# St. Christopher medal

**Christophorus*, “Christ-bearer”