground-down blasphemies of the heretics against the existence of St. Christopher.

[St. Christopher, appearing to the virgin Friderund, commands a monastery to be built for himself;] An apparition of St. Christopher is related in Leibniz, On the Writers of Brunswick, volume 1, page 580, in these words: "In the year … one thousand after the childbearing of the Virgin, the venerable lady Frederunda, daughter of the most serene count Altman and of his happy wife Hathewig, daughter of the count of Olesburg, by the guidance of divine inspiration consigned her castle at Steterburg to the divine service … When these venerable women from Olsburg, with an escorting company, were visiting their castle of Steterburg for the pursuit of hunting, the huntsmen following the beasts with the sounding of horns, the noble virgin Friderund, reclining and falling asleep in the bosom of the venerable countess Hathewig, her mother, beheld the most excellent, most glorious martyr of Christ, St. Christopher, of noble form and wondrous height, leaning upon the top of the wall, and saying such things to her: 'In this place divinely chosen thou shalt build me a monastery, and thou shalt recover most perfect health both of soul and of body.' She, suddenly waking, rejoicing at the heavenly visitation, spiritually gladdened, briskly made known to her most devout mother both the heavenly vision and the divine command.

[34] "At which words of her most beloved daughter, the devout countess Hathewig, kindled with the most ardent fervor of the Holy Spirit, consenting with a rejoicing mind, which Hathewig, the mother of Friderund, carries into execution: the violence of ravishers and robbers being cast out, resolved that a cloister should be made, at most lavish expense and with buildings, from the castle of robbery. This castle, I say, she appointed to those serving God, and gathered together a college of holy nuns, canonesses, as they are commonly called, secular, insofar as they could be sustained from the same patrimony. At that time the most glorious and most just … Henry of Bamberg happily held the monarchy of the whole empire, and in the seventh year before the institution of the church of Bamberg … the beginning of this donation and happy institution took its start; which the same emperor confirmed, an instrument having been drawn up on this matter, and given on the 9th of the Kalends of February in the year of the Lord's incarnation 1007, in the third Indiction; but with that year concurs the fifth Indiction." These things are reported from the Chronicle of Steterburg, which is carried down to the year 1319; and which, as its editor notes in the introduction to his collection of Writers, Meibom had published imperfect, without having seen the authentic codex itself: which, having obtained it formerly from the Wolfenbüttel archive, he supplied what was lacking, and gives the whole little book, as the same editor adds.

[35] Imhof, in the Notice of the Holy Roman German Empire, the circumstances of which matter are here explained. book 4, chapter 4, no. 25, names the wife of the above-said count Hedwig, Palatine of Saxony. Merian, in the topography of the duchy of Brunswick and Lüneburg, from page 190, collected various things concerning the monastery of Steterburg and its vicissitudes, which he says is so situated that it has Wolfenbüttel and Brunswick in view; but that it was most recently restored by the most serene Rudolf Augustus and Anthony Ulrich, brother lords of Brunswick and Lüneburg, more splendidly built, and converted into a heterodox convent of noblewomen in the year 1691, the same Imhof relates in the cited place. Of St. Henry it was treated on the 14th of this month. Concerning the wondrous height under which the Saint is said above to have appeared, may be consulted the things which will afterward be discussed, concerning the Saint's stature, as they will have it, gigantic.

[36] Escolano, in the history of Valencia mentioned above, volume 1, Another apparition is related to have occurred in Spain, book 5, chapter 10, column 594, relates a marvelous apparition which happened there in the year 1391, in a place at that time destined for the synagogue of the Jews; but afterward changed into a shrine and monastery sacred to the Saint. Receive a compendium of the deed. They will have it, then, that a terrible voice was heard, which frightened the Jews from their errors; and by which St. Christopher indicated that he was speaking, and commanded that house to be emptied and dedicated to his name; that voice was repeated the next day and the day after; the place being dug up, the Jews found a small image of the Saint; a sedition then arising, several of them were slain, others in a great number baptized; the synagogue was dedicated in honor of St. Christopher, not without a new miracle, as it is reported.

[37] The lamps, namely, which illuminated the new altar with the image of the Saint, [but which, for the requirement of things so marvelous, is not sufficiently established.] when they had several times been extinguished, were seen to kindle of their own accord; and, no new nourishment being supplied to them, the oil flowed and increased, healing the sick who anointed themselves with it. But the pious affection toward this holy shrine increasing, it passed into a monastery of the canonesses regular of the Order of St. Augustine in the year 1409. To these Escolano moreover adds that a book was composed on this history by John Baptist Agnes, a beneficiary of the greater church there; which book was drawn from public and authentic instruments. But since Escolano does not produce those documents, that it may be discerned by the learned of what authority and credit they are, he will not take it ill if we say that greater firmness is to be desired for the history of this apparition, that it may be believed as true. Of better note, indeed, is the following apparition of the Saint, which occurred in the East, near the monastery of Galatia, dedicated under his name; concerning which we made mention above.

[38] In us, then, in the Life of St. Theodore of Sykeon at the 22nd of April, from page 42, these things are read: More certain is another apparition in the East. "A boy named Arsinus was brought to him from a certain monastery, who was vexed by an unclean spirit … And so, when the servant of Christ wished to visit the women's monastery of the holy martyr Christopher, he took Arsinus with him … The demon therefore being stirred, he began to be afflicted and to be lifted on high. But the demon, suspended, said: 'I go forth, thou iron-eater: only loose me, and I will depart at once.' And saying this, he saw the holy martyr of Christ, Christopher, coming to meet the servant of God, and the demon, howling more vehemently, prostrated him at his feet and departed. And when he had recovered himself, the holy man led him into the monastery of the Martyr himself, etc." Of better note, I say, is this apparition, since it is founded on the Life, composed by a disciple of St. Theodore. And from these things, which concerning the ancient cult of our Champion, the public veneration, the sacred shrines, and the apparitions, have hitherto been produced by us, it is most clearly established that some Saint existed in the world, known, honored, and invoked under the name of St. Christopher; and this is proved by reasons so certain and irrefragable, that whoever obstinately denies this is either witless, or, blinded by voluntary blindness in the clearest light of truth, affects darkness; so that it is wonderful, not to say incredible, that there have been found those who would assert that a Saint of this kind never existed in the nature of things: whose dreams we set ourselves to refute.

[39] To the heretics denying the Saint's existence, Serarius proves it, If we listen to the impious slanderers of the saints and the babbling innovators, now our Saint will be an empty phantasm without substance, and a shadowy mushroom, born from the vain dreams of a nocturnal illusion in the little brain of Catholics: for to such a pitch of madness they come, in what with foolish mouth they belch forth against his existence, and scribble with a pen hired for reviling. But excellent and above all invincible against sycophants of this kind, our own Nicolaus Serarius set himself as a wall on behalf of the Church of God and the honor of the Saints, in a work entitled Litaneutici, or On Litanies, composed in two little books, which is contained among his theological works printed at Mainz, in volume 3. Hither pertains book 2, question 20, noted with this title, "Did St. Christopher ever exist in the nature of things?" This Serarius proves: 1. From the Christopher in St. Eulogius; concerning whom we above. 2. From the monastery in Gregory the Great; concerning which likewise we have already treated. 3. From the Martyrologies; concerning which enough has been said by us. 4. He adds the Menology of the Greek Church, the monastery of this Saint and the church at Cordova, the Toledan relics; of which matters a fuller notice was given by us above.

[40] by various arguments; The patronage of the Saint, as one who deserved to bear Christ on his shoulders, was employed toward God by the English and Germans, he throws back into the teeth of the innovators from their own follower Rainold; whom he says confirms this from the Mass of the Saint in the Sarum Missal, and from the order of the church of Hildesheim in Chemnitz, part 3 of the Examination. Nor does he pass over Rudger of Fulda, from whom Wicel composed a brief epitome concerning that Saint in his Hagiology; nor does he leave unmentioned the ancient Litany of the emperor Louis, which is kept in the archive of St. Bartholomew of Frankfurt, etc. But now let us bring into the midst what engines are employed by the innovators to eliminate from the nature of things, and so from the assembly of the heavenly ones, St. Christopher; and then Serarius's replies against their cavils.

[41] and their futile subtleties "The first argument," says Serarius, "they take from his name, which they will have to be appellative. The second from the errors of his history: 'Since somewhere, having suffered under king Dagnus at Samos,'" says Rainold, "'I know not what city, whether of Cilicia or of Lycia' The third from the picture of gigantic bulk. 'Who,'" says Daniel Chamier the Calvinist, "'could deny that Christopher is a monster?' And by way of mockery Chytraeus in his Onomasticon calls him Polyphemus." But to those objections Serarius fittingly replies thus. To the first: "No one denies," he says, "that the name of Christopher can be taken as appellative, which in Latin is rendered Christ-bearer or Christ-carrier: for indeed by St. Athanasius, in the Oration against the idols, blessed Paul is called χριστοφόρος (that is: 'Christ-bearer'), and when we receive the most holy body of the Lord we become χριστοφόροι γινόμεθα (that is: 'we become Christ-bearers'), as St. Cyril of Jerusalem says in the fourth Mystagogic. Whence also the piety of the elders among the Poles sometimes calls a Christian priest Piastun Bozi, that is, a bearer of God, or θεοφόρον (that is: 'God-bearer'). But are there not many appellatives of this kind, which by use and custom have become proper? Is not any one of the Saints a θεόφιλος (that is: 'friend of God')? And yet in St. Luke is Theophilus the proper name of one man? Is not whoever loves horses a φίλιππος (that is: 'lover of horses')? And yet one of the Apostles is so named.

[42] "What of Stephen, Peter, and Paul? Are they not common words? concerning the name of the Saint; And yet they are the names of the first Martyr and of the first Apostles. What of Philemon, that is, 'lovable,' and his servant

Onesimus, that is, as it is rightly rendered against Muretus, 'useful'? Nay, Adam too is used in the Scriptures in both ways: and almost all the proper names of the Greeks are of the same sort. Are not those of horses also proper, which are otherwise appellative? Volucris ('Winged') in Capitolinus, in his Verus; Incitatus ('Swift') in Martial; Babylonius in Ammianus, book 23. Christopher, therefore, is not only an appellative, but also a proper name; which from that Saint Christians received not unwillingly in Greece, Spain, Germany, Gaul, Poland, and other provinces, even as also that woman at Alexandria in Sophia near the Pharos, of whom Sophronius in the Meadow, chapter 105."

[43] Then Serarius rightly compares those babblers with the heathen Maximus of Madauros, who, in the letter which he cites, the 44th, in St. Augustine, mocks certain Christians on account of the names of the Saints or of the dead; he vigorously refutes; but to whom Augustine excellently replies in the following letter, that Punic names ought not to have been derided by an African before an African. But full, so to speak, are the books, full are the lucubrations of writers, full is the antiquity of examples, and especially our own Acts, even if examples were lacking elsewhere; in which the names of the Saints, which are at once proper and appellative, recur in six hundred places; whose etymology is very often inquired into and indicated by us. Not to pursue things more remote or long past, when things near and recent are at hand, let those smatterers, those quibblers, look at the things which were said at the 17th of this month, page 263, on occasion of St. Alexius, called by the name of Riscia among the Syrians; and let them henceforth be quiet and cease to revile. Now let us proceed with Serarius, who replies to the second objection thus:

[44] "I have already said above," he says, "that no one is to be removed from the number of men on this ground, that the narrations concerning him are vain and false. [and he rightly proves that the Saint's existence is not on that account to be denied;] But truly, as I had said at the beginning of the present question 20, shall such futile and flimsy little reasonings drive our Martyr out of the blessed city of the Saints? Shall any such cavils, before a wise and grave judge, expel any proletarian and common man whatever from the little house he has possessed for many years now, or from a little town and village?" The rest of Serarius on the second objection is this: "And among the Catholics there are not lacking learned, diligent men, most skilled in Christian antiquity, who have labored, and today most zealously labor, at cleansing away blemishes of this kind; as may be seen even in the earlier and later notes on the Martyrology of a single Baronius, and in all the volumes of the Annals; so that the things which Rainold inculcates concerning king Dagnus, and other similar things, even in holy George and Catharine, he has drawn all from the fountains of this Catholic."

[45] that many false things have been fastened upon him. Moreover, what has been performed by us concerning the Saints and their Acts for nearly a hundred years now, we easily suffer to be here passed over in silence. What more? This second objection, or rather this inept and wretched sophism, to be relegated to threepenny dialectic, needs no further refutation: since its weakness and utterly open falsity ought to strike anyone at first sight who is not carried away by affected obstinacy; and Serarius pleaded the cause of St. Christopher, as our Gretser attests in book 2 on the Feasts, in such wise that if the sectaries should wish hereafter to hiss anything against it, they will far transgress the bounds of prudence, unless they first solidly refute the Serarian arguments; which, I know well enough, he says, they will never do; men who in this argument bring no argument whatever, except their ἀπιστίαν (that is: their disbelief) or incredulity. Their third cavil we shall exhibit in the next paragraph.

§ V. The gigantic stature in no way hinders the existence of the Saint; whether and of what kind that was.

