Sainthood - Saint Christopher

Today's saint is rather apt due to the fact I have recently landed in Tokyo and will be enjoying the sights and sounds of Japan until the 10th August.
 
"A Canaanite of gigantic stature, Christopher desired to serve the most powerful prince in the world. A hermit suggested he would do better to serve the needy, so he decided to help travellers cross a river. When he carried a child who revealed himself as Christ, he converted. He died a martyr"

Usually depicted as a giant with a staff and the Christ child on his back. Invoked against sudden death, hurricanes, hail and plague. Protects travellers of all sorts.

He's usually held to have died in the reign of the Roman emperor Decius which you might notice was almost three centuries after Jesus's Crucifixion.This is because he's a figure of legend and his story is demonstrative of Christ continual presence on earth (etc. etc.). When Christopher is carrying the supposed child across the river, the child gets heavier and heavier until it feels as though Christopher is carrying the world. The child then says he is Christ and to prove it, Christopher's staff is thrust into the earth and the next morning has turned into a fruit bearing palm tree.

Christopher's conversion and miracle story helped to convert many others and he was eventually incarcerated and executed.

Now this may have gotten you thinking about another famous Christopher, Christopher Columbus and yes - there is a connection. There were numerous political goings on around the time of the re-discovery of the Americas, one of which was the duty of the Spanish explorers to take their knowledge of Christianity with them and convert who they found.

Christopher took this to heart and by the end of his life was signing his name as "Christ bearer" and crediting himself with bringing conversion to the new lands.



Notes

St Christopher image: Book of Hours, France, Loire, ca. 1475
Morgan Library, MS G.1.II fol. 259r

Giorgi, R. Saints, A year in faith and art (New York, Abrams: 2005) p. 440

Bio of St Christopher:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03728a.htm

Christopher Columbus image:
http://www.josephsmithacademy.org/wiki/christopher-columbus/

Bio of Christopher Columbus:
http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/death-christopher-columbus

Storytime - Of the three wise men of Gotham

I must confess, I selected today's story because of the town's name.

"A certain man who was living in a town called Gotham went to a fair four miles away to buy sheep. And as he came over a bridge he met one of his neighbours and told him where he was going. And the neighbour asked him which way he meant to bring them back. He said he would bring them over the same bridge.

'No,' said the other man, 'but you won't.'
'By God,' said he, 'but I will.'

The other again said he would not. And he again said he would bring them over in spite of him, and so they fell to words, and at last to blows, so that each one knocked the other badly about the head with his fists.

A third man came up to them, a miller, with a sack of meal upon a horse. He was a neighbour of theirs, and parted them, and asked them the cause of their quarrel, which they made clear to him, as you have heard. This third man, the miller, thought he would rebuke their foolishness with a familiar example, and took his sack of flour from his horse's back and opened it and poured all the flour in the sack over the bridge into the running river, so all the flour was lost. And he said as follows:

'By my truth, neighbours, because you fight about driving over the bridge sheep which haven't yet been bought, and you don't know where they are, it seems to me that there is as much sense in your heads as there is flour in my sack.'

This tales shows you that some men take it upon themselves to point out good sense to other men, while they are but fools themselves."


Notes

The notes for this story state that 'Gotham' should be pronounced 'Gottam'.

Shakespeare's Jest Book, A Hundred Mery Talys, ed. H. Oesterley (London: John Russel Smith: 1866), XXII

Printed in Medieval Comic Tales, ed. D. Brewer (Cambridge, Boydell & Brewer Press: 1973) p. 72

Indecision

Today's excerpt comes from the visitations register of Eudes Rigaud written by himself and his aides between 1248 and 1269 during his travels through Normandy. 

Originally of the Franciscan order, Eudes rose to become archbishop of Rouen in 1248 and his register provides valuable anecdotal evidence for the misdemeanours in ecclesiastical life and its problems. He was a spirited reformer was rigorous in enforcing the decisions of the third Lateran council in 1179 which, amongst other items, concerned the lifestyles of clerics. Although incredibly useful in providing an account of these institutions, and his experiences, it is important to remember that when he created the register is was probably intended more as an aide-de-memoir for Eudes. Today's snippet underlines how seriously a lack of religious conviction was taken:

18th April, 1266

"With God's grace we preached near the Mare-du-Parc, where the clergy and people of Rouen had collected after marching thither in a procession. Here we adjudged and condemned as an apostate and a heretic one who had converted from Judaism to the catholic faith. He had again reverted from the Catholic faith to Judaic depravity, and, once again baptised, had once more reverted to Judaism, being unwilling afterwards to be restored to the Catholic faith, although several times admonished to do so. He was burned by the bailiff."

Notes

Davies, A., 'The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-century Normandy', (London: Cornell University Press ) p. 1; O'Sullivan, J., The Register of Eudes of Rouen,  (London: Columbia University Press, 1964) pp. XVIII, 618