The Unlikely Story of Saint Christopher

Andrew Petcher

Sep 28

Last weekend we went to visit some good friends, Richard and Pauline who live in the delightful town of Oakham in the County of Rutland, the most fiercely determined smallest County in England

This is Richard and Pauline, not in Rutland but on a holiday together with Kim and I in Ireland several years ago…

Richard suggested a day travelling around Rutland Water and we started off with a visit to the Church of Saint Andrew in the unlikely named village of Stoke Dry.

Wikipedia has a likely explanation...

"The name means 'outlying farm/settlement'. The village is positioned on a hill above a valley that may have been marshy in previous times and may have been drained."

The idea of visiting a church gave me an immediate memory nudge. When I was a boy we regularly went on holidays to East Anglia and Dad always liked to visit churches, I don't think that it was because he was especially religious or interested in church architecture but rather because they had free admission.

Churches were never locked in those days, always open for visitors. Sadly not so anymore because of thefts and vandalism. When it comes to good manners and respect the UK has sadly declined rapidly even since I was a boy.

At Stoke Dry we approached the small church, pushed open the heavy creaking door (it was open, nice surprise) and we stepped inside. I liked it immediately, the smell of church, stone floor, the wooden pews, the soaring pillars, the statuary and the stained glass windows.

What intrigued me the most were the medieval wall paintings which have miraculously survived six hundred years of neglect, the hostile environment and the Reformation. Wall painting in the English church dates from after the Norman Conquest, and a few, such as this still survive

One of these murals was of Saint Christopher. I knew of Saint Christopher of course, everyone who likes to travel has a Saint Christopher necklace or bracelet but I didn't know the story of Saint Christopher until now.

The most popular image of St. Christopher depicts him as a huge, bearded man, a giant, carrying a child on his shoulders as he wades across a river. This image dates back to one of the most famous biographies of those who were martyred on July 25th in the year 251 in Samos, in Lycia in Anatolia, part of modern day Turkey.

According to this tradition, Christopher's real name was Reprobus and he was a giant of a man who wanted to be at the service of the world's strongest king. When he visited the court of a king who was apparently invincible, he entered his service. One day, while the king was listening to a song that mentioned the Devil, Reprobus saw him make the sign of the cross and asked him why he performed this gesture. The king replied that he was afraid of the Devil and that every time he heard him mentioned he made the sign of the cross for protection.

Reprobus then decided to look for the Devil who was evidently more powerful than his king.

The Devil proved easy enough to find and Reprobus chose to serve him but one day, while passing through a street where there was a cross, the Devil retraced his steps to avoid it. The giant was curious why he did so and the Devil was forced to admit that Christ had died on a cross which was why the image terrified him.

Reprobus was a bit like Boris Johnson (or any Tory politician for that matter), clearly not a man known for being loyal or especially reliable it seems. He now abandoned the Devil and went looking for Jesus Christ instead. A hermit advised him to build a hut near a river that flooded dangerously and to use his great strength and stature to assist travellers cross to the other side.

One day he heard a child's voice asking for help to cross the river. Reprobus put the child on his shoulders and began to wade through the water.

The further in he went, the heavier the boy on his shoulders became until even his monstrous strength was not strong enough and he began to struggle. Reprobus didn't think that he could make it but the boy urged him on. He eventually reached the other side and asked the boy how he could be so heavy?

The small boy now revealed his true identity, he was Jesus, the Christ Child and confessed that he was so heavy because he was carrying on his shoulders the sins of the world.

He instructed Reprobus to go and tell a bishop. "Tell him to baptise you with a new name. From now on, you shall be called, "Christopher" "Christ-bearer."

Interesting fact...

The name Christopher, as used in the Anglophone world, is the English version of the Greek name Χριστόφορος (Christóphoros or Christóforos). It is formed from the word elements Χριστός (Christós, 'Christ'), and φέρειν (phérein, 'to bear'), together signifying, "Christ bearer".

Moving on. According to legend, St Christopher's martyrdom took place in Samos, in Lycia. Tradition tells us that he resisted torture, inflicted with iron rods and burning metal. Arrows that were shot at him remained suspended in mid-air. One of them reversed and blinded the king who had ordered the torture.

Finally, they decided to decapitate Christopher. Before he died, however, Christopher told the king to dampen his wounded eye with his blood. The king did so and regained his sight immediately, subsequently converting to Christianity. Since then, St Christopher has been invoked to heal diseases of the eye.

Some Saint stories are even too unlikely even for the Church that St Christopher was removed from the Roman Catholic Calendar in 1969, and long before this the 16th century Council of Trent had tried to suppress his cult, or at least to purge it of its more fantastical elements.

The wall painting at Saint Andrew's, Stoke Dry...