For the gigantic stature of the Saint Serarius brings various conjectures; To the third argument of the heretics Serarius replies thus, page 85: "Why is the gigantic bulk objected? Are there no giants? Are all these bad and impious? Can he not raise up Saints from any kind, state, and stature, who is able of stones to make sons of Abraham, namely God? If some certain limb of this Saint existed anywhere, it could be gathered, as was done by some from the foot of Hercules in Gellius, book 1, chapter 1, whether he was really a giant. St. Augustine had written, book 15, chapter 9, this: 'I myself saw, not alone, but with several others with me, on the shore of Utica, a molar tooth of a man so huge, that if it were cut up piecemeal into the size of our teeth, it would seem to have been able to make a hundred for us. But I would believe that it was of some giant.'" Then Serarius cites Ludovico Vives, writing on this passage, and saying that a molar tooth, bigger than a fist, was shown to him, which they said was his. Serarius likewise adduces Bernard von Breydenbach, who, in his Jerusalem pilgrimage, part 1, chapter on the Venetian relics, notes a certain great bone of St. Christopher; and finally Serarius proceeds thus: "Nor perhaps without foundation and cause is the pencil of almost all the painters, agreeing, carried away into a more vast figure of this Saint." Yet he rightly adds that he does not wish to press on with conjectures alone.

[47] [which, however they may be, nothing thence accrues to the heretics. Raynaud holds that stature;] Now, whether those conjectures concerning the gigantic stature of our Saint be false or true, the assailers of the saints certainly feign dreams to themselves, when from this quarter they hope for some support, whereby to proscribe him from the nature of things, and so from the number of the heavenly ones; and it stands and will stand henceforth, whatever they impiously bark, that a true and real place among mortals and among the heavenly ones is to be denied to no one on this ground, that false things are circulated concerning him. Our own Theophilus Raynaud, in the Saints of Lyon, treating of the Antonian symbols, on the same occasion, page 366 of the Lyonese edition of the year 1662, after the Roman one of the third, treats of the symbolic picture of St. Christopher, against the sectaries and certain simple Catholics; by which both these and those have been led into error, though wholly diverse; concerning which matter see below. "Although," he says, "the tallness of the body of St. Christopher, and the gigantic stature, can be admitted apart from the symbol, with Serarius in the place cited above, and others." But that he did not wish to press on with conjectures alone, Serarius expressly added, as we have seen. Those others, whom Raynaud names, will perhaps say just as much, or if they say anything further, they will doubtless be of small age and authority; since he does not express their names, nor otherwise can much of solidity be hoped for to the present purpose.

[48] The argument by which he confirms it will have little of persuasion with fair arbiters; because it is too incredible, but he does not sufficiently prove it. not to say ridiculous and paradoxical. "A foot," he says, "with the leg and hip of the same Martyr, with the flesh and skin plainly entire, Byzantium having been taken by the Turks, was carried out into the West, with the written attestation of the patriarch Gennadius, Melchior Inchofer writes, on the testimony of the bishop of Bosnia, in the Mantissa to the work for the epistle of the Mother of God, note 76. But the dimension of that foot reached from the heel of a man of just stature to his armpit. From which it is permitted to estimate the tallness and greatness of the whole body, as from the foot of Hercules, concerning which above." And at length he thus concludes: "And so, as far as concerns the bulk and tallness, the image of St. Christopher can be taken to the letter, without the support of symbolic interpretation." So he, roundly enough and affirmatively, if only so solidly.

[49] Baronius, in the notes to the Roman Martyrology, proceeding more cautiously and step by step: Baronius seems to disapprove it; "As for what pertains to the gigantic stature, in which the Saint is accustomed to be painted, what shall I say," he says, "I have not"; content to have reported, from the Toledan hymn according to the rule of St. Isidore, these verses, by which his image is described, or rather only adumbrated. Thus they run:

"Elegant in stature, more elegant in mind, shining in aspect, vibrant in heart, and ruddy in hair: Christ with his mouth, Christ with his heart Christopher sounds forth."

And from the chapter he recites this: "From least, great, that from a soldier he might become a leader of faithful peoples, etc." The cited Escolano, column 907, well enough aware that from what is here said in Baronius — that the Saint was not of gigantic but of elegant stature — the Valentian molar tooth, of which we have treated above, is overthrown, undeservedly traduces the most wise founder of the Annals, as though by light and seemingly plausible arguments he overthrows the whole fabric of ecclesiastical history.

[50] But good words, I pray: what Baronius performed for the truth of ecclesiastical history, the whole world knows. (therefore not rightly reprehended by Escolano) The little reasonings which Escolano draws out at length, to prove that this tooth is truly to be held as a tooth of St. Christopher, we do not delay upon; since they can be seen in him; and if even a single one settled the matter, we would not omit to report it; but in positive facts, as they call them, and purely historical, one must rely not on little reasonings or little conclusions, but on solid, ancient, and suitable testimonies; here especially, where very many authors deny to the Saint a true, real, and physical stature of a giant, but grant him only a symbolic one; whether and how truly, will presently be discussed by us. Baronius certainly, whether he only suspended his judgment concerning the gigantic stature, or rather suffered himself to be inclined by the said Breviary to deny it, could and ought certainly here to have seen a little more acutely than Escolano, or several other writers of that note. Moreover, although Baronius says that the true, real, and physical stature is unascertained to him from the said hymn, yet we are not ignorant that the words of the Mozarabic, Isidorian, or Toledan Missal favor much that gigantic stature: for in the Illation, as it is there called, or Preface, of the Mass which is of our holy Martyr, it is thus said:

[51] and to follow, whom he cites, Vida in the symbolic signification; "Who dost show … Christopher both terrible by his bodily appearance, and eminent by the grace of his gift … Whom (the emperor) he so terrified by his life-giving aspect, that he hastened to fall from his throne; truly beholding a great worshiper of Christ." Which most manifestly savors of the Saint's Acts, which attribute to his stature twelve cubits; but elsewhere just as many feet only are given to it. Moreover, all those things, as Baronius proceeds in the cited place, which are related of St. Christopher, concerning the palm, the river, the tall stature; "all these things," he says, "Hieronymus Vida, bishop of Alba, interpreting in an allegorical sense, sang in an excellent epigram": from whose interpretation that he himself does not much shrink, the same Baronius tacitly indeed, but yet not obscurely, insinuates, when presently, making mention of the symbolic Christian pictures anciently accustomed to be painted, concerning which he says he has treated at the 23rd of April in George, he likewise seems tacitly to hint that, just as the picture of that Saint, he says he thinks, is the expressed image of a symbol rather than of any history; so all that apparatus which is accustomed to be painted upon St. Christopher is a type, or symbol, which the things by

the Saint on behalf of Christ and the Catholic faith endured may represent allegorically rather than a true and real history: especially since that custom, of painting symbolic pictures of this kind, was in use among the Christians from the most ancient times, as is established from Eusebius in the Life of the emperor Constantine, book 3, chapter 3; and Baronius rightly observes it in the same place.

[52] a passage of which author is produced. Now it is pleasant to hear how graphically and elegantly the praised bishop Vida expresses symbolically and allegorically the several things accustomed to be painted upon St. Christopher, especially those which regard the immense tallness of the body; when he sings thus:

"To Christopher: because you bore Christ fixed ever in your heart, the painters give you Christ to bear upon your shoulders: And because, bearing him, you endured many bitter things, they make you go on foot through the depths of the sea *. Because you could not do this except by use of a vast body, they give you limbs as great as those of a huge giant were, So that the temples, however immense, cannot contain you: and you are compelled to bear the rigid winters under the open sky. Because as victor you overcame all hard things, a green palm they give into your hands, by which you, lofty, guide your way. What it can, art gives you, since it cannot fashion true things. Receive all these things with a good spirit, you being good."

And these indeed, because they chiefly adumbrate symbolically the gigantic stature of the Saint, concerning which we here inquire, let them be said: of the other things which besides are accustomed to be added to his image, we shall speak elsewhere, where we shall treat of his image.

[53] But if you would have that stature taken in the proper, physical, and real sense, That the Saint was truly of gigantic stature it is altogether necessary that you prove it by fit testimonies, such certainly as are suitable in antiquity, authority, and weight of reasons, so as to elicit a prudent assent: nay rather, the more singular, extraordinary, and unheard-of the things are whose truth one desires to persuade, the more firmly and solidly must they be established, lest what before appeared marvelous be afterward held paradoxical and incredible, because they are not proved in due manner. Now, since that gigantic stature is so rare, unusual, and unheard-of among all the other Saints, as far as we know, and peculiar and proper to this our Saint alone, let it be permitted us to require that you establish it solidly from somewhere. And, prithee, whence will you accomplish this, except from the Acts, which, although we confess to be ancient, yet have little or nothing of authority in this matter, because elsewhere they everywhere need no small correction; as will afterward be shown.

[54] The things reported by Serarius above, no. 46, concerning the existence and possibility of gigantic stature, it is in no way sufficiently proved from anywhere. in no way prove that our Saint was endowed with such a stature; but they prove that there can be giants, and therefore that nothing conflicts with our Martyr's having existed as one of them, a man of this kind. But that in no way settles the present controversy about stature: for the argument from potency to act, as the philosophers say, is not valid: and indeed the reasoning drawn from the gigantic statures of others proves this one thing only, that such a stature could also be found in our Saint; which we do not here inquire about, and which no one would deny: but this is inquired, this is urged and contended, that that marvelous stature is shown, by documents worthy of belief, to have existed in fact, truly and physically, in the Saint. But such a stature, indeed, displeases the bishop of Alba; such is not approved by Baronius. Our own Ribadeneyra, in the Spanish Life of the Saint, which is contained in the Flos Sanctorum on this day, seems to have entered upon a certain middle way, when he indeed attributes to him a high and great stature, yet not a gigantic one. Papebroch, in the Greco-Muscovite Ephemerides before volume 1 of May, page 26, not obscurely showed what he thought of this controversy, when he candidly professes: "As easy as it is to prove the cult of this most celebrated Martyr, and to explain the MYSTERIES of the gigantic image, so difficult will it be to elicit anything of certain truth from his fabulous Legend."

[55] It now remains that we set forth our own opinion, We propose a certain way which is not a fixed system, but a mere hypothesis, according to which this controverted difficulty, both extremes being declined and some middle retained, may be explained. Let us suppose, then, that the Saint was tall above the ordinary stature of men in such wise that he indeed stood out higher than all the rest with a notable difference, yet not with such tallness as to reach even remotely to the gigantic. This being laid down, it may have been written somewhere in an ancient Calendar or Fasti, which have now perished, that he was a man of most tall stature, as indeed is written in lesson 1 of the Saint, which is contained in the Breviary of Schleswig, published in print in the year 1512; which stature, thus found in the copy which lay before the dramatic embellisher of the whole history, since he thought it to his interest to bring his Saint upon the stage under a marvelous figure, went on so to grow under his hand, that from most tall it was transformed by him into gigantic; with the addition afterward, either by the same fabulist or by others of the same genius, of all that other apparatus.

[56] in this argument we propose a middle one. From a similar cause, perhaps, the symbols began which are accustomed to be painted upon St. George: for "we do not deny," says Baronius in the place cited above, "that St. George, as a soldier of the equestrian service, was accustomed to be represented by an equestrian image"; which being once introduced, it could most easily happen that under the pencil of the painters that symbolic scene gradually grew and accrued, not so much sought out by their ingenious invention as in some way spontaneously and from the nature of the thing offered; that is, an armed horseman, transfixing a dragon with a lance; and a virgin placed nearby, who, stretching out suppliant hands, implores help. Why, then, may it not be permitted to reason in a plainly similar way concerning our Saint? But the things which upon this argument we have hitherto said, we wish to be taken no otherwise than as a mere conjecture, and a pure and simple hypothesis; to which to consent or to dissent may be altogether free to everyone, and to suggest something better. Moreover, this gigantic stature lay before, as we just hinted, the rest of the symbolic retinue, which is accustomed to be represented in the image or picture of the Saint; concerning which we must now treat.

* is it "maris" (of the sea)?

§ VI. The abuse, use, and signification of the Saint's images.

It is inquired why the Saint's image is set forth before the churches; Molanus, in the little work on the history of holy images and pictures for their true use against abuses, published in four books, book 3, chapter 27, discusses in many ways the picture of St. Christopher. What chiefly pertains hither we shall take thence, using the Louvain edition of the year 1594. "In the first place," he says, "they are accustomed to paint him everywhere in the halls of houses, and in the churches, so that he can easily be seen. Nay, I hear that in Germany in many places he is painted outside the church, near the entrance, or on the exterior wall of the church. But of this the verses subscribed in certain places indicate the cause; such as are:

'Whoever beholds the figure of holy Christopher, on that day, forsooth, shall not die an evil death.'

But since we have said elsewhere (book 2, chapter 35) that this is vain, those are rightly judged to do better who set his image in another fitting place, so that from the place no occasion of this vain error can be taken." So he, and rightly: although we do not see why, just as that picture, thus set forth, can give occasion to a superstitious error of the common people, so it may not be employed in another manner, so that the use may remain and the abuse be removed.

