Old English "Life of St Christopher"

Christopher was a relatively minor figure in the early medieval English church. The period pre-dates his elevation to superstar status which resulted from the perhaps twelfth-century invention of an encounter between him and the Christ-child. His early story, while equally unmoored from history, is a relatively simple martyrdom: converted directly by divine intervention, he seeks to convert a non-Christian city. People flock to support him, on the back of miracles he performs (his staff bursts into flower) and the example of his patient prayer while being tortured. The city’s ruler, most often called Dagnus, perceives Christopher as a threat to his control, and wants to convince, seduce, or torture him into submission to his own pantheon. Nicea and Aquilina, two sex workers sent to seduce him, are converted, and pose their own threat to order in the city by destroying a temple before being martyred. Bereft of other alternatives and struck blind by a mishap during one of the tortures, Dagnus has Christopher executed before himself converting and being healed. The story is most frequently read or studied today because of two key features: a version of it was included in the manuscript that contains Beowulf; and the saint is a dog-headed giant.

It is not possible to directly engage with the whole of Christopher’s story in Old English; study of the legend quickly requires engagement with manuscripts, fragments, and translation. Latin versions of Christopher’s story are widespread and highly variant with a networked maze of interrelationships. Old English prose provides potentially confusing snapshots of this complicated whole: the Old English Martyrology has an epitome of the legend which gives the antagonist a different name (he becomes Decius, the historical emperor d. 251 CE, who martyred many Christians); and uniquely among preserved versions omits the central third with Nicea and Aquilina. The fuller Old English prose translation in the Nowell Codex (London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A. xv part 2; also called the Beowulf Manuscript) now starts two thirds of the way through the narrative. The opening sequence must have been lost before 1563, because its first known owner, Laurence Nowell, signed his name on what is now the first side, above a scene of Christopher being tortured. This copy was substantially the same text as was in London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho B. x, though the Otho text was made for preaching and the Nowell one perhaps for more private contemplation. The Christopher text in Otho was completely destroyed by fire in 1731, but fortunately its start and end were recorded by Humphrey Wanley (d. 1726), making the connection with the Nowell text clear. So, while there is no extant full version of Christopher’s narrative—and no mention at all of Nicea and Aquilina—in Old English, there is also no doubt that it circulated; and plentiful evidence in Latin prayers, relics, and in martyrological calendars that the saint was relatively well known. It is the Otho opening recorded by Wanley that confirms for us that, in Old English, Christopher was healf-hundisces mann-cynnes (‘of the half-dog people’). The Old English Martyrology specifies that he hæfde hundes heafod (‘he had a dog’s head’), and all early medieval texts are consistent in the idea that he has terrifying eyes which shine or burn, and is extremely tall at twelf fæðma lang (‘twelve fathoms high; at least 60 feet or 20 metres’).

What remains of the prose text in the Nowell Codex is relatively straightforward work of translation with some creative touches and an interest in narrative clarity. Both Otho and Nowell date from the early eleventh century, and the spellings suggest that it was made not long before that, most likely somewhere in Wessex. That Ælfric did not translate it might indicate that it already existed when he began his mammoth programme of translation in the 990s. But he also seems to have not been fond of dogs (on a long charge sheet, this is surely the worst thing about the man), and possibly he would have seen the narrative as problematically fantastical; it was on the basis of its fictionality that Christopher was removed from the Catholic Church’s Universal Calendar of Saints in 1969. There is, though, no reason to think that anyone in western Europe doubted the existence of dog-headed peoples, the Cynocephali. The early authority Augustine of Hippo, a major influence on the English Church, reflected on Cynocephalic peoples without questioning the reality of their existence. A letter from Ratramnus of Corbie (d. 868) advises his colleague Rimbert of Hamburg-Bremen(d. 888) on how best to convert Cynocephali whom Rimbert understood to live in Scandinavia, using a Latin text of the hagiography to inform him. There were Christopher relics in England in this period, including a head at Exeter—which must have been a dog’s skull. Those who read this story are no more likely to have questioned its veracity any more than they would have done Andrew’s encounter with cannibals; indeed, Saint Christopher ultimately comes from a similar background (it is connected with the Apocryphal Acts of Andrew and Bartholomew) and his is another example of the possibility of converting peoples defined by their difference from the text’s audience.

