| San Cristobal, whose date of celebration is July 25, is one of the saints most represented by images. Who doesn't have a picture of San Cristobal in his keychain and self-adhesive for cars? |
However, where does this devotion arise as the patron saint of the drivers and those who have to travel?
It is said that he was a giant called Reprobo that helped travelers pass the river through a place where there was no bridge or boats.
On one occasion, the colossus was crossing a child, and the little one became so heavy that it made the giant sink into the water; it came a moment, finding itself in the middle of the current, that he experienced the overwhelming fatigue of those who “take the whole universe above”.
Then he recognized the Child Jesus himself and was baptized with the name of Christophorus, "bearer of Christ", a name more than his taste than that he carried from the cradle, which meant "condemned to eternal sorrows".
Consequently, the iconography has collected this story by making the Child Jesus appear, often with the globe on the hand, on the shoulders of Christopher.
Undoubtedly, the collective unconscious who made the legend fit drank from the sources of the narratives of mythological giants, especially Atlas, the titan that had to carry the globe on its shoulders. In some miniaturized manuscripts of the Middle Ages this pagan symbol was borrowed in favor.
It was the Dominican Genoese Fray Santiago de Vorágine, in the 13th century, who in his famous Golden Legend, dedicated to glossing the life of the saints, spread the wonders and milagreries of Saint Christopher to satisfy the demands of the time in matters of popular religiosity.
In the Middle Ages, the frescoes of San Cristobal multiplied everywhere, since it was believed that anyone who looked at his image would not die that day. He was therefore regarded as a protector of motorists.
As a giganton was believed to be five or six metres tall, the churches began to represent him "in a natural size", covering with his image the facades and entrances of temples, and even cathedrals, from the ground to the ceiling.
The great enemy of this saint was the demon of biology, which was determined that the height of the human species did not give so much. In view of this finding, there was an attempt at the Council of Trent to remove him from the altars, suppressing his cult, but he did not prosper.Te recomendamos Recetas para Cookeo
When the star of San Cristobal had begun to decline, the Bolshevik-Jeshuas who had critically purged the texts of the lives of the saints made an effort, at the end of the seventeenth century, to resurrect their devotion.
But it has been the phenomenon of motorization, which has saved San Cristobal from oblivion, rejoining with abyss the medieval faith of travellers who embarked on their safe routes of being protected against the uncertainties of those ways of God.
San Cristobal and his devotion
San Cristobal, whose date of celebration is July 25, is one of the saints most represented by images. Who doesn't have a picture of San Cristobal in his keycha
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2025-04-15
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