Notes
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(reckoned the tenth and last) began about a.d. 303 and lasted nearly ten years, during which the victims were numbered by many thousands, and death was usually preceded by cruel tortures.
42.
6. "meiny": household. See note on page 285.
43.
23. "eculee": a kind of wooden rack for torture. Latin equuleus, from equus=horse. This French word never took root in English.
44.
10. "beaten with…men" So Shakespeare has: "he was torn with a bear," and "himself…marred with traitors." But since the sixteenth century with is used only of inanimate agents.
45.
6. "to-frusshed": crushed to pieces. To is an intensive prefix; frusshed is from Fr. froisser, from Latin frustum=a morsel.
S. CHRISTOPHER
The name and fame and cult of S. Christopher have been spread throughout Christendom since extremely early times. He is mentioned in the oldest martyrologies, but simply as a martyr in Lycia. S. Gregory the Great about a.d. 600 mentions a monastery dedicated to him. In forms of his story earlier than that given (for the first time) by Jacobus de Voragine, a savage, even bestial, character is ascribed to Christopher: he belongs to a race of "dog-heads" who feed on human flesh. But at its crudest the legend brought out noble ideas—that of the conversion of great natural powers from base or evil uses to good, that of merely natural man elevated above himself by supernatural grace. This was recognized by Luther (among others), who, though he rejected the tale as fictitious, yet thought it a beautiful allegory.
The celebrated Latin poet of the Renaissance, Vida, has from this point of view summed up well the significance of the Saint's various attributes:—
Christophore, infixum quod eum usque in corde gerebas,
Pictores Christum dant tibi ferre humeris; etc.
Because thou barest Christ within thy breast.
The limners show him on thy neck at rest;
Because thou faithful wast, by torment tried,
They paint thee stemming the wild torrent's pride;