A striking difference between the Old English Martyrology and Nowell versions of the story is the fate of Christopher’s antagonist. The OEM’s Decius vanishes from the story after Christopher’s execution; Nowell’s Dagnus is converted. This difference is because they reflect different Latin versions of the story, classified today as BHL 1764 (the Decius group, confined in western Europe to Iberia and Ireland) and BHL 1766 (the more widespread Dagnus group, perhaps originally from northern Italy). Dagnus’ conversion is combined with a healing miracle. In an imitation of the story of Saint Sebastian, Christopher is being tortured by having arrows fired at him. But by a miracle, they hang in the air to his side. In an illustration of his absurd ignorance, Dagnus apparently doesn’t notice this and comes out to mock his victim. As he does so, twa flana of þam strælum scuton on þas cyninges eagan ond he þurh þæt wæs ablend (‘two barbs from the arrows shot into the king’s eyes and as a result he was blinded’). After Christopher’s execution, Dagnus again comes out, but this time to gather mud and blood to rub in his own eyes (ultimately modelled on John 9.1–12 when Jesus heals a blind man). When healed, he is converted, and seeks in turn to convert all of his kingdom. There is something apocalyptic about this shift from an individual to a complete system change: the story attributes Christopher with an astonishing 48,115 conversions even before Dagnus’ order takes effect.

The central figure’s identity and how others, including the reader, understand them are all important. As in many hagiographies, this is bound up with ideas about naming, embodiment, and social performance; it is very productive to read Christopher using queer and trans theory. Christopher’s monstrous body makes his story an excellent basis for discussing monster theory. This is particularly productive in the context of the other texts of the Nowell Codex, which contains the only extant accounts of beings with shining eyes and of Cynocephali in Old English. Like its companion texts, Christopher seem to have an interest in geographical and racialized otherness; saint and king are both defined by their absolute difference from English readers. As is the case in Beowulf, the central third of the hagiography is focused on female figures; as in both Beowulf and Judith, the women in Christopher are violent and pose genuine threats to patriarchal order. The presence of toxic, uncontrolled, possibly absurd male leaders is another common theme across most of the manuscript’s texts—and indeed much of Old English.

It is worth noting that the abused sex workers are not alone in resisting Dagnus’ tyranny: soldiers throw down their weapons; and consuls argue with the king’s treatment of the saint. The text arguably illustrates the importance of fighting against unjust power; protestors’ bodies pay a price, but their movement is ultimately successful. Christopher spends much of the text in prison or being tortured and interrogated; this militarised complex of secular power seems to have technological sophistication and brutal force on its side, but is ultimately undone. The text is not truly about social justice, though: Christopher’s faith is portrayed as cancelling out and overwriting his monstrous body and racialized identity. For the text’s composer(s) and translator(s), the point was not an attack on autocracy or a violent state, but an assertion of Christian imperialism. The text’s vision is not one of an “interdependence of mutual (non-dominant) differences” as Audrey Lorde put it, but of the sort of “cultural coherence” that modern white supremacists advocate. This is powerfully illustrated in Dagnus’ post-conversion order that everyone in his kingdom convert. If anyone questions his new God, on þære ylcan tide sy he mid swyrde witnod (‘in that same hour let him be punished with a sword’). There is no dismantling of the militaristic system of oppression; it is simply shifted to serve the needs of Christianity, and therefore (for the text) become positive.

Select bibliography

Manuscripts

London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho B. x

London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A. xv (part 2); the Nowell Codex

Editions

Fulk, R. D., ed. and trans. The ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript: Complete Texts and ‘The Fight at Finnsburg’, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 3 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2010).