[58] where the abuse must be guarded against. Serarius, produced before: "But why," he says, "this sacred symbol is painted before most churches, some inquire. In the cited verses, which we too have already cited, Vida of Cremona seems to answer something, and more Lucas Gauricus; but I think it is signified to us that we must bear Christ the Lord to him, when about to enter the sacred buildings; there the waters of this world being for a while sent across and set aside, Christ the Lord is to be called upon and laid upon our shoulders, or rather our minds, namely by holy prayers, by the reception of the sacraments, by the hearing of the divine word. To this too that common distich looks:

'Holy Christopher, so great are your virtues, that whoever sees you in the morning laughs in the nighttime.'

For pleasant and happy is the evening of that day whose morning hours have been begun by God, as Varro too, by the examples of the heathen, teaches in Gellius, book 14, chapter 4; Livy, book 26; St. Augustine, book 3 on the City of God, chapter 21. Thus, I say, of the picture set forth outside the sacred buildings the good use will remain, and the superstitious abuse will be removed." As for what pertains to the origin of that setting-forth, the author of the manuscript notices of Saint Lambert in Styria, of whom above, thinks it may not unfittingly be said that this custom of depicting St. Christopher on the doors of the churches, in those provinces of the Austrian princes, took its rise from that confraternity which Dietrichstein is reported to have instituted, and concerning which we have treated above.

[59] But let us return to Molanus, and pursue the explication of the symbols. The symbolic Not without reason he thinks that the painters, in painting Christ upon the shoulders of Christopher, and painting certain other things upon him, looked to the Golden Legend, whose words from Legend 95 he produces, which a certain hermit is said to have spoken to the Saint in this manner: "Since you are of tall stature and strong in strength, if you should reside beside a river and ferry all across, it would be most pleasing to Christ the King, whom you desire to serve, and I hope that there he would manifest himself to you." And after he had added that he carried the boy Christ upon his shoulders, and wondered at his weight, he subjoins that, having crossed the river, he said: "In great peril, boy, you have placed me, and you have weighed so heavily that if I had had the whole world upon me, I would scarcely have felt greater weights." To whom the boy: "Do not wonder, Christopher, because you have had upon you not only the whole world, but him also who created the world, borne upon your shoulders." This fabulous narration, or, to use the words of Molanus, "this picture expressing" these things, although it is to be numbered among those which are probable to the simple people, yet among the learned has little or no probability: and therefore by these it is not to be extended.

[60] "Nevertheless the principal thing, namely the image of Christopher with Christ on his shoulders, apparatus seems to me," he says, "to be able to be extended by the learned, the signification, however, being referred to another point, so that he may be said to bear Christ on his shoulders, to signify that, as in name, so also in fact he was a true Christopher or Christ-bearer"; which in the same place Molanus deduces at a little more length, and of which we have already treated before, no. 41. Of the ferrying across the sea we have just spoken from Vida, as also of certain other things accustomed to be set upon his image, with the interpretation of the same Vida. "But if you assume," says Molanus, to our purpose, "that these things are far-fetched; I do not deny it. But you will remember that otherwise

an obscure and rare picture is to be treated, otherwise an image most well known everywhere: and as such a one is not easily to be condemned, so it is rather to be interpreted benignly: although this cannot be done save by a far-fetched exposition." Meanwhile it happens to be strange that George Wicel, in his Hagiology, or little work on the Saints of the Church of God, confesses that of the crossing over the sea, and the other things * which are painted, he read not a syllable.

[61] But now let us proceed with Serarius to set forth the remaining symbols of the picture. upon the Saint "There is circulated," he says, "a certain image of this Saint at Augsburg, engraved fairly beautifully and elegantly; to which these verses, ascribed by a certain innovator Stigelius — imitating his own Luther in the sermon on St. Christopher in Aurifaber's Symposiaca, chapter 53, page 363 — which Wicel praised in his Hagiology, Chytraeus transcribed in the Onomasticon:

'Who are you? The image of one ingenuously professing Christ: to whom this boy, whom * I bear, gave a sweet name. Who is this boy? Christ. What is this so great bulk of a giant? Since he bears the light burden of a tiny boy. To all in appearance that boy seems small: yet than whom there is nothing greater in the whole world. Hence there is need of spirits, that they be strong in body too, who wish to bear Christ through the mouths of the people. But why, entering through the marbles of the swelling sea, do you repel the hostile waters with a tree-like mass? By the sea, which I tread, understand the perverse world: it presents savage perils to pious souls. By the tree understand nothing else than the holy word, which in adverse things governs pious hearts. For, equipped with this, we rush through rocks, through fires, we who teach the merit of Christ, a grand work.'

[62] is set upon it And these things indeed thus far are common enough, and clear to understand; needing, however, a little observation, as also the rest which follow; but these being recited, we shall give it. Thus, then, the said poem proceeds:

'Yet say this too: what means the wallet hanging at your back, what the cake with the moist fish? Sure nourishments never fail the pious ministers: and those who trust in God, God preserves and feeds. Moreover, who is that man conspicuous from afar with hoary old age, who, going before with a kindled torch, shows the way? The torch sent before recalls the oracles of the coming Christ; it signifies the seers, the old men, who sang. Come hither, O guest, and you, O best boy Christ, dwell with me: to live with you is the only salvation.'

[63] customarily Moreover, whether that wallet, as it was just described, was not fastened by the innovators upon the rest of the symbols; whether in Germany, or at least on the Augsburg image, it was set forth by Catholics, I have not whence to determine: this one thing I know, that nowhere hitherto in the images representing St. Christopher has that wallet been detected by me; which likewise is not exhibited by the most elegant Rubens picture, which is seen set forth on the altar of this cathedral church of Antwerp at the side door, by which one goes to the episcopal palace. But there is a suspicion that that wallet, since Serarius contradicts nothing of it, has nothing of the impious salt and jest of the heretics; but that it has this one thing only in common among them with the other symbols of our Saint which we have enumerated: that, if we listen to them, all that picture, however great it is, is nothing else than a mere phantasm, a shadowy figure, and a pure and simple imaginary allegory, which sets forth the type of a Christian man or of an evangelical minister as so feigned that it does not suppose it truly to exist; since, as they impiously prate, no such person ever truly existed in the nature of things; and therefore, according to them, it is to be dismissed to merely fictitious personifications: which error we above abundantly refuted; and concerning which Molanus, against Melanchthon and the Magdeburg Centuriators, may also be seen.

[64] is exhibited A certain heterodox professor of the Greek language in the academy of Basel, in his universal Lexicon, printed at Basel in the year 1677, is here ineptly equivocal: for after, at the name Christopher, he had said this: "In Lycia he is written to have propagated the Gospel concerning Christ, and to have been beheaded, under the emperor Diocletian"; he presently subjoins "a merely allegorical Christopher, who, bearing the boy Christ over the sea, is the picture of a Christian man, and especially of a teacher of the Gospel, elegantly expressed in these verses; 'Who are you?' etc."; concerning which a little before. So he, imitating in this the Lutheran heretic Dresser, who, in the little work on the Feasts, not daring to take away this our Saint from the midst, places "Christopher, the 12th (he meant to say the 25th) of July"; and at once, "the image of Christopher," he says, "is the great and notable picture of a Christian man, and of an evangelical teacher." But it is no wonder that these two, both alien from the Roman Catholic religion, are so much in agreement among themselves in feigning their shadowy image. It is more to be wondered at that similar things could creep upon Catholic writers in explaining the picture of which here is the discourse.

[65] On which matter Molanus takes to task Lawrence of Xeres, and with various observations who, in the books which he restored on the method of theological study — although through imprudence, easily accustomed to creep in in the purging of the writings of heretics, because under the latent honey of allurements they present hidden poisons — left it written that the feigned picture of Christopher adumbrates the herald of the Gospel. "For neither," as Molanus rightly adds, "are these words those of a Catholic writer, but of a heretic, in which the latent poison was not observed by the theologian revising the work." Molanus likewise takes to task John Hunaeus, that upon the same stone, laid for him by the spurious writers of his own nation, he incautiously stumbled: who wrote the allegory concerning St. Christopher with a Christian and Catholic spirit indeed; yet handles it too harshly, and seems to lean too much to the side of the adversaries, when among other things he writes:

"These things, under the image of Christopher, whoever was the first author of the fiction to mortals, showed: And since the pious fable says nothing against faith, it will surely be able to be tolerated under any judge whatever."

[66] But before we put an end to this argument, it is illustrated. a small observation cannot be passed over, which we subjoin in the words of Serarius: "Some painters," he says, "sometimes add a hermit, who is named Cucuphas: but he is not a hermit, but a true martyr, crowned with martyrdom in the persecution of Diocletian: whose, because his anniversary memory falls on the feast-day of St. Christopher, the error was snatched up both by the fabulists and by the painters. There is, besides, among the Egyptians a certain symbolic bird, κούκουφα (that is: the koukoupha, or hoopoe); which, because it too is exceedingly pious toward its parents, some confound with the stork; but the hieroglyphic writer Horapollo distinguishes them, when he treats of the former in book 1, chapter 55, of the latter in book 2, chapter 58." And so, if you understand the old man with the lantern in the picture of St. Christopher in the symbolic sense which we gave above, the matter is well; but if physically and really you join an old hermit, who was Cucuphas the martyr, with our Saint, you err by the whole heaven: for he, besides that he suffered at another time, was neither a hermit nor an old man: as you may consult the things which will presently be said of him among us on this day.

* "aliis" (other things) * "quem" (whom)

§ VII. The serpent is slain by the Saint's help; the annual memory thereof; hymns, eulogies, and his native land.

The people of Lodi, having suffered most grievous harms from a serpent, That in the slaying of a dread and hostile beast St. Christopher was a help to the people of Lodi, the author is Castiglione, in the place cited, from page 259, from the tablet of the shrine dedicated to him at Lodi Pompeia, which was written in the vernacular and hung up there; and which is rendered into Latin by him to this effect; and, with some things cut away for brevity's sake by us, runs thus: "About the town of Lodi Pompeia, in the year one thousand three hundred, a lake had settled, which, on account of the vastness and abundance of the waters overflowing and flowing together into one, had obtained the name of the Gerundian Sea. In this lake, by a great portent, appeared a dread and virulent serpent, of horrible monstrous form, breathing a breath so foul and venomous that it infected almost the whole neighboring town, and wretchedly afflicted it. Hence it came about that many of the citizens perished by the intolerable foulness of that odor alone. But when the citizens perceived that a disease and plague of this kind grew stronger from day to day … and … feared also that the city itself would be overwhelmed and utterly submerged by the more frequent inundation of the turbid waters, they were in most bitter anxiety …

[68] are freed by the help of St. Christopher, "Wherefore all hope seemed cut off of the destroying of that monstrous beast swimming in those waters … the people of Lodi … implored the divine help … And that they might more easily obtain what they desired with the whole longing of their heart, Bernardinus of Talento, then bishop of Lodi, having gathered a multitude of clergy and people, held from the pulpit a pious sermon to them … Wherefore he first ordained that solemn supplications should be held for three days; then that a vow should be taken by the citizens together in this manner: that if ever they should have the Deity propitious … they would set up a sacred shrine to the most holy Trinity and to the glorious martyr Christopher. Nor was their hope vain, or their counsel idle; for, three supplications having been duly performed, and the vow for the safety of the city having been taken, on that very same day, which fell on the Kalends of January, two great and memorable miracles occurred: for the serpent at once perished, and the lake was dried up.

[69] and celebrate the memory of the benefit received; "Wherefore the pious citizens, not unmindful of this singular benefit, built, as they had vowed, a magnificent temple, which afterward, God favoring, the Olivetan monks in the year 1563 rebuilt more ample, and reformed to a more august worship … At the altar of holy Christopher there is seen hung up even today the very large spine of that serpent, like the bone of an ox, preserved there ever since that age … But because this day ought to have been kept festal on the very Kalends of January … this solemn and joyful commemoration was transferred by Plantinus, of the Order of Minors of St. Francis, bishop of Lodi, to the day following after the Epiphany." Thus far the tablet of Lodi. As marvelous as that history is, and exceedingly honorable to the praise of our Saint, so desirable would it be to us, if the author who narrates it had confirmed it from some other source than from the tablet alone, of uncertain age and authority.

[70] That Bernardinus (in Ughelli, Sacred Italy, volume 4, column 923, he is called Bernard de Talente) is placed by the same among the bishops of Lodi as having attained this dignity in the year 1296, concerning which deed and taken from the living about the year 1307; who, as is there added to our purpose, "by pouring forth prayers, and by the public vow of the citizens, turned aside the inundation of waters from the city," no mention being made of St. Christopher, much less of that venomous beast, extinguished by his patronage. Another bishop of the same see, who was above given under the name of Plantinus, is there, column 925, named Friar Leo Palatinus, and is said, from the year 1318, on the 3rd of the Nones

of May, to have presided over that see until 1343. Whence the aforesaid history is confirmed, insofar as it enunciated the deliverance from the inundation of waters under that bishop; for the times agree with him, as also with the other, under whom the feast is said to have been instituted or translated. The History of the affairs of Lodi of Otto and Acerbus Morena, among the Italian writers most recently reprinted, volume 6, from column 955, can furnish us no help here, since it ends in the year 1186. But what religious memory of a grateful mind toward the Saint followed, not only among the people of Lodi, but afterward also among the Milanese, understand in few words.

