40 Fun Facts About Saint Christopher

According to legend, a child who grew crushingly heavy on Saint Christopher's shoulders revealed himself to be whom?

Jesus told the exhausted giant that he had carried the whole world and the one who made it, then vanished from the riverbank.

Saint Christopher is best known today as the patron saint of which group?

Travelers claimed him because legend has him spending his days carrying strangers across a dangerous river.

In the Golden Legend, whom did Saint Christopher serve until he saw his master flee from a roadside cross?

The devil admitted that the cross terrified him, so the giant quit on the spot and went looking for a stronger master.

In the Golden Legend, Saint Christopher's staff, planted in the ground overnight, had turned into what by morning?

A palm tree heavy with dates stood where the staff had been, the sign the child had promised as proof of who he was.

Which Caribbean island, paired with Nevis in one nation, is named with an old nickname for Saint Christopher?

St Kitts is short for Saint Christopher Island, because Kit was once the usual pet form of the name.

Which Beatle had a Saint Christopher medal snatched from his neck by a fan in New York in 1964?

Ringo Starr got it back, because the fan returned the medal to him in a much-publicized meeting.

Which German carmaker has published a customer magazine named Christophorus, after Saint Christopher, since 1952?

Porsche chose the saint who watches over people on the road, and the magazine is among the oldest customer publications in the world.

Eastern icons give Saint Christopher a dog's head, an image scholars link to which Egyptian god?

Anubis was fused with the Greek Hermes as Hermanubis, a dog-headed guide whose statues may have shaped the earliest icons of the saint.

Medieval believers thought a glance at an image of Saint Christopher protected them from what for that day?

Sudden death was the fear, so his picture went up on city gates, bridges and church walls where nobody could miss it.

Which emergency vehicles in Germany are named Christoph, plus a number or place, in honour of Saint Christopher?

Rescue helicopters got the name in 1970, when Christoph 1 began flying from a Munich hospital as Germany's first permanent civilian rescue helicopter.

In the Golden Legend, what name did Saint Christopher go by before baptism gave him a new one?

Reprobus is how he introduces himself to the king who puts him on trial, adding that baptism made him Christopher.

In the Golden Legend, who taught Saint Christopher the faith and suggested he carry people across a dangerous river?

A hermit first proposed fasting and long prayers, but the giant said he could manage neither, so river duty became his service.

In the Golden Legend, the child on Saint Christopher's shoulders grew as heavy as which metal in mid-river?

Lead is the legend's comparison, and the weight kept growing as the water rose until the giant feared he would drown.

In the Golden Legend, an arrow fired at Saint Christopher hung in the air, then turned and struck what?

The king's eye was blinded, and the saint told him the cure: clay mixed with the martyr's own blood, applied once the execution was over.

After fire, hot iron and arrows all failed in the legends, how was Saint Christopher finally martyred?

Beheading was the end he foretold himself: in the Golden Legend he tells the king a day ahead that he will die the next morning.

In an early Greek legend, which Roman emperor demands pagan sacrifices and has Saint Christopher executed?

Decius really did order everyone in the empire to sacrifice, and those who complied received a certificate recording it.

The Golden Legend says the giant Saint Christopher was born into which people named in the Old Testament?

Canaanites were his kin in this telling, which also makes him twelve cubits tall, at least seventeen feet.

Which country's church banned dog-headed icons of Saint Christopher in 1722, though Old Believers kept painting them?

Russia had taken to the dog-headed saint in the late 1500s, and after the ban official icons had to show him with a human face.

In a folk tale from Cyprus, why did a handsome Saint Christopher pray to be given a dog's head?

To avoid temptation is the reason given: his good looks kept attracting local women, so he asked God to disfigure him.

The second half of the Greek name Christopher comes from pherein, a verb with which meaning?

To bear is the sense of pherein, so the name itself describes the deed the legend made famous: hoisting a sacred passenger onto his shoulders.

San Cristóbal, a place name found across Latin America, is Saint Christopher's name in which language?

Spanish turned the Greek Christophoros into Cristóbal, while Portuguese speakers say São Cristóvão and the French say Saint-Christophe.