Pulsiano, Phillip, ed. ‘The Passion of Saint Christopher’, in Early Medieval English Texts and Interpretations: Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg, ed. Elaine Treharne and Susan Rosser (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2002), pp. 167–99.

Ratramnus of Corbie. ‘Epistola de Cynocephalis ad Rimberterum Prebyterium Scripta’, in Epistolae Karolini aevi, iv, ed. Ernst Dümmler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae, 6 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1925), pp. 155–57.

Rauer, Christine, ed. and trans. ‘The Old English Martyrology’: Edition, Translation, and Commentary, Anglo-Saxon Texts 10 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013).

Rypins, Stanley, ed. Three Old English Prose Texts: ‘Letter of Alexander the Great’, ‘Wonders of the East’, ‘Life of St. Christopher’, Early English Texts Society 161 (London: Oxford University Press, 1924).

Socii Bollandiani. ‘De S. Christophoro Martyre Forte in Lycia’, Acta Sanctorum, 33, for July 6 (1868): 125–49 [BH 1766].

Socii Bollandiani. ‘Passio Sancti Christophori martyris ex cod. Paris. signato num. 2179 inter noviter acquisitos’, Analecta Bollandiana 10 (1891), 393–405 [BHL 1764].

Wanley, Humphrey. Librorum veterum septerntrionalium catalogus (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1705).

Criticism

Frederick, Jill. ‘“His ansyn wæs swylce rosan blostma”: A Reading of the Old English Life of St. Christopher’, Proceedings of the Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference 12–13 (1989), 137–48.

Kim, Susan M. ‘“In his heart he believed in God, but he could not speak like a man”: Martyrdom, Monstrosity, Speech and the Dog-Headed Saint Christopher’, in Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, ed. Sharon M. Rowley (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 235–50.

Loeschke, Walter. ‘Sanctus Christophorus canineus’, in Edwin Redslob zum 70. Geburtstag. Eine Festgabe, ed. Georg Rohde, Ottfried Neubecker and Hans-Herbert Möller (Berlin: Blaschker, 1955), pp. 3–82.

Lionarons, Joyce Tally. ‘From Monster to Martyr: The Old English Legend of Saint Christopher’, in Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, Studies in Medieval Culture 42, ed. Timothy Jones and David A. Sprunger (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), pp. 167–82.

Newall, Venetia. ‘The Dog-Headed Saint Christopher’, in Folklore on Two Continents: Essays in Honor of Linda Dégh, ed. Nikolai Burlakoff and Carl Lindahl (Bloomington, IN: Trickster Press, 1980), pp. 242–49.

Thomson, S. C. ‘Grotesque, Fascinating, Transformative: The Power of a Strange Face in the Story of Saint Christopher’, Essays in Medieval Studies 34 (2019): 83–98.

———. ‘Telling the Story: Reshaping Saint Christopher for an Anglo-Saxon Lay Audience’, Open Library of Humanities 4 (2018), 1–32.

———. ‘The Overlooked Women of the Old English Passion of Saint Christopher’, Medievalia et Humanistica: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Culture 44 (2018), 61–80.

———. ‘Otherwheres in the Prose Texts of the Nowell Codex’, in The Idea of the World in Early Medieval  England, Studies in Old English Literature 1, ed. Mark Atherton, Kazutomo Karasawa and Francis Leneghan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 103–26.

———. ‘From Here to Eternity in the Prayers of Saint Christopher’, Parergon 41 (2024): 67–91.

Racine, Félix. ‘Geography, Identity and the Legend of Saint Christopher’, in Religious Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. Robert M. Frakes and Elizabeth DePalma Digeser (Toronto: Edgar Kent, 2006), pp. 105–25.

Weinreich, Spencer J. ‘How a Monster Means: The Significance of Bodily Difference in the Christopher Cynocephalus Tradition’, in Monstrosity, Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World, ed. Richard H. Godden and Asa Simon Mittman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 181–207.

S. C. Thomson is Senior Lecture in Old and Middle English at Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf. He is working towards an edition of Saint Christopher for Liverpool University Press.