[71] Let us proceed with Castiglione: "Therefore, whence was the first origin of the feast-day of St. Christopher, various by us which is celebrated by the people of Lodi on the 7th of the Ides of January, is already clear enough even from this monument; but how it passed over to us," he says, "not likewise. That indeed is most certain and most well known to all Milan, that that seventh day of January is kept festal in honor of that Saint: and before St. Charles Borromeo the archbishop, an anniversary thanksgiving was then held celebrated in the divine prayers, which that Saint, as also that of certain other Saints, took away and wholly abrogated, that he might grant to the most holy bishop Basil some place among the Ambrosian calendars; yet the people never ceased to keep that same day as a feast to the honor and reverence of the Saint; and it is celebrated in our shrine, both on account of the concourse of people, and on account of the musical concerts accustomed to be made in it. Which fact indeed is an argument that that day, the 7th of the Ides of January, celebrated to St. Christopher … was long before the time of John Galeazzo, duke of Milan, accustomed to be kept festal elsewhere, and that then, the pestilence ceasing and being utterly extinguished, and a vow being made at Milan to the Deity of this Saint, it began to be kept festal." Hence it is manifestly perceived that it can at once stand that this feast-day, first introduced elsewhere by the prodigious slaying of the serpent, was afterward received among the festal days by the vow of our fatherland; and, as we suspect, translated from the people of Lodi to the Milanese.

[72] But lest the above history, insofar as it brings that great serpent upon the stage, here are given be traduced as an open fiction and hitherto unheard-of, it will be of service to remember that similar things happened at other times, so solidly established as to be bound to make full belief: for concerning the inundation of the Tiber over the city Rome … and also a multitude of serpents with a great dragon in the manner of a stout beam, which descended through the channel of this river into the sea, St. Gregory of Tours writes in the history of the Franks, book 10, chapter 1. On this matter Paul the Deacon too may be seen, On the Deeds of the Lombards, book 3, chapter 23, of volume 1, part 1 of the most recent impression of the Writers of Italian affairs, page 447; and Baronius at the year 589.

[73] observations. Of the ancient sacred hymn, which is read in the old Breviary of Toledo according to the rule of St. Isidore, by which the Acts of our same Martyr are described, Baronius makes mention in his notes; which indeed, he says, "please us before all the rest." That rhythmic hymn our associate William Cuper transcribed from the said Breviary, when in the year 1722 he was residing with me at Toledo, in several places corrupt indeed, but corrected and published by Tamayo among those things which he has on this day concerning our Saint: and therefore, since it can there be read entire, yet not even so be everywhere clearly enough understood what it means, we do not transcribe it hither, content afterward to mention only those things which it commemorates as proper to the holy Martyr, and which will serve for discussing the Acts, concerning which there will be a place for speaking below. Bivar, in the Commentaries on the Chronicle of the pseudo-Dexter, at the year of Christ 496, no. 2, will have it, from the Chronicle of the counterfeit Julian, that Castinus, prelate of Toledo, was the author of this hymn. Away with the ineptitudes of the ill-employed workshop. In Peter Lambeck, Library of the Imperial Court of Vienna, book 2, chapter 8, codex 276, is noted a "Life and Passion of St. Christopher … composed in ancient Italic rhythms," whose beginning is there given; but those rhythms presently betray their merit of small value, when even on the very threshold of the narration they make mention of Canineus and Caninea. But of this matter afterward.

[74] Eulogies noted among the Greeks, Now let us speak of the eulogies of our holy Champion; and first of the Greek ones. The Basilian Synaxary, at the 9th of May, in us before volume 1 of that month, page 723, proclaims the following in his praise, which run in Latin thus: "Some monstrous and paradoxical things are said of this Saint by some: that he was first of a canine countenance, and ate men; but then, after he had believed in Christ, he was transformed. But this is not so: rather, some induced their mind to believe him to have been of this kind, because he was a heathen, and fierce and terrible. Nevertheless he lived under the reign of Decius, and, taken in war by a count, and ignorant of speaking Greek, prayed to God. And an angel was sent to him, saying: 'Act manfully.' And when he had touched his lips, he made him speak Greek. Having therefore entered the city, he preached Christ. Soldiers therefore are sent to take him. And when his rod had budded, they believed in Christ, and with him are baptized at Antioch by St. Babylas; and there he was called Christopher. Then, brought to the emperor, and first afflicted with many torments, he was at last beheaded."

[75] here are given: The Menology translated by Sirletus and edited by Canisius dispatches the matter in fewer words, speaking thus on the same 9th of May: "The combat of the great martyr Christopher. He, under the emperor Decius, baptized at Antioch by St. Babylas, on account of the confession of Christ, together with Callinice and Aquilia *, whom he had converted to the faith, was beheaded." Longer is the eulogy in the great Menaea published in type than that it deserves to be transcribed hither; especially since there is almost nothing in substance beyond a compendium of the Acts which are commonly circulated. Of the same fountain too the eulogy savors which is found concerning St. Christopher in Rabanus, and which will here also have some place: whence it follows that, whatever the Acts were that were transmitted to posterity, yet they prove a great argument of antiquity even from this, that the eulogy which the praised Rabanus heaps together is most certainly excerpted from them. Thus it has:

[76] "On the same day (the 25th of July) is the passion of St. Christopher the martyr, and that also which is in Rabanus. who in the city of Samos was martyred by king Dagnus. For the king commanded him to be tortured with various torments. But the holy man obtained from the Lord that many should believe through him in Christ, and also the king himself, who lost his eye by the blow of an arrow, he healed after his passion by a drop of his own blood: as he himself had foretold before, and converted him to the faith of Christ." Longer runs the eulogy which is read inserted in the Martyrology of Bede augmented from Florus and edited by us, consisting of so many and such certain marks of the Acts that no doubt can remain that it was drawn from the same Acts. Blessed Peter Damian has a sermon on St. Christopher, which is the thirty-third. And these, since they will pave an easier way both to the Acts themselves and to the combat of the martyrdom, must now be examined.

[77] That it was in Lycia, in the city of Samos, Whether there was any Samos in Lycia, the ancient Martyrologists note, produced in no. 1. The city of Samos likewise our Acts of the Saint express at the beginning: but from those things which they presently superadd, they hint that it was in Syria. "Samon" too you have in Rabanus; which also occurs among those things which were added to our Bede, from Florus augmented. But it must here be discerned by us whether, as clearly as that place of the combat is indicated by them, so easily can it be found anywhere in Lycia. Cluverius, after he had distinguished, at the word Samos, various places of that name, says: "There is also the name of a city of Lycia, the Martyrologies of Ado and Usuard being witnesses, at the 8th of the Kalends of August"; where you see this 25th of July, and therefore the announcements of St. Christopher, reported above from them, indicated. But since it is here inquired whether a city of this kind exists anywhere in Lycia, and whether so far the Acts, which register it, can be believed; to wish to prove its existence from those Martyrologists alone, who doubtless drew it from the Acts, is to prove the same by the same, or to beg the question. And so it was necessary to consult other geographers; which was done: but that Samos, both that one and the one in Syria, nowhere appeared; and so it seems to be expunged from the Acts, until its existence can be proved from anywhere out of the ancients. The reformers of the Roman Martyrology perhaps saw this difficulty: who announce the Martyr in Lycia, the city of Samos being omitted or expunged; which nevertheless the lesser or old Roman expressly marks; whose author perhaps did not find it in Lycia either, since he does not express Lycia.

[78] But whether with the present Roman Martyrology you place this combat in Lycia, The native land of the Saint or with the lesser Roman in the city of Samos, provided you do not join both places, we shall not greatly resist: although then it remains uncertain which of the homonymous Samos-es, which the same Ortelius enumerates, is here to be understood. Moreover, the matter is in no way unfolded, but rather more involved, by the Hieronymian copies in Florentinius (who, by those very few things which he observes here in his notes, does not solve the difficulty), when they write: "In Lycia, the city of Salmon." The Acts too in Mombritius involve the matter, "in the city of Samon, in the province of Syria"; and also Peter de Natalibus, "in Lycia the city of Amon." Trifles, after his manner, the pseudo-Maximus here again obtrudes upon us, in the Chronicle at the year of Christ 483, placing the combat "in Lycia, the city of Sami, to others of Solymus." Commenting on which passage, Bivar, page 256, "Let the reader know," he says, "that the inhabitants of that very region, which was afterward called Lycia, were once called also Solymi, from the mountain Solyma existing there," from the book which he cites, the 14th of Strabo, "and whom," he says, "Homer mentions, Iliad 3" (but he meant to say book 6, verse 184).

[79] it may be said. But Strabo, in the cited place: "Homer," he says, "makes the Solymi different from the Lycians … Better those who say that the Solymi named by Homer are those who are now called Milyae." But suppose them to be the same: what then? It is not treated in this controversy of the Lycians or the Solymi, but of Samos in Lycia; whose existence, since it cannot be shown, it follows that neither can there be shown a city which to others was called by the name of Solymus, as Bivar dreams with his guide, or rather his seducer, walking in darkness. We therefore, no sufficiently suitable and skilled guide having hitherto been found, who might lead us disentangled from these labyrinthine windings to

the true, fixed, and genuine combat of the martyrdom, which we seek in vain; have announced the Saint in Lycia with the Roman Martyrology, following Ado and Usuard, etc.; but with the adverb "perhaps," and the city of Samos, which they mark, being omitted.

* Aquilina

§ VIII. The Saint's lineage, his name before baptism; where and by whom he was baptized; under whom and when he suffered.

The Acts assert that our Martyr came from an island, of the race of the Caninaeans; The lineage of the Saint is thus reported, elsewhere it is written of the Chananaeans or Cananaeans. But the great Greek Menaea, published in type, record that he was from the region of the man-eaters, or Anthropophagi. But what have the inhabitants of the land of Chanaan, which is also Palestine or the Holy Land, to do with the Anthropophagi, divided from them, so to speak, by a whole world? For whether you call those Anthropophagi, with Pliny, Natural History, book 7, chapter 2, "Scythians, in a certain great valley of the Imaus mountain, etc."; or, with Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, book 9, chapter 4, "the innermost Scythians, who spend their life under the very North" (the people of America, for the greater part, especially toward Brazil and the Magellanic region and elsewhere, you cannot understand, since it was discovered to the world too recently) — certainly by an immense and too enormous measure both those origins of the Chananaeans and of the Anthropophagi differ among themselves, both in the situation of the places and in the diversity of nature and morals, than that they can ever be composed together even in appearance. In Mombritius it is placed, "a certain man from an island, of the race of Abnoch."

[81] so that it is a labyrinth In our parchment codex P, Manuscript 18, the Saint is said to have sprung "from the race of the Cynocephali." The cited Menaea record that he was "of a canine face" (κυνοπρόσωπον, that is: dog-faced), and "could not speak in the human manner … but after an angel had touched his lips, made him speak": but all equally fabulously and ineptly; whatever be reported in Gellius, in the place just designated, that "there are in the mountains of the land of India men with canine and barking heads." To which expression of the Menaea, κυνοπροσώπου (that is: of the dog-faced one), perhaps, or at least to the Greek exemplar of the Acts, from which that eulogy was compiled, the Latins looked, who obtrude the Saint upon us under the race of the Caninaeans.

[82] Unless perhaps it was there written thus by error for "Chananaeans." altogether inextricable. But turn, invert; roll and re-roll the origin of the Saint which we inquire into, equally will you prove anything at all worthy of belief, even then, when you have made him a Chananaean with the cited blessed Peter Damian, who asserts that "he flowered forth like a purple rose from the thorns of the Chananaeans." For the writer of the Acts, who is elsewhere accustomed to fable there, both ought here with reason to be held suspect, and is not sufficiently fit to make any belief of himself here. And indeed, after it once came into the mind of the idle narrator, as is observed in the notices praised above, to form a giant, it was next that he should summon him from Chananaea, which is said, Deuteronomy 2, to have been inhabited by giants of the stock of the Enakim and a lofty people. Nothing therefore concerning the Saint's lineage can, we think, be determined with sufficient probability, until it rest on a more concordant and more suitable authority.

[83] Now some things offer themselves here to be said concerning the name of the Saint, Of similar flour are the things which concerning the Saint's name before baptism not indeed that one which the Acts, with the Menaea, will have to have been imposed upon him after baptism, and of which we have already treated: but of another, by which, as is reported, he was called before baptism. But what indeed was that? "Reprobus" (the Menaea, less correctly, Ρέπρεβος); but that name, how aptly, even in appearance, it agrees with the origin of the Saint, we by no means attain; so that it appears to us by far most probable that it, among other things, was devised by the same fabricator of the Acts, to embellish his scene the more, since another, as he thought, more apt did not occur to him; or was afterward intruded and superadded to a history once ill patched together from the beginning.

