Cynocephaly

Saint Christopher

I am continuously amazed at the world and what is in it. when I posted the last blog with that puppy faced icon, I thought it was something that had been cobbled together as humour.


When bb-idaho commented that it might be Saint Bernard, I smiled and then thought, OK, let's see how many dog breeds are named after saints. The next thing I know I am looking at actual Icons of Saints with dog's heads. Whoops, what it this?


From a Psalmatry in Kiev Museum


From Wikipedia

"Cynocephalus and St. Christopher :
Cynocephalus ( κῠνοκέφᾰλοι) is a Greek word, literally meaning "dog-head", for a sacred Egyptian Baboon with the face of a dog.... "


Thot, The Egyptian God of scribes


"In the Eastern Orthodox Church, certain icons covertly identify Saint Christopher with the head of a dog. The background to the dog-headed Christopher is laid in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, when a man named Reprebus Rebrebus or Reprobus (the "scoundrel") was captured in combat against tribes to the west of Egypt in Cyrenaica, and was assigned to the numerus Marmaritarum .....He was reported to be of enormous size, with the head of a dog instead of a man......"


Dog faced Saint(?) by Schedel

"Cynocephali figure both in pagan and in Christian world-views. A legend that placed St. Andrew and St. Bartholomew among the Parthians presented the case of "Abominable," the citizen of the "city of cannibals... whose face was like unto that of a dog." After receiving baptism, however, he was released from his doggish aspect (White, 1991). Quite similar was the portrait of St. Christopher, a giant of a cynocephalic species in the land of the Chananeans (the "canines" of Canaan in the New Testament) who ate human flesh and barked. Eventually, Christopher met the Christ child, regretted his former behavior, and received baptism. He, too, was rewarded with a human appearance, whereupon he devoted his life to Christian service and became an athlete of God, one of the soldier-saints (Walter of Speyer, Vita et passio sancti Christopher martyris, 75)."


Christophorus in the Byzantium Museum in Athens

"Cynocephali illustrated in the Kievan psalter, 1397
The "cynocephali" offered such an evocative image of the magic and brutality deemed characteristic of bizarre people of distant places, that it kept returning in medieval literature: Augustine, Isidore of Seville, Paul the Deacon, Adam of Bremen, and Ratramnus all reported on the Cynocephalae, with the aplomb of anthropologists. Quoting St. Jerome, Thomas of Cantimpré corroborated the existence of Cynocephalos, in his Liber de Monstruosis Hominibus Orientis, xiv, ("Book of Monstrous men of the Orient"). The encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais acquainted his patron St. Louis IX of France with "an animal with the head of the dog but with all other members of human appearance... Though he behaves like a man... and, when peaceful, he is tender like a man, when furious, he becomes cruel and retaliates on humankind" (Speculum naturale, 31:126). The werewolf tradition is an archaic Greek one as well as an ancient European one. Additionally, in Chinese record Liang Shu (History of the Liang Dynasty), the Buddhist missionary Hui-Sheng describes an island of dog-headed men to the east of Fusang, a nation he visited variously identified as Japan or the Americas."





Christophorus