The second question is, "What is the real meaning of the representations of St. Christopher that are so frequently found on the north walls of churches?" I cannot agree with MR. J. EASTWOOD in thinking that the explanation he gives from Sacred and Legendary Art is sufficiently satisfactory. It appears to me that the figures of St. Christopher were meant to symbolise the privilege enjoyed by the faithful of receiving the body and blood of Christ, and thus becoming Christo-feri. The emblem may have had its origin in the earliest ages, when the disciplina arcani was carried out. This opinion receives strength from the circumstance, that Christopher was a name assumed by the saint, and not his baptismal name. The extraordinary powers of cure spoken of in verses often inscribed below the figures of this saint, were understood by the faithful to allude to the efficacy of the Holy Communion, that made them Christopher's, i.e. persons bearing their blessed Saviour, not on their shoulders, but within their breasts. His figures in sculpture and painting are always represented as colossal, to signify that this heavenly food makes each of the faithful "as a giant to run the way" (Ps. xix. 5.) This explanation will probably satisfy E. A. H. L. that the important position occupied by St. Christopher in the iconography of the mediæval church is to be solved by its symbolical signification.
In addition to the representations of this saint in painted glass mentioned above, E. A. H. L. will find mention of another specimen in the last number of the Archæological Journal. It is in private hands, being the property of Mr. Lucas, who purchased a collection of specimens of old glass some years since at Guildford, said to have come from an old mansion in Surrey. The specimen in question is described as "St. Christopher carrying our Saviour—an octagonal piece of glass."—P. 101.
He will also find, in the same place, that a mural painting of St. Christopher has been lately discovered in the chancel of Gawsworth Church, Cheshire, of which a description is given in p. 103.
CEYREP.
E. A. H. L. asks if there is any known representation of St. Christopher in painted glass. There is one in All Saints, York, engraved in Weale's Papers; and there is a small one on a brass in Tattershall Church.
C. T.
For information on this subject, I would refer E. A. H. L. to Warton, Poetry, vol. i. p. 451.; Coryatt's Crudities, vol. i. p. 29.; Rudder's Gloucestershire, p. 286.; Gage's Hengrave, p. 64.; Winckelm. Stosch, ch. i. n. 103.
On a loose print of "Painted Glass at Leicester," Throsby del. 1788, now before me, is a representation of him who was once Psychicus the savage, but now the holy Saint Christopher, figured, as usual, under the likeness of a man of gigantic stature, carrying on his shoulder the little child Jesus, through the broad and deep waters of a turbulent river, and steadying his steps with an uprooted palm-tree laden with fruit, which he bears in his hands by way of staff. He is here exhibited in more seemly habiliments, and as a personage of much more dignified and venerable appearance, than in the well-known picture on the walls of Wotton Church. The latter, however, is a portraiture of superior antiquarian interest, on account of its accessories, wherein St. Christopher's especial office, as patron of field sports, is, with much rudeness it is true, but most efficiently and fully illustrated.
In the extract given by J. EASTWOOD from Sacred and Legendary Art, we have merely the supposititious conclusions of an ingenious imagination, introduced to supply a void which the accomplished writer was unable otherwise to fill up. There is a pretty little work published by Burns, and entitled St. Christopher; a Painting in Fordholme Church, which contains, much too much, however, in the suspicious form of a modern religious allegory, what professes to be the authentic "Legend" of this saint.
COWGILL.