[84] Be that as it may; the appellative word "reprobus" cannot so easily be found among the ancient authors of the Latin tongue are circulated, as it is by now long since known and used by usage. This the sacred interpreter used, 1 Corinthians 9:27 and elsewhere; from the Greek ἀδόκιμος (that is: rejected, disapproved). But now, to whom did it ever come into mind to say that the word ρέπροβος, or ρέπρεβος, is found anywhere among the Greek authors, whether ancient or new, such as the Menaea just now obtruded upon us? If anyone wish to play the patron of it, it is for him either to remove our suspicion by some solid reason, or to confess with us that it is truly supposititious and fictitious, first invented and employed by some Latin fabulist, and thence borrowed from the Greek, and that from a word of any kind whatever, appellative, a proper name was formed, established by no authority, so far as we know. But concerning the baptism itself, by which the former name of Reprobus, as they will have it, was changed into Christopher, some things occur which create no small difficulty.

[85] The eulogy edited by Canisius records, as we have seen, as also concerning the baptism itself. that the Saint was baptized under the emperor Decius at Antioch by St. Babylas. The printed Menaea agree in the baptism, and in its place and minister Babylas, as they add, "the hieromartyr": and afterward the name of Decius is expressed. Moreover, there is here designated St. Babylas the hieromartyr, patriarch of Antioch; of whom we have treated in the historical-chronological Treatise of those patriarchs before volume 4 of July, and we said that he sat from the year 237 until the beginning of the year 250. But since Decius began to reign in the year 249, that baptism must have fallen in the last years of St. Babylas; if indeed it truly happened then in that manner, as is there narrated; which we add, because the Latin Acts hint that the Saint was baptized in a plainly extraordinary and miraculous manner. And these circumstances, so diverse among themselves, which surround that baptism, as it is reported, of our Martyr, are here simply proposed by us to be weighed; since we are compelled candidly to profess that, for lack of suitable documents, nothing is at hand for us whence we can decide which are to be preferred to which as truer, or at least more probable.

[86] Nor is it certainly established under whom, A new controversy now occurs concerning the king or emperor under whom the holy Athlete consummated his martyrdom. Vincent of Beauvais, in the Mirror, book 13, chapter 24, places him among the Martyrs concerning whom, when they suffered, it is not established. The great Menaea published in type, the Menology in Canisius, Nicephorus Callistus, ecclesiastical history, volume 1, book 5, chapter 27, and the Roman Martyrology; add Baronius, volume 2 of the Annals at the year 254, and in the notes to the same Roman Martyrology, indicate that he suffered under Decius. But what does the king or emperor Dagnus mean, under whom our Saint was crowned with martyrdom, as the Latin Acts will have it? For indeed who he is, whether and when he lived, what rule or empire he administered, to what historian he is known, we by no means sufficiently attain: nor did Baronius attain it in his notes; where he confesses that it crept in, among other things, into the Acts, that for Decius a certain Dagnus was placed. Our copy, such as it is, described from the Vatican library, of which below, notes the fourth year of Decius at the very beginning of its narration of the Saint's martyrdom; but Decius did not reach the fourth year of his reign, according to the authors cited in Tillemont, history of the Emperors, volume 3, page 285.

[87] and when Besides, that we should not stand by that time, the fables which are intermixed with the said exemplar forbid. Altogether singular here is the Slavo-Russian Menology, when it writes that our Martyr suffered in the year 355 under Constantius. But this reckoning of time most plainly overthrows the whole history of the martyrdom, however great it is: for Constantius the emperor was not a heathen, but an Arian, and the most powerful support of that sect, a most cruel persecution against the Catholics having been stirred up in that said year 355 in their favor; so far, moreover, removed from the profession of the heathen, that he issued rescripts against them; which you may see in Baronius at the years 341 and 353. Unless, therefore, you affix another time and another emperor to this martyrdom, you already overthrow up and down its Acts; which record the Saint from beginning to end as undergoing torments and death for the worship of the one and true God; and now those things will vanish into smoke which are set forth concerning the combat of SS. Aquilina and Nicea or Niceta, and of others mentioned in the Acts. And so, since nothing here appears to us so contrary that the Saint's martyrdom should not have happened under the emperor Decius, but rather it is altogether consonant with the Greek documents, we prefer to place it then with Baronius, or to suppose from elsewhere that it happened then; than with the Latin Acts to obtrude some merely imaginary and fictitious Dagnus; by which, namely, all approach is barred to arriving at some determinate time of the martyrdom. Add that at the end of the historical Sylloge on SS. Niceta and Aquilina at the 24th of this month, the emperor Decius is expressly expressed, and therefore there is no need to have recourse to another, under whom our Martyr suffered.

[88] Our Henschen, in the sheets in which is transcribed from the Fulda Manuscript the martyrdom of St. Christopher, he suffered, places the beginning with which the Passion begins in the Manuscript of Cardinal Mazarin; and presently subjoins an annotation of Father Combefis, expressing it in these words: "The word Dagnus offends Baronius, because Christopher took his martyrdom under the emperor Decius. But those words indicate perspicuously not an emperor, but a petty king and toparch: to whom thus it was free to rage against the Christians." But this is a pure and simple evasion, born from the mere conjecture of Combefis; which therefore is denied with the same ease with which it is obtruded. For that Dagnus, whether toparch, or petty king, or emperor, as long as he is not proved from better documents than the Acts are, will ever be to us a fictitious name without substance, and a shadowy phantasm.

[89] Various are the days of the martyrdom placed by various writers. For in Mombritius St. Christopher is said to have suffered on the 7th of the Ides of January; or on what day. but in Peter de Natalibus, book 6, chapter 135, on the 8th of the Kalends of August: which seems to have been the opinion of the ancient Martyrologists, reporting him on that day: although whether on that, and not on another day, he completed his martyrdom, we cannot define safely enough, on account of the Greeks, who devote a plainly different day to his annual memory: since nevertheless it seems most probable that the Saint passed over from them to the Latins, whether you consider his name, or the province of Lycia to which he is attributed. It will be of service to have recalled to memory in a word that St. Christopher the martyr is marked at the 28th of April, in our Bede and Rabanus; likewise in the Manuscript of Monte Cassino, in the Manuscript of Trier of St. Maximin and St. Martin, and in the Manuscript Ado of the queen of Sweden; but in a certain writing of the Carthusians of Brussels a translation of St. Christopher is noted; as was said long since

in the Omitted matters at that day.

§ IX. The unbelievers converted to the faith of Christ; the torments inflicted on the Saint; his death and its circumstances.

Among the unbelievers converted by our holy Champion to the faith of Christ, a place is deserved first of all by SS. Niceta, SS. Niceta and Aquilina converted to Christ, Nicea or Callinica, and Aquilina, who afterward underwent a glorious martyrdom: but since concerning them it was treated at the 24th of this month with the Roman Martyrology, this one thing now remains, that, besides those things which on occasion of our Saint of today can illustrate their deeds, for the sake of a fuller notice we refer the reader to the historical Sylloge: where, in the eulogy of St. Aquilina, which we then produced from a double manuscript codex of the Menaea of the library of Turin, of the Duke of Savoy, is noted what properly belongs hither, the memory of the two hundred Saints who completed their martyrdom with her: where also they are honored with this modest eulogy: "These, sent by the impious emperor Decius to apprehend the holy martyr of Christ Christopher, but having seen the miracles which the Saint here wrought, believed in Christ, and, having confessed his divinity before the tyrant, at his command were beheaded."

[91] And these two hundred anonymous Martyrs indeed, because they are established at least by the authority of those manuscript Menaea, with two hundred others, anonymous, as converted to Christ by St. Christopher, suffer not so great a difficulty as the other unbelievers, gathered by the same to the faith of Christ in a multitude beyond belief immense; and in a number indeed so closely determined that you would say he who recounts them enumerated each individually with singular diligence — I mean the author of the common Acts, or some other writer of similar genius, from whom he drew his own. But since the testimonies do not agree in the number, and besides these Acts labor so gravely for several causes; certainly what could be admitted as sufficiently safe, or at least probable, concerning those converted unbelievers by the force of such Acts, we do not suffer ourselves to be persuaded. The Fulda Manuscript, no. 2, places "eighteen thousand men, who were baptized by his hand"; and these indeed from a single city — understand Samos of Syria, of which above.

[92] and by several others are they reported; In this copy is a variant reading attached, which is doubtless of the Trier Manuscript of St. Martin (for the said Fulda one is noted to have been collated with it), and thus it has: "They believed through him in the Lord: and there were on one day forty-eight thousand; and on another day one hundred and fifteen souls." The Milan Missal, printed in the year 1522, in the Preface to the Mass of St. Christopher, writes that "he recalled forty-eight thousand men from the error of heathenism to the worship of the Christian doctrine, by flashing miracles." In Mombritius it is thus said: "They believed … to eight thousand, and were baptized by his hand." Now let us return to our Fulda Manuscript; in which, no. 4, occur 400 soldiers, sent to summon the Saint, baptized, and undergoing martyrdom: and so much already then versed in the sacred Letters that they answer the tyrant aptly with sacred words. In Mombritius only forty soldiers are there reported. In the Fulda one, no. 10, a great people is reported to have believed: and no. 11 opens a new scene in three consular men beheaded.

[93] but the testimonies do not agree. And no. 16: "There are, moreover, in number, those who believed … through St. Christopher, forty-eight thousand men, and one hundred and eleven souls." The Manuscript of St. Vitus in Gladbach, ancient, as Rosweyde noted on our copy, departs much from that immense number, when it marks "ten thousand and eight, and one hundred and fifteen souls." Now, since we have above blown away king or emperor Dagnus as fictitious and merely imaginary, it follows that both his conversion, narrated at the end of the Acts with such plainly marvelous circumstances, goes off utterly into empty smoke, and likewise the whole nation of the Syrians, which is elsewhere noted as converted to the Lord; for it rests on the fictitious supposition of the city of Samos in Syria, which does not exist in the nature of things, as we indicated above. But if you contend that an error was here committed in the person and nation, one being substituted for another, so that the substance of the conversion may remain true; we answer that it will then only have something of probability, when it happens to be established from documents more worthy of belief than the Acts are, so various among themselves both in embellishment and so fabulous in the narration of the facts, and therefore deserving no greater belief here than in several others which they report.

[94] The torments inflicted on our Saint we think to be also of this kind, that they deserve some examination. The torments, as reported, inflicted on the Saint savor of the stage: "Then the king commanded an iron bench to be made according to his stature: and craftsmen came, and reported his measure, which was of twelve cubits: and it was done according to the king's command." So our Acts, no. 11. But against this make those things which we have premised concerning king Dagnus and the gigantic stature of the Saint. Theatrical too we think are those "forty jars of oil, which the king commanded to be poured over him, burning in the fire"; as you have in the same place. Moreover, that shooting of arrows, no. 13, by which the Martyr is said to have been assailed "from the first hour to the twelfth; and so indeed that the arrows were suspended by the wind to his right and to his left; none of which touched his body … and on another day … at once one of those arrows, leaping forth, entered into the king's eye, and blinded him"; that shooting, I say, and also the former sight of the eyes, foretold to the king by the Saint, and afterward wondrously restored to him — would that they rested on somewhat better documents; which, since they are lacking, we consign these and the like to the corrupt bilge of the Acts.

[95] Nor indeed do the death of the holy Martyr, and the things which surround it, the death too present marks of better note than several other things hitherto indicated: for the death is narrated as undergone not in the same manner. The Fulda Manuscript: "Then the hour drew near," it says, "that the Saint of God should be crowned … And completing his good martyrdom, he was crowned"; where there is nothing of the manner in which he completed his martyrdom, no more than in Mombritius. But that the end was put to the martyrdom by the beheading of the head, we have both from the Martyrologists adduced above, and from Peter de Natalibus and Surius, to say nothing of our Vaucelles codex, and other Manuscripts. Our codex Q, Manuscript 7, very ancient, dissents, which thus has: "Pierced by the soldiers with a lance, he gave up the spirit." But one must rather stand by the authority of the said Martyrologists, and of several exemplars, than of that single one, especially since it adds this fictitious episode: "And from his body came forth a dove white as snow." Which of the two punishments just mentioned, or rather neither, the Manuscript of St. Maximin of Trier will have, whose fragment transcribed we have at hand, is not sufficiently clear, for it says: "He completed his prayer; and so was slain by the ministers."

