This is the most mysterious of all the saints, and the icons with his image are still in disgrace near the church. They depict Saint Christopher with a dog's head.
This may seem like blasphemy to some. But the Greeks, creating these icons, did not even think to desecrate the holy feelings. It was such people that the holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called described after his missionary journey through the lands where the Pakistani-Iranian border is now located.
There are many references to the life of this unusual saint with the head of a dog in church literature. According to them, Saint Christopher looked so fierce that the Roman emperor Decius Trajan, who ruled in the 250s, upon seeing him for the first time, fell from his throne in fear. Giorgi Alexandru, a Greek writer, collecting facts about the life of the holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called, about whom he wrote the book "Raised the Cross in Ice", found many references to cinocephalus, a tribe to which Saint Christopher could belong.
As the writer assures, the Apostle Andrew visited the north-east of Pakistan. There he met people with an unusual and even terrifying appearance. The traveler Marco Polo also mentioned these tribes. He called them cinocephalic. Describing these creatures, he said that they look like mastiff dogs. They allegedly achieved an intimidating appearance by cutting their cheeks, sharpening their teeth and ears. For babies, they pulled the skulls in such a way that they took on an elongated shape. And all this in order to intimidate enemies.
There are different versions of how Christopher with a dog's head became a saint. This is what the legend says. During the time of Emperor Decius Trajan, he was a warrior and robber of gigantic stature, who terrified all of Palestine. Christopher said that he would agree to serve the one who is more terrible and more powerful than him. Then he realized that there was no one in the world more terrible than the devil, and decided to bow to him. However, having learned that the devil was afraid of Jesus and flees from the sign of the cross, he left him and became a zealous servant of God, converting many people to Christianity.
According to another version, the giant Christopher agreed to carry Christ across the river and was surprised at his severity, and he said that he bears all the burdens of the world. What convinced Christopher that there was no one in the world more powerful than Christ!
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Trying to baptize the population of Lycia, Christopher met with fierce resistance and died. The church honors him as a great martyr. True, in 1722 the Holy Synod decided not to paint Saint Christopher with a dog's head …
However, there is no agreement on the place of birth of Saint Christopher among historians, both ancient and modern.
The medieval chronicler Paul the Deacon wrote that the Germanic tribe of the Lombards, which is famous for the first crusades, had friendly relations with the cinocephals. Why were they afraid of dogheads? They say that, killing, they greedily fell to the wounds of their enemies and drank blood.
Researcher Adam Bremensky expounds the legend that cinocephalics are the children of the Amazons, whose fathers were some unknown monsters that lived in the North. There are many legends about them, some of which were recounted by the poet Nizami in the poem "Iskander-Nam".
It says that the tribes of the Rus, who fought with the army of Alexander the Great, released a monster into battle, which tore off the arms and heads of the enemy's warriors and even chopped off the trunk of a fighting elephant. The monster, according to Nizami, was no different from an ordinary tall person. From the total mass it was distinguished only by the horn on the forehead and enormous strength. Nizami calls the birthplace of monsters the mountains on the way to eternal darkness - the polar night. It is possible that this is the modern Subpolar Urals.
Until the 18th century, the North of Russia was a reserve for creatures known to the rest of the world only from legends and myths. Nikolai Karamzin mentioned that they liked to talk about the mysterious mountains on the ocean coast in Moscow in the 16th century. Moreover, among the inhabitants of the Polar North, Muscovites mentioned people with dog heads. And the traveler Herberstein, who left his testimonies in the Russian road book of the 17th century, wrote that people with dog heads lived in the upper reaches of the Ob River.
In the 20th century, the Ob River was mentioned by the French philosopher Rene Guénon. In addition, the witnesses who saw the Pseglavians called them inhabitants of the highlands. But these regions are also considered the habitat of Bigfoot. True, describing him, they say that he looks more like a monkey and, in particular, a baboon. Meanwhile, baboons in Egypt were called cinocephalic, that is, pseglavets, because of the similarity of their heads to the heads of large dogs. So, the tribe from which Saint Christopher came out could be the tribe of the snowmen?