The Roman Martyrology remembers Saint Christopher on the 25th of which month, his traditional Western feast day?

July 25 is also the feast of the apostle James the Great, so the two saints share a date on Western calendars.

Which pope's 1969 calendar reform left Saint Christopher's feast day to local calendars instead of the worldwide one?

Paul VI dropped the feast from the worldwide calendar because it had joined the Roman calendar late, but Christopher kept his place in the official list of martyrs.

Saint Christopher belongs to which group of saints, first invoked together in the Rhineland during the Black Death?

Fourteen Holy Helpers were each prayed to for a particular danger, and Christopher was one of two called on against the plague itself.

The oldest evidence of devotion to Saint Christopher is a church inscription from 452 found near which modern city?

Istanbul has since swallowed ancient Chalcedon, where the inscription names a shrine to a blessed Christopher but says nothing about his life.

Which Caribbean capital was founded under a name honouring Saint Christopher, who is still the city's patron saint?

Havana began as San Cristóbal de la Habana, and its cathedral still displays a statue of the saint carved in Seville in 1632.

Which Baltic capital's coat of arms shows a silver Saint Christopher carrying a child on his shoulder?

Vilnius has stamped the saint on its seals since the 1400s; the Soviets abolished the arms in 1940 and Lithuania reinstated them in 1991.

A gold-plated reliquary on the Croatian island of Rab is claimed to hold which part of Saint Christopher?

His skull is the claim, and tradition says a bishop held the relic up on the town wall in 1075 to end a siege.

San Cristóbal Island, named for Saint Christopher, is where Charles Darwin first went ashore in which archipelago?

Galápagos Islands charts once labelled it Chatham Island, and a Darwin statue now marks the spot where he stepped ashore in 1835.

In which Stephen King novel is the gentle giant John Coffey given a Saint Christopher medal after a healing?

The Green Mile hands the medal to a healer of enormous size, a fitting echo of a saint whom legend describes as a giant.

Which Dutch painter of fantastical scenes showed Saint Christopher wading with a child in a panel now in Rotterdam?

Hieronymus Bosch painted the oil panel around 1490 to 1500, and it hangs in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Which Venetian master painted a fresco of Saint Christopher above a doorway in the Doge's Palace?

Titian placed the saint over a door to the private staircase that let the doge slip from his apartments to the council halls.

A Saint Christopher print bearing the date 1423, long hailed as Europe's earliest dated print, used which technique?

Woodcut is the technique, and the sheet was found in 1769 pasted inside a manuscript at the Buxheim monastery in southern Germany.

A fragment of a life of Saint Christopher survives in the same thousand-year-old manuscript as which epic poem?

Beowulf shares the Nowell Codex with it, along with Wonders of the East, a tour of far-off lands and their fantastic inhabitants.

In which medieval English poem does a knight's yeoman wear a silver Saint Christopher medal on his chest?

The Canterbury Tales presents the yeoman as a forester in a hooded tunic with peacock-feathered arrows, and the medal completes his kit.

In which Truman Capote novella does the narrator give Holly Golightly a Saint Christopher medal for Christmas?

Breakfast at Tiffany's has the narrator buy the medal at the famous Fifth Avenue jeweller named in the title.

In which 2013 space thriller does a stranded astronaut come across a Saint Christopher icon while trying to get home?

Gravity gives Sandra Bullock's astronaut the sight of the saint in mid-river just before the story turns and she finds the will to escape.

In the Golden Legend, what happened when a king sent two women to win over the imprisoned Saint Christopher?

He converted them, and the pair then pulled down the temple idols with their belts and told the crowd to fetch doctors for the broken gods.

On Juan de la Cosa's world map of 1500, a figure of Saint Christopher is thought to stand for which explorer?

Columbus shared the saint's first name, and the mapmaker, who had sailed with him, drew the saint carrying a child across the water.

In an early Greek legend, Bishop Babylas baptises Saint Christopher in which great city of Roman Syria?

Antioch was the see of Babylas, a real bishop who died in prison during the persecutions of the 250s.