Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/813

 CHRISTOPHER

729

CHRODEGANG

Acquiring in time extraordinary size and strength, Offerus resolved to serve only the strongest and bravest. He bound himself successively to a mighty king and to Satan, but he found both lacking in courage, the former dreading even the name of the devil, and the latter frightened at the sight of a cross by the roadside. For a time his search for a new master was in vain, but at last he found a hermit, (Babylas?) who told him to offer his allegiance to ( 'hrist, instructed him in the Faith, and baptized him. Christopher, as he was now called, would not promise to do any fasting or praying, but willingly accepted the task of carrying people, for God's sake, across a raging stream. One day he was carrying a child who continually grew heavier, so that it seemed to him as if he had the whole world on his shoulders. The child, on inquiry, made himself known as the Creator and Redeemer of the world. To prove his statement the child ordered Christopher to fix his staff in the ground. The next morning it had grown into a palm- tree bearing fruit. The miracle converted many. This excited the rage of the king (prefect) of that region (Dagnus of Samoa in Lycia?). Christopher was put into prison and, after many cruel torments, beheaded.

The Greek legend may belong to the sixth century; about the middle of the ninth we find it spread through France. Originally, St. Christopher was only a martyr, and as such is recorded in the old martyrologies. The simple form of the Greek and Latin passio soon gave way to more elaborate legem Is. We have the Latin edition in prose and verse of 983 by the subdeacon Walter of Spcyer, " Thesaurus anec- dotorum novissimus" (Augsburg, 1721-23), II, 27- 124, and Harster, "Walter von Speyer" (1878). An edition of the eleventh century is found in the Acta SS., and another in the "Golden Legend" of Jacob de Voragine. The idea conveyed in the name, at first understood in the spiritual sense of bearing Christ in the heart, was in the twelfth or thirteenth century taken in the realistic meaning and became the char- acteristic of the saint. The fact that he was frequent- ly called a great martyr may have given rise to the story of his enormous size. The stream and the weight of the child may have been intended to denote the trials and struggles of a soul taking upon itself the yoke of Christ in this world.

The existence of a martyr St. Christopher cannot be denied, as was sufficiently shown by the Jesuit Nich- olas Serarius. in his treatise on litanies, "Litaneu- tici" (Cologne, 1609), and by Molanus in his history of sacred pictures, " De picturis et imaginibus sacris" (Louvain, 1570). In a small church dedicated to the martyr St. Christopher, tin- body of St. Remi- gius of Reims was buried, 532 (Acta SS., 1 Oct., 161). St. ( (regory the Great (d. 604), speaks of a monastery Christopher (Epp., x, 33). The Mozarabic Breviary and .Missal, ascribed to St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636), contains a special office in his honour. In brotherhood was founded under the patronage "1 Si. i hristopher in Tyrol and Yorarlbcrg, to guide travellers over the Arlberg. In 1517, a St. Chris- topher temperance societi was established in Krain; a. similar society existed in Carinthia, Styria. in Sax- ony, and at Munich. Great veneration was shown to "it in Venice, along the shores of the Danube, the Rhine, and other rivers where floods or ice-jams I frequent damage. The oldest picture of the saint, in the monastery on Mount Sinai dates from the time of Justinian (527-65). Coins with his image were cast at Wilrzburg, in W'urtemberg, and in I'.ohemia. His statues were placed at the entrances of churches and dwellings, and frequently at bridges; and his pictures often bore the inscrip- tion: "Whoever shall behold the image of St. Chris- topher shall not faint or fall on that day." The saint, who is one of the fourteen Holy Helpers, has

been chosen as patron by Baden, by Brunswick, and by Mecklenburg, and several other cities, as well as by bookbinders, gardeners, mariners, etc. He is invoked against lightning, storms, epilepsy, pestilence, etc. His feast is kept, on 25 July; among the Greeks, on 9 March; and his emblems are the tree, the Christ- child, and a staff. St. Christopher's Island (common- ly called St. Kitts), lies 46 miles west of Antigua in the Lesser Antilles.

Erskine. Symbols and Stories of the Saints (Boston. 18S6); Analecta Bollandiana, I, 121 J 10, 393; Kekler, Die Patrtmate der Heiliaen (Ulm, 190,5); Gcnter, Legenden Studien (Co- loL'tie. 1906); Lindemann, Geschichte der dmtsrhm Litcratttr (Freiburg im Br., 1906).

Francis Mershman.

Christopher, Pope (903-904). Some hold that Christopher, once Cardinal-Priest of the Title of St. Damasus, a Roman and son of Leo, was an antipope. But though his manner of taking possession of the papacy was wholly uncanonical, lie appears to have been subsequently recognized as pope. Hence we find his name included in all the more or less contem- porary catalogues of the popes (Liber Pontificalis, II, ed. Duchesne; Watterich, Pontificum Romanorum Vita?, I; and Origines de l'eglise romaine, I, par les membres de la communaute de Solesmes, Paris, 1836). His portrait figures among the other like- nesses of the popes in the church of St. Paul Outside the Walls, at Rome, and among the frescoes of tenth- century popes painted in the thirteenth century on the walls of the ancient church of San Pier-in-Orado, out- side Pisa. He was, moreover, acknowledged as pope by his successors; for, in confirming the privileges of the Abbey of Corbie in France. St.. Leo IX mentioned the preceding grants of Benedict, and Christopher (Jaffe, Regesta RR. Pont., I, n. 4212). This privi- lege is the only one of Christopher's acts which is extant (ibid., 3532, 2d ed.). He became pope by forcibly dethroning his predecessor, Leo V, and put- ting him into prison, seemingly about October, 903. As Leo appears to have soon died in his prison, Christopher may be regarded as pope after his death. One writer, indeed, Eugenius Vulgarius, who was in- terested in blackening the character of Sergius III, pretends that he murdered both Leo V and Christo- pher. But his evidence is unsatisfactory in itself, and is opposed to evidence better substantiated. At this period, however, the darkest ever known in papal Rome, when its barons were making and unmaking popes at their pleasure, and when both Italy and Rome were in such a state of turmoil that men could find no leisure to write history, we have to grope about in the dark and when we have grasped some detail we can scarcely tell whether it is fact or fiction. A Creek eleventh-century document (Mon. Gra-ca ad Photium pertinent., p. 160, ed. Hergenrother, Etatis bon, 1869) says that Christopher was the first pope who, in his profession of faith which he sent according to custom to Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, stated that the Holy Ghost proceeded "from the Father and from the Son". The difficulty in the way of accepting this statement is that there was no Patriarch Sergius at this time. Christopher was driven from the Chair of Peter by his successor. Sergius III (Jan., 904), and compelled to end his days as a monk (Chronicle of Hermannus Contractus, ad an. 904), though Vulgarius says lie was strangled in prison [Dummler, Auxilius und Vulgarius i Leipzig, 1866), 160, 135J

Jaffe, Regesta HI; I'ont. (2d ed.), I, -111 so,.; Mione, /' /... CXXXI, 45; Mann, Lives «/ the Popes, IV; Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, II. .'.; i

HOB \' i K. M snn.

Chrodegang, Saint (called also Chrodegand,

', . i. ■ \ Ml Gl noigkan, RaTGANG, Id mho am;, anil

»a I, Bishop of Metz. b, at the beginning of the eighth century at Hasbania, in what is now Belgian