From Here to Eternity in the Prayers of Saint Christopher and their Manuscript Variations

Abstract

Early medieval hagiographers use the concrete and unique nature of the cynocephalic Saint Christopher's physicality to provide a contrastive frame for what his behaviour models: the power of prayer to transcend the individual being and moment and to function as a conduit that connects human communities across centuries, subsuming all of their individualities into the timeless and infinite being of the medieval Christian God. Further, and by contrast, paying attention to Christopher’s prayers in the individual manuscripts that contain them enables us to recognise and engage with individual medieval scribes and readers and how they responded to hagiographical texts. This is challenging because it problematises a traditional approach to understanding hagiography, through classification by type, and instead prioritises the individual artefacts. This discussion attempts to unpack the potential for looking closely at prayers in three different ways: considering the meaning of the prayers in this particular narrative; exploring how early medieval hagiographical and manuscript culture responded to and manipulated the presentation of those prayers; and pointing towards the potential for digital humanities in responding to and managing the complexity indicated by the variation in use of the prayers.