He suffered martyrdom under Decius in Lycia, and is honored on
this day in the Martyrology which bears the name of St. Jerom, and
in other western Calendars, but is commemorated by the Greeks and
other Oriental nations on the 9th of May. The Mosarabic Breviary,
attributed to St. Isidore, mentions the translation of his relics
to Toledo, whence they were brought into France, and are at present
shown enshrined at the abbey of St. Denys near Paris. He seems to
have taken the name of Christopher upon the like motive that St.
Ignatius would be called Theophorus, to express his ardent love for
his Redeemer, by which he always carried him in his breast as his
great and only good, his inestimable treasure, and the object of
all his affections and desires. There seem to be no other grounds
than this name for the vulgar notion of his great stature, the
origin of which seems to have been merely allegorical, as Baronius
observes, and as Vida has beautifully expressed in an epigram on
this saint.[291] The enormous statues of St. Christopher, still to
be seen in many Gothic cathedrals, expressed his allegorical wading
through the sea of tribulations, by which the faithful meant to
signify the many sufferings through which he arrived at eternal life.
They are monuments of the devotion of our ancestors to this saint,
whose intercession they implored especially against pestilential
distempers. Saint Gregory the Great mentions a monastery in Sicily
which bore the name of St. Christopher. See Pinius the Bollandist, t.
6, p. 125.