Today is St Christopher’s feast day, so this week’s work of art is an extraordinary medieval sculpture of St Christopher carrying Christ across the waters, which can be seen at Norton Priory Museum, between Manchester and Liverpool, on the site of an ancient abbey that was dissolved in 1536. The work was carved by an artist whose name is unknown, probably some time between 1375 and 1400. I first came across it when it was loaned to Tate Britain a few years ago, for a wonderful exhibition of medieval art jointly curated by the art historian Philip Lindley and the sculptor Richard Deacon. I was struck by its impressive scale (this sturdy colossus of a saint is larger than life-size); by its imposing strength and solemnity; and perhaps above all by the fact that such a masterpiece should have been lurking for so long, almost unknown, in a former priory on Merseyside.

 

 St Christopher became a particularly popular saint during the Middle Ages and after, so much so that Erasmus, in his Praise of Folly – a harbinger of the Reformation, in some respects – mocked “people who have adopted the foolish but pleasurable belief that if they see some carving or painting of that towering Polyphemus, Christopher, they are sure not to die that day.” The superstition ridiculed by Erasmus had its origins in the cult of St Christopher as the patron saint of travellers, which in turn had its origins in the saint’s myth, which dates to around the sixth century.


According to legend he was originally Offerus, the son of a heathen king in Canaan. As he grew older, the child developed into a man of phenomenal strength and swore to serve only the mightiest rulers. He served a mighty king and then Satan but...

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