[96] But since we see mention here made of the prayer which his Acts will have to have been uttered by the Saint just before the consummation of his combat, with their circumstances by this opportunity we are made mindful to suggest a few things to be observed concerning this passage. Prayers of this kind detract very much from the authority of those Acts in which they are found intermixed. And say, prithee, where ever, in sincere and genuine, or at least in Acts of any value, will you find them? Consult what we said in the Commentary on the Acts of St. Procopius the leader, at the 8th of July, page 554. And indeed those prayers seem to us to be nothing else than the pious cogitations of some fabulist, which aim at this, that those who read Passions of this kind may either be stirred to confidence, or to frequenting the place where the body of that Saint is thought to rest, or at least some relics to be preserved: and why not sometimes also, that men may be rendered more prompt to read and copy similar Acts, a reward being thence promised to those who shall have done this; such as is asked at the end of the Acts which we give, in these words:

[97] it wavers. "This prayer St. Christopher composed: 'Lord Jesus Christ, grant a good reward to those who write and read my Passion.'" To which our codex Q, Manuscript 7, and the fragment of the Passion from the Manuscript of Maximin of Trier, also agree. What of this, that, so that these Acts may be more easily believed, some interpolator a little more liberal, fearing perhaps lest otherwise they should find little credit with some who might have somewhat more taste than the simple vulgar, added this fabulous clause, which in our sheets, extracted from the Manuscript of the monastery of Marchiennes, is noted in these words: "And praying again he said: 'Lord God almighty, render a good reward to all who believe, and celebrate, write, and read my passion.'" Do you see how by degrees the prayer grows?

§ X. A notice of the various exemplars and Acts.

[98] Various and manifold We have already, in the course of this Commentary, enumerated various exemplars of the Acts; but in this place we shall bring both these and others under one view. And first let the discourse be set up concerning the manuscript exemplars. The copy from the ancient Manuscript of St. Vitus in Gladbach, which we cited, is noted with this beginning: "In that time in which king Dagnus reigned in the city of Samon, there came thither a man of the Cananaean race"; but with this ending: "This prayer St. Christopher poured out to the Lord: 'Lord God almighty, grant a good reward to those who write and read my Passion. Who livest and reignest, etc.'" From those things which are noted on the wrapper of that copy, we are led to a notice of various manuscript exemplars. And those are these, with which that copy of the Passion is noted to have been collated: namely, with the Manuscript of St. Maximin of Trier, and also with the Manuscript of the monastery of Marchiennes. Our Bolland adds these things in the same place: "It exists in the Manuscript of St. Hubert, but with a different beginning and ending."

[99] of several manuscript exemplars There exists a different and more prolix one in our Manuscript, which formerly belonged to the monastery of Vaucelles. Likewise in our Manuscript α (now Q, Manuscript 7), folio 42. It seems to be the same in matter, but differing in words. The same Life exists as here, from the Fulda Manuscript, in the Manuscript of the most serene Queen of Sweden, in quarto, without wrapper and beginning, marked no. 136, and it agrees with our Life in the beginning and ending. The Fulda copy which we have is indicated, according to those things which are at its head, as collated with the Manuscript of St. Martin of Trier, and is said to exist in the catalogue of Father Beatillo, no. 51. But after the end of the same copy Henschen noted that it exists in the Manuscript of Cardinal Mazarin with this beginning: "In that time in which king Dagnus reigned in the city of Samani, which is in the province of Lycia, there came a man from the islands, of the Chananaean race."

[100] a notice is furnished, They contain likewise the Passion of the Saint, besides the said Vaucelles codex, our P, Manuscript 157,

likewise another of ours, parchment, of even larger form, P Manuscript 155, and yet another, of smaller form than those two former, marked P Manuscript 18, all three consonant with the same beginning, in these words: "There was a certain Christian by name Christopher, a holy man and very illustrious in those times, both admirable in doctrine and mighty in virtues." In the ending likewise (not regarding certain lighter minutiae varying both here and in the fragments to be cited presently below, which easily creep into exemplars) those codices agree. Thus reads the Vaucelles one: "So the whole nation of the Syrians, converted to the Lord, then first believed in Christ through holy Christopher. Then freely, through the king, it began to worship Christ. Who with the Father and the holy Spirit of both, etc."

[101] Whoever was the author of the aforesaid narration, and at whatever time he lived, some specimens having been exhibited, he cooked over again — badly, nay worse — the common cabbage of the Christopherian history, before badly enough cooked, dilating all the juice of the substance in such wise that he might offer it to readers with a new taste of seasoning, if so it may be said. Let us say the thing itself in proper terms. He amplified the prose Acts, changed the style, and expressed it in rhythm. And a specimen of the rhythm you have from the text just adduced; to which add these things, which he proclaims of the Saint, copied out from the said codex: "This man, sprung from the race of the Cynocephali, unlike to all in nation, countenance, and speech, his former countenance retained, had changed his speech." Of Dagnus he speaks thus: "At that time Dagnus the king had arisen there, who, although he was utterly implacable toward all, yet was most especially hostile to the Christians, etc." Of Niceta and Aquilina thus: "There were there by chance two women fair of countenance, but by the wickedness of their morals themselves very foul, etc." But to the soldiers sent to summon the Martyr, and converted to the faith, these words are attributed: "Whence, because with the heart it must be believed unto righteousness, but with the mouth confession made unto salvation, etc. Let your money be with you in your perdition, O king, because you thought that we would sell Christ God for gold, etc." I forbear the rest.

[102] Of the fragment which we have from the Manuscript of St. Maximin of Trier, whence a judgment of their value may be made. we have already spoken. Another copy of the Passion besides is preserved among us in a parchment codex in form quarto, marked ✠ Manuscript 87, which formerly belonged to the Carthusian monastery of St. Alban of Trier; but the argument of that Passion, if you except at the beginning the etymology of the name, and at the end the words from the Preface of the Milan Missal, agrees in substance with the printed one in Peter de Natalibus. And these things thus far concerning the manuscript exemplars of which we have notice. Now concerning another manuscript exemplar, whose beginning we have from the Vatican codex 6074; in which the author, having prefaced common things which could be applied to any Martyr, but presently having slipped down to St. Christopher, betrays himself, so that you can at once feel his ineptitudes. Hear new fables: "The blessed martyr Christopher," he says, "flourished with the intent ear of the heart, and spiritually, according to the etymology of his name, was feronomus * (a beast-namer), etc. And so, to receive this mark of the Holy Spirit through the laver of regeneration, he happily approached the blessed apostle Simon, by name the Zealot and by surname the Chananaean; imbued with whose doctrine faithfully, he obtained such a name in the very font of purgation." A new fiction indeed, and, so far as we know, unheard-of elsewhere! Tillemont, Ecclesiastical Monuments, volume 3, note 19 on the persecution of Decius, asserts that he saw manuscript Acts whose prologue begins: "The most praiseworthy combats of the Martyrs of Christ": but the history thus: "In the time in which, by a most wicked error."

[103] A Greek exemplar is preserved in the Vatican library, whose title is μαρτύριον τοῦ ἁγίου Χριστοφόρου (that is: "the martyrdom of St. Christopher"); and the beginning, Certain Greek exemplars are indicated, ἐν τῷ τετάρτῳ ἔτει τοῦ βασιλέως Δεκίου, πολλὴ μαλακία ἦν ἐν τῷ λαῷ, καὶ πλῆθος ἰκανοῦ τῶν τὰ εἴδωλα σεβομένων. That is: "In the fourth year of the emperor Decius there was much slackness among the people; and there was a large enough multitude which worshiped the idols." A part of this martyrdom Papebroch had begun to transcribe from the Vatican codex 866, folio 720; but he stayed his pen, because, as he left noted, "these things are mixed with fables through the six following pages." Behold for you a very few fragments, from which you may know the whole matter in compendium. Ἀνὴρ δέ τις ἀβλαβὴς, τοῦ γένους τῶν κυνοκεφάλων … οὗτος συλληφθεὶς ἀπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν τοῦ βασιλέως, ἀπὸ τῆς ἐρήμου ἠνέχθη τῷ βασιλεῖ Δεκίῳ εἰς τέρψιν· ἐτέρπετο γὰρ ὁ βασιλεὺς τὸ εἶδος αὐτοῦ ὁρῶν ἐν τῷ ἀρίστῳ. That is: "There was a certain harmless man, of the race of the Cynocephali … he, apprehended by the soldiers of the emperor, was led from the desert to the emperor Decius for his delight: for the emperor was delighted, seeing his countenance, at his meal."

Κατενύγη ὁ αὐτὸς ἀλλόφυλος ὑπὸ τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος .. διὰ τὸ μὴ δύνασθαι αὐτὸν λαλεῖν τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ διαλέκτῳ, καὶ μὴ ὑποφέρων τὸν πύρωσιν τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος, ἀπελθὼν ἐκάθισεν ἔξω τοῦ παλατίου, προσέχων τῆς κτίσεως τὸν εὐμορφίαν. That is: "That foreigner was pricked to the heart by the Holy Spirit … because he could not speak in our tongue; and since he could not bear the flame of the Holy Spirit, departing he sat outside the palace, attending to the elegance of created things, etc." But at the end, according to Papebroch, these things are found: Τὸ δὲ ἅγιον μαρτύριον τοῦ ἀθλοφόρου Χριστοφόρου ἐκέλευσεν ὁ ἁγιώτατος ἐπίσκοπος Πέτρος εἰς τὸν ἀπόῤῥοιαν τοῦ ποταμοῦ γενέσθαι, εἰς τὸ ἐπικείμενον εἰς τὸν πόλιν· ἔστι δὲ πεφυλαγμένη ἡ πόλις ἐκείνη μέχρι τῆς σήμερον ἡμέρας, διὰ τῆς πρεσβείας τοῦ ἁγίου Χριστοφόρου· μακάριοι δὲ ἔσονται, οἱ τὸν μνείαν αὐτοῦ ἐπιτελοῦντες ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰ, τῷ κυρίῳ, ᾧ ἡ δόξα.

[105] betray their own worthlessness. That is: "But the holy martyrdom of the glorious Christopher the most holy bishop Peter caused to be made at the outflow of the river, on the side which lies next the city (there had preceded 'Italia, a city of the Persians,' as the same Papebroch likewise left noted). But that city, unto the present day, has been preserved under the protection of St. Christopher. And blessed shall they be who celebrate his memory in Christ Jesus our Lord: to whom be glory, etc." "Italia, a city of the Persians," as it is here said — is there such a thing, and where? Likewise that bishop Peter — who, where, and when? But now it is time that we subjoin a few things concerning the exemplars printed in type.

[106] Of the Acts published in print They exist in the cited Vincent of Beauvais, James of Genoa, Peter de Natalibus, St. Antoninus, Wicel, Mombritius, Surius. Finally, of things pertaining to the Saint there is a historical collection in the recent French Legendist: to say nothing of the other Legendists, more ancient than he, namely the Flos Sanctorum or Legend, printed at Seville in the year 1532 in Spanish; our own Pedro Ribadeneyra, and Alfonso de Villegas likewise in Spanish; Diego do Rosario of the Order of Preachers, in the history of the Saints in the year 1585 in Portuguese; Thomas de Trugillo, of the Order of Preachers, in volume 2 of the Treasury of preachers, published at Barcelona in the year 1583 in Latin; and finally the history of the Saints, collected by various persons and published in French at Paris in the year 1601. Of the Acts likewise, composed by a very ancient author in metrical and prose composition, it will be spoken a little later. Those which are in Vincent of Beauvais are indeed shorter than those which we publish; but they savor of the bilge common to all. James of Genoa wove a great part of the Saint's history from a narration which he affirms to be read in certain of his deeds. Receive a compendium of the matter. To the Saint, dwelling with a certain king of the Chananaeans, it came into mind to seek the greater prince who was in the world, before others. Having therefore departed to one, greatest by fame, he remained with him. It chanced by accident that the king, hearing a song in which a certain minstrel frequently named the devil, signed himself with the cross. Wondering at the thing, Christopher inquired the cause.

[107] And when he understood that this was done for this reason, lest the demon should harm; presently Christopher: "Therefore he," a great series he says, "as one who can harm you, is greater than you." Therefore he betook himself at once to that one, to serve him. Said and done: he meets him, and receives him as his lord. So it fell out that, while they made a journey, a cross presented itself: this the demon fled; but Christopher retired into the solitude. Then, returning to the devil, and having learned the cause why he fled the cross, Christopher sees that he had spent vain labor, and that he had not yet hitherto found the greatest prince of all who were in the world; he resolved to seek Christ himself: whom he is taught of by a hermit; and by the same one's persuasion Christopher, being of so tall a stature, devotes his labor to ferrying travelers across a river, a dwelling having been built beside it. What more? While at a certain time he was resting, he hears the voice of a certain boy, calling him three times; he ferries him across, weighing down the shoulders of the ferryman so much as if he had carried the whole world. Then the boy manifests that he is Christ (see above, no. 59), a promise being added to his words, that Christopher should fix his staff in the earth; in the morning he would have flowers and fruits.

[108] After this singular and fabulous scene, the Saint is introduced as having proceeded into Samon, a city of Lycia, etc.; is recounted. where is the beginning of the other Acts, and it pursues their argument in substance. Peter de Natalibus draws the same ill-cohering rope of the scenic drama. St. Antoninus, having reported the Saint's martyrdom from Vincent, subjoins the little fable from James of Voragine; rightly adding that "Vincent, however, does not write these things … either because he wished to abbreviate, or because perhaps he did not reckon them authentic": on either count certainly, or rather on the last count, Vincent by most deserved right ought to have suppressed these trifles. In Wicel, in the compendium of the Acts, they are exceedingly immoderately exploded, when to the words cited from him above, no. 60, these are subjoined: "Unless perhaps you believe that this Christopher was a certain Centaur Nessus, who ferried Deianira across the Euenus, a river of Aetolia, as it is in the fables of the poets." But since these things are not found in the Mainz edition of the year 1541, I suspect that they were added by a heterodox person to the Basel edition of the year 1557. But now let us pursue other things which pertain to the present undertaking.

