In my recent, fruitless and intriguing hike through the library of Babel, I have found it increasingly difficult (as if longsightedness were blurring things as they got closer) to investigate the legend and myth of St. Christopher. It says a great deal when the most useful source I have found is wikipedia. The basics you probably know: St Christopher was supposed to be a great, strong, giant man - a horse of a man, you might say - who carried the Christchild across a river. The back story is just as pleasing: he was a martyr under Domitian and he was believed to have had the head of a dog.
Now, I know well that he didn't have the head of a dog, as do you. And the people who recorded this tradition knew that as well. Infact, it may be that no-one ever really believed he had the head of a dog. Nevertheless there is some iconography, some depictions of Christopher that turn on this testular irregularity. I have no real sources for this (yet), but I imagine the same thing will result in 500 years time when someone reads that Jacques Chirac was considered a 'frog' and a holy image of the man will be produced with suit, gattling gun (or other mythical weapon) and ... a frog's head. Or legs.
In any case, I have been keen to work out the significance of Saint Christopher. In brief, what I am puzzling over is the masculinity of the saint. He is so strong, mighty and naked that he could scarce be other than a type of Heracles. Except for the baby. He is always depicted with the baby. This throws everything into relief: is he then a doubly sexual image, a worldly embodiment of both genders?
Such a thing would seem unlikely. But then, you have the unambiguous Saint Sebastian that is something of an icon today for a gay history of art - the imagery involved is more than half of the idea: without the arrows and the bound hands, Saint Sebastian would be just a beautiful youth. And so with Saint Christopher. Note that I am not arguing for him as a bisexual being - I am not talking about that act at all - I want us to see him as a masculine figure, capable of at the same time being read as a feminine one. Without the child, he would be a burly, gigantic man. With the child in the image, he becomes the complete human.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
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