* "pheronymus" (name-bearing)

§ XI. A further notice of the exemplars and Acts; the judgment of others and our own concerning them.

[109] Further It follows that something must, it seems, be briefly said of the Passion of the Saint, published in Mombritius. Moreover, let it be permitted to pronounce summarily of it that it presents nothing of a better or different character, for which it should deserve to be preferred even a whit to the Acts to be produced by us presently in print, or to others of the same flour, manuscript, recounted a little before in great number: since all things were drawn from the same gaps, and grew up with the same filth; and therefore, since they agree in substance, some cannot claim for themselves a greater merit and value before others. As for

what pertains to Surius; he published the Life and martyrdom described in compendium from various sources, as is prefixed to the narration which he briefly gathered. But since these things were taken from various sources, and are almost consonant, at least in substance, with the narration of the common history of the Acts as they are commonly circulated; it is clear of what value they are, of no greater surely than the Acts themselves, from which they came forth: although we cannot deny that they are so much the more tolerable than the more prolix Acts, inasmuch as, several dramatic ornaments being cut away, they report a very few things described in compendium.

[110] concerning certain exemplars The Seville Legend indicated above prefixes to the Saint's martyrdom a patchwork sewn together from old wives' fables, which we just now contracted from the Golden Legend or history of James of Genoa. But so far is Ribadeneyra from adopting that patchwork, that after the deeds of St. Christopher he thus refutes it: "Commonly St. Christopher is painted with the boy Jesus on his shoulder, as though he were ferrying him across a river. I," he says, "do not find what foundation there is for painting him thus, unless it be by way of symbol, etc." The Portuguese history of the Saints does not have the said patchwork; and to the martyrdom it well subjoins that "many other things are written of that blessed holy Martyr; but because they seem apocryphal, they will be omitted." Thomas de Trugillo indeed asserts that he gives the Acts from Surius; but he changed and cut them down in the course; and among those things which he added at their end, it is said that "he suffered martyrdom about the year of the Lord 354, in the reign of Julian the apostate, as Wicel says."

[111] reasons are furnished. Where a threefold error is to be corrected. 1. Concerning the year of death; of which it has been disputed above. 2. That he connects that emperor with the year 354; who began to reign in the year 361. 3. He cites Wicel; but since he does not indicate the passage, he doubtless meant to designate no other than the Life of St. Christopher published by him from Rudger of Fulda: but in neither edition, which we cited above, do we find any jot concerning the year of the martyrdom, or the emperor under whom it happened. Alfonso de Villegas prefixes to the Acts which he brings forward from Surius a byplay, in which he alludes to the ferrying across the river, accustomed to be expressed in the pictures. Moreover, what he reports concerning the martyrdom ought not to detain us, no more than that which the history of the Saints, collected by various persons and published in French, has: for in both places the name of Surius is prefixed to these. Greater attention indeed deserves another exemplar, concerning which receive this.

[112] The Acts of St. Christopher, composed under the emperor Otto III, who flourished at the close of the tenth century, Acts composed in metre in the 10th century, and lately published, the Rev. Father Bernard Pez, Benedictine, not long since made public in print, in his most recent Thesaurus of anecdotes, published in the year 1721, volume 2, part 3, from column 27. They were written in verse and prose by Walther, subdeacon of Speyer, and are noted as drawn out of a manuscript codex of the imperial and most celebrated monastery of St. Emmeram at Regensburg, of the Order of St. Benedict; which indeed seems to have been written in the age of the author himself, as you have in the introductory Dissertation prefixed to that volume, page 50. The metrical Acts thus begin their narration:

"After the manner indeed of kings the sceptres of the Syrians did wield — unworthy of the public rods — a king by name Dagnus, concealing the heart of a wolf, with the feigned features of a lamb. He had covered secretly the serpent under the form of a dove. Now why should I complain further? To raging tigers he was unequal. This man, while by chance he held Samos under the dominion of his forefathers, which was the head of the city, while the realms of Syria remained, there was a certain man, in worldly means poor, rich in merits, whom, of parents not unknown, the Chananaean stock had brought forth."

[113] And the same argument being deduced through altogether six books, composed by Walther, subdeacon of Speyer, are exhibited, there follows at the end this clause, describing the author:

"These things the subdeacon * Walther, from the city of Speyer, in place of Christopher painted with the metrical rule, when first the third Otto succeeded to the kingdom."

And therefore about the year 983 or a little later. But to the prose Life he prefixes a prologue, and indicates that he dedicates it "to lord Balderic, father and bishop of the holy church of Speyer": who in the Catalogue of the bishops of Speyer in Bruschius, On the bishoprics of Germany, is noted as substituted for Odogar in the year of the Lord 970; but to have departed from this life in the year 987; and on the 15th of April, as is read in our copy from the manuscript Necrology of the church of Weissenburg, of the Order of St. Benedict, not in Saxony, but on the Rhine (see Bucelinus, volumes 1 and 2, and Mabillon, Benedictine Annals, volume 1, at the year 642, no. 16): and so that author did not write this Life after that year 987; to which is added at the end a clause to the praise of the Saint, then most celebrated in the whole world by miracles, as he attests: "For the unheard-of quantity of his signs," he says, "is today diffused throughout the whole globe of the lands."

[114] Moreover, certain other things which pertain to this author, and to his faculty of erudition and especially of the poetic vein, [with our judgment concerning them; as also concerning the prose Acts, composed by the same author.] the Dissertation just indicated will supply: in which, because its most learned author professes that he leaves to us (for whose sake especially, he says, we have brought both these and several other things into our collection) to discuss and determine of what credit the Acts of St. Christopher, illustrated by Walther, are; we say that they are worth no more than the others, nay, are of less value; because the poet, by amplifying them metrically in the first place, and adorning them with similes, inductions, and colloquies, composed rather an epic drama than a simple narration of history — though even then corrupt and fabulous, and compacted from the same filth with which the common Acts of the Saint now teem, we are compelled to profess. But the prose Acts, which by the same Walther as author follow the metrical ones, because they are of the same argument as the common ones, it is clear enough from thence in what esteem they are to be held; the worse than the common ones on this account, that their author, having used oratorical trappings, wandered far and wide beyond the bounds prescribed to hagiographers. John Hessels of Louvain, in the censure concerning certain histories of the Saints, which is at the end of the first impression of Usuard edited by Molanus, cites a Passion with this beginning: "There was, then, the glorious holy Christopher, in human likeness a Chananaean."

[115] Certain other Acts Bartholomew Chioccarello, On the Bishops of Naples, page 161, writes that the deeds of St. Christopher the martyr were recounted by a certain Peter, at the command of the archbishop himself (Peter, as he will have it, of Sorrento); these verses being produced, which are there read at the end:

"O summit of Naples, prelate blessed in all things, girded with saving nectar by a divine gift, Peter, by the merits of Peter, who consecrated you in the city. Receive the service of your Peter with a benign mind, which, rejoicing, he performed for the odes of your name, concerning the praise of Christopher and the great triumphs of the excellent Martyr, wrought for the law of Christ, etc."

What those Acts are, we hold unascertained; but whatever they were, we can scarcely doubt that they were kneaded from the same or a similar bran from which the others consist. Moreover, of both that Peter — namely the archbishop and the writer — we made mention at the 16th of February in the preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Juliana, Virgin and Martyr, §1, page 868; whose Life, given by us in the second place, that Peter inscribed not to the archbishop Peter of this name the Second, surnamed of Sorrento, but to Peter the First about the year 1100, according to what was there said, having in it this singular thing: that, although he uses prose style, he sprinkles in certain verses in several places here and there. In the cited Leibniz, page 870, to the church at Steterburg is ascribed a "book of single quaternions composed, in which is contained matter concerning St. Christopher"; otherwise unknown to us.

[116] are enumerated, with the judgment of learned men And these things thus far concerning the notice of the exemplars and the Acts which are exhibited in them. It now remains that we bring forward the censures of learned men concerning the Acts. Let the most wise founder of the Ecclesiastical Annals, Baronius, lead the column, who both here and elsewhere ought least of all to seem a judge suspect of excessive rigor. In the cited notes, then: "We read," he says, "the same things in certain ancient codices, which Surius also reported in volume 4; but all of them such as need censure. There crept in, among other things, that for the emperor Decius a certain Dagnus was placed." Hessels, designated a little before, concerning the Passion whose beginning we gave just now from him, thus judges: "The Passion of St. Christopher pleases me: although on that side it displeases, that the place of the martyrdom is not mentioned; nor are the cities, of which mention is made in the history, expressed." We do not attain how that Passion could please him absolutely: for neither can we be induced to believe that those Acts, such as they are, were of a note so dissimilar and of a better character than so many others hitherto enumerated, or rather the same in substance, while one is more or less bad than another, insofar as they more or less restrain themselves in the amplification and embellishment of the facts.

[117] concerning them; Cardinal Bellarmine, least obscurely, though not expressly but tacitly, indicated what he thought of these Acts: for in volume 2 of the Controversies, On the Beatitude of the Saints, book 1, chapter 20, to the eighth argument, by which the heretics contend that many are invoked who were not only not Saints, but not even men, as Christopher, George, Catharine, and therefore that that invocation is superstitious; he answers "that the histories of certain Saints are indeed apocryphal and uncertain, yet not on that account that the Saints themselves never existed … because although the history of St. George which then existed (under Gelasius, as he will have it, Pope) was apocryphal, yet the universal custom of the Church is not apocryphal: because the memory of George, Christopher, and Catharine was always most celebrated." Where you have concerning those Acts of St. George an express, and concerning the Acts of St. Christopher a tacit, censure.

[118] Nor do we see why, after such great men, namely Baronius and Bellarmine, to which we who brought forward their judgment concerning the Acts here discussed, the censure should be accused of excessive severity which Papebroch long since passed concerning them, when, having candidly expressed his mind concerning them in the Greco-Muscovite Ephemerides alleged above, he thinks it "difficult to elicit anything of certain truth from the fabulous Legend of the Saint." Meanwhile his Replies may be seen, part 1, §9, to article 11 of the pretended Exhibition of errors. Tillemont, concerning the Acts whose beginning we brought forward above from him, asserts that "they cannot serve except to confirm the censure of Baronius." The recent French Legendist, elsewhere strangely critical and a bold censor, does not incur the fault of rashness, when by the example of others he rejects the Acts of the Saint.

[119] But if it be permitted us to superadd our own also to the judgment of others, subjoin our own censure also. we say that those Acts are utterly disapproved by us as uncertain and

apocryphal. 1. Because they err in many things, as has been shown here and there in this Commentary. 2. Because they are stuffed with unexpected and plainly theatrical events and inept dialogues. 3. Because, finally, to comprehend all in few words, all their symmetry, composed of ill-cohering parts, is so far from furnishing motives of credibility fitted to the things so marvelous which it narrates, that it furnishes occasion to the heterodox of assailing the very existence of the Saint, as imaginary and fabulous, to whom so imaginary and fabulous a history is applied. Of similar bran are the Acts of St. Margaret, which we gave on the 20th of July, and of St. Christina, Virgin and Martyr, on the 24th of the same. What we there said concerning the Acts of both Saints may be consulted, and applied hither. Behold the Saint's Passion itself, such as it is.

ANNOTATIONS.

* hypolevita, that is, a subdeacon

PASSION

From our fairly ancient parchment Fulda Manuscript,

COMPOSED BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR.

St. Christopher, Martyr, perhaps in Lycia.

BHL Number: 1766

FROM THE MANUSCRIPT.

CHAPTER I.

The Saint is sent for the conversion of many; he is presented to king Dagnus; he converts Nicaea and Aquilina.

The Saint is destined for the conversion of many, In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. In that time, in the reign of Dagnus ^a in the city of Samos ^b, a man came from an island, of the race of the Canineans ^c, and it was shown to him by the Lord that he should be baptized with holy baptism, which the Lord Jesus Christ showed in his age: and it was shown to him that "many generations are to believe through you in the Lord Jesus Christ, and shall be called sons of the living God." But the Saint himself, praying with his whole heart, behold, a cloud descended from heaven and shone upon him: and a voice came to him from heaven, saying: "Chosen servant of God: behold, you have received baptism in the name of the Lord and of the holy Trinity." And the Saint, having entered within Syria, prayed, saying: "Glory to you, O God, who convert the ignorant, and lead them into the way of truth; you change the tongues of beasts, and give them a human tongue." And having entered into the city, he prayed, saying: "Lord, who made Adam, and gave him knowledge, that he might know the way of truth; give also to me, your servant, that I may teach this people, who has erred."

[2] he prays for the people, and baptizes many. And as he prayed, a woman came out of the city, to go and worship the idols: and seeing the Saint, she trembled: and her face was changed, seeing the body of a man, but the head of a dog ^d: and she ran to the city, and cried, saying: "Come and see marvels, which hitherto no one could see." And great crowds came out, and saw the Saint standing and praying beside the church; and looking upon that people, he prayed, saying: "Lord God almighty, grant me that they may believe through me in your holy name." And holding an iron rod in his hand, he fixed it in the earth, and said: "Lord, my God, make my rod flower, and have good branches and comely leaves; as you changed at Cana of Galilee the water into wine." And many, seeing that the rod flowered, believed in him, of this city eighteen thousand men, and were baptized by his hand ^e.

[3] He is presented to king Dagnus; But Dagnus the king, hearing of it, sent to him two hundred soldiers, to bring him before him. But the soldiers, seeing him, feared to approach him; and he sent another two hundred. And the soldiers, coming to him, saw him standing and praying; and they too began to pray with him. And having completed his prayer, he rose: and the soldiers said to him: "Lord, the king desires to see you." And he answered him: "If it is of my will, I will come; if not, I will not come: nevertheless I go with you." And having entered before the presence of Dagnus, the king, seeing him, that he was great, at once fell down from the tribunal on which he sat, and afterward rose, and sitting for judgment, questioned him, saying: "Who are you, or whence are you, or what is your name?" St. Christopher answered: "From my birth I was called Reprobus: after holy baptism I am called Christopher ^f." But the king says to him: "Dog, and evil torch, do you not sacrifice to my great gods?"

[4] St. Christopher answered and said to him: whose impiety he refutes, and converts 400 soldiers; "Truly you are well named Dagnus; for ^g you are a portion of death, and the spouse of your father the devil: but the gods to whom you tell me * to sacrifice are vain. They have eyes, and see not; they have ears, and hear not; nor can they help those who worship them: for they are of gold, of silver, and of wood; but let the gods who made not heaven and earth perish. But you, like a fool, worship them. Would that you would hear me, and worship the Lord who made heaven and earth! for he can free you from the fire, and forgive your sins." But the foolish King said within himself: "How can I conquer this man, who was reared among wild beasts, unless I find diverse torments?" And the king ordered him to be cast into prison. Behold, those four hundred soldiers came before the presence of Dagnus, and cast down all their arms before him, saying: "We too believe in the God of St. Christopher, and worship him." And the king said: "Have you too been bewitched, that you wish to follow him? But come, and worship my gods, and I give you gold and silver beyond measure; and I will establish you in great honor."

[5] The soldiers said to him: "Let your gold and silver be with you in perdition: who also become Martyrs. Two maidens, sent to pervert the Saint, but we have once been baptized, and we believe in the holy Trinity." But the king, being angry, ordered them to be beheaded. And they, on account of the grace of holy Christ , completed their martyrdom. Then the king ordered two beautiful maidens to come to him, and to be shut up with St. Christopher in the prison, Nicaea and Aquilina ^h, and he promised them gold and silver and precious stones, to make him sin with them, and sacrifice to the gods. But having entered to the Servant of God, they saw his face as it were a flame of fire, and they fell on their faces from the third hour to the sixth ⁱ. But when St. Christopher, the Saint of God, had completed his prayer, he said to them: "Rise up, my daughters, do not fear: but he who sent you to me shall stand before the judgment of God." And he questioned them, saying: "What is your trade?" And they answered: "Pray for us, Servant of God, that the Lord may forgive our sins; but our work is that of harlots : and what we received from our body, we distributed to the poor, we clothed the naked, we redeemed captives, we fed the hungry ^k."

[6] St. Christopher said to them: "Deny then Jupiter and Apollo, by him are brought back to better fruit, and all your idols, and share with me in prayer; and I hope in my God, that he himself will forgive you your sins." They answered and said: "Pray for us; for we believe in your God: for with you we will endure martyrdom." But on another day the king ordered them to come out of the prison and to entreat their God. They answered, saying: "Would that you would hear us, and worship the Lord God of St. Christopher." The king answered and said to Nicaea and Aquilina: "Have you too been bewitched by that sorcerer, that you too should deny my great gods? But consider, for the sake of your beauty, and sacrifice to my gods: but if you will not, I will make you perish evilly from the face of the earth." They answered and said: "If you wish us to sacrifice to your gods, order all the squares to be cleansed, and let a herald go out crying, that all may be gathered into the temple, for Nicaea and Aquilina are to sacrifice to the gods."

[7] in such wise indeed that they dash the idols to pieces. Then a great people was gathered: and the king said to the people: "Nicaea and Aquilina are to sacrifice to the gods." And coming to the temple, they looked toward the prison, where St. Christopher was shut up: and they cried with a great voice, saying: "Pray for us, Servant of God, that God may free us from these idols." And when they had entered into the temple, they cried: "Gods of the pagans, hear us." When they had said this three times, there was no voice in them. And they said to the people: "Perhaps they have fallen asleep, and do not hear, or are engaged in some work, and are not at leisure." Then Nicaea loosed her girdle, and placed it on the neck of Jupiter, and they both dragged, and cast him on his face, and broke him to pieces. Likewise they did to Apollo, and said: "If you are gods, rise up and help yourselves." But Dagnus the king, hearing that Nicaea and Aquilina had broken his gods to pieces, in a fury said to them: "I had asked you to sacrifice to my gods, and not to break them." Answering, they said: "We broke stones to pieces; such foolish gods of yours are, that they should be broken by women."

[8] Therefore Aquilina is tortured; Nicaea is presented to the king. The king answered and said to them: "Since you have believed that sorcerer, and injured my gods, I will make you perish evilly from this world; that Christopher may see your perdition, and sacrifice to my gods." And the king ordered iron chains to be put on the hands and feet of Aquilina: and he ordered her to be hung up, and a great stone to be put to her feet, that her limbs might be torn asunder. But she, lifting up her eyes, saw St. Christopher praying: and she cried to him, saying: "Servant of God, pray for me, for in the name of your God I receive my crown in all good, and in the Holy Spirit." Afterward she heard a great voice saying: "Receive your crown: enter into the grace of your God." And Nicaea saw her, and praying said: "Lord God of St. Christopher, do not separate me from my sister, but deign to crown me with her." And the king ordered Nicaea to come before his presence; and he said to her: "Do you still persevere in your folly? Hear me and sacrifice to my gods, that you may not also suffer more torments, which your sister has suffered."

ANNOTATIONS.

* whom you bid me * Christopher * of harlots

CHAPTER II.

The martyrdom of both; the Saint's torments and death; the tyrant punished with blindness, and freed from the same; his edict on behalf of the Christians.

Nicaea answered: "Your torments are sweetness to me, and your death is life eternal." Then the king ordered her hands and feet to be bound, [Nicaea, tortured with many torments, undergoes martyrdom together with her sister.] and her teeth to be knocked out one by one, that from pain she might not be able to answer. But she cried the more, and said: "I will not fear your torments; but I have a holy helper, who can free me from your hands." But the king, being angry, ordered much wood to be brought, and a huge pyre to be made; and he ordered her to be burned there. But she stood in the midst of the flame and cried: "Lord, who sent your angel into the furnace of the three children, and freed them from the flame of the fire, so free me also from this fire, that this tyrant may be put to shame." And then her hands and feet were loosed, and she stood in the midst of the fire: and that flame became as it were dew, which descends from heaven. But the tyrant, seeing that he could in no way harm her *, ordered her to be beheaded, and she completed her crown with her sister in a great testimony.

[10] But a great people awaited their glorious passion, St. Christopher is ordered to be tortured for they conquered that tyrant, and believed in the God of St. Christopher, and all the people cried: "Great is the God of the Christians." But the king, being angry, said in his heart: "If I do not destroy this sorcerer from the face of the earth, by his sorceries he is going to draw the whole world * to himself, so that all may believe in him." And the king ordered him to come before his presence, and said: "Dog, and evil torch, do you not sacrifice to my gods? How long do you stand in this faith; and how long can I endure you? Do you sacrifice to my gods, or not?" He answered him and said: "I wish to lead you into a good faith, that you may forsake evil, and worship my Christ, who has power over your life and your death." And the king said: "Do you still stand in this folly? And how long can I endure you?" St. Christopher, answering, said: "I am not foolish, but I am the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ; but you are foolish and unwise, who do not confess the Lord Jesus Christ, but confess Satan your father." And the king, being angry, ordered his hands and feet to be bound, and him to be beaten with iron rods, and a fiery helmet to be put on his head. Then three of the consuls said: "You would have been blessed, Dagnus, if you had not been born, for you have ordered such torments to be inflicted on the Servant of God." The king, being angry, ordered them to be beheaded.

[11] with exquisite torments; Then St. Christopher said to him: "If you can inflict more torments on me, do so, foolish king: to me it is life eternal, and your torments are sweeter than honey and the honeycomb." Then the king ordered an iron bench to be made according to his stature. And craftsmen came and took his measure, which was of twelve cubits ^a. And it was done according to the king's command, and they placed him in the midst of the city, and the king ordered him to be bound there, and fire to be put under: and he ordered forty jars ^b of oil to be poured over him. The Saint of God answered from the midst of the fire, and said: "These torments of yours, which you inflict on me in your baseness, and your gods, shall be consumed. I have told you once: that I will not fear your torments, nor your anger." When he had said these things, from the multitude of the flame that bench became as it were wax ^c. But the king coming, and seeing St. Christopher standing and praying in the midst of the fire (and his face was as it were a new rose), the king, seeing him, fell on his face from great fear, from the first hour to the ninth.

[12] but with a plainly vain endeavor. But after he had risen, he said to St. Christopher: "Evil beast, do not the sins of the souls whom you have made to err suffice you, and that you did not permit them to sacrifice to the gods; but you have drawn all my people to yourself?" St. Christopher answered and said: "Still many souls are to believe through me in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you yourself." And the king blasphemed him, and said to St. Christopher: "Do you wish to lead me too into your sorceries?" And the king, being very angry, says to St. Christopher: "So may my gods do to me, and so may they repay me, if this hour tomorrow I do not destroy your soul, and make you come as an example to all." But on another day he ordered St. Christopher to be brought: and when he had come before his presence, he says to him: "Now sacrifice to the gods and understand my words, that you may not perish through many torments." St. Christopher said: "I have made your gods an abomination; for I have my faith, which I received in baptism."

[13] He is assailed in vain with arrows, Then the king ordered a great piece of wood to be brought according to his stature, and to be set before the palace; and the soldiers were called, and he ordered the Servant of God Christopher to be bound to the wood. And the soldiers, coming according to the king's ordinance, shot three arrows each upon him, that the Servant of God might be more quickly slain. And the king said: "Let us see whether his Lord can come, and free him from my hands, and from these arrows." And they shot him from the first hour to the twelfth: and the foolish king thought that all [d'] the arrows were fixed in his body. But the arrows were suspended by the wind to his right and to his left: and none of them touched his body. And after sunset, the king ordered him to be left bound, and to be guarded, lest perhaps he should be loosed by the Christians in the night. But a great people awaited to receive his body.

[14] one of which, leaping into the king's eye, blinds him. But on another day the king says: "Let us go and see that sorcerer." And coming to him he said to him: "Where is your God? Let him come and free you from my hands, and from these arrows." At once, leaping forth, one of those arrows entered into the king's eye and blinded him, and St. Christopher says: "I tell you, foolish tyrant, if you believe: I tomorrow, at the eighth hour, receive my crown in all good. And this the Lord has deigned to show me. Many Christians come, and take my body, and place it in a place of prayer; but you come to that place, and make clay with blood in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; and put it on your eye, and you shall be saved." And then the hour drew near that the Saint of God should be crowned. He opened his mouth in prayer and said:

[15] "Lord my God, who brought me out of error into this knowledge, The Saint, having poured out prayers, is at last crowned with martyrdom. what I ask of you, grant me: and in whatever place they lay my body, let neither hail enter there, nor the wrath of flame, nor famine, nor pestilence: and in that city, and in those places, if there be there sorcerers, or the demon-possessed, and they come, and pray with their whole heart, and for the sake of your name name my name in their prayers, let them be saved." And a voice came to him from heaven, saying: "Christopher, my servant, where your body is, and where it is not; but they commemorate your name in their prayer; whatever they ask, let them receive, and be saved." And completing his good martyrdom, he is crowned in the month of July on the 8th of the Kalends of August ^d.

[16] But there are in number those who believed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ through St. Christopher, The king, healed of his blindness, issues an edict on behalf of the Christians. forty-eight thousand men, and one hundred and eleven souls. But on another day the king said: "Let us go, and see where they have laid him." And coming to that place, he cried with a great voice, saying: "Christopher, Servant of God, show me the power of your God, that I too may believe in him." And he took earth from that place where he suffered, with a little of his blood, and put it on his eye in the name of the God of Christopher; and in that very hour his eyes were opened. Then the king cried with a great voice, saying: "Glory to you, God of the Christians; who do the will of those who fear you, and I from this day forth will set my command among all the people, and in every tongue; that whoever shall blaspheme the God of the Christians, let him be struck with the sword." This prayer St. Christopher composed: "Lord Jesus Christ, grant a good reward to those who write and read my passion ^e: who reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen."

ANNOTATIONS.

* to him * perhaps "the people" * that is, all * they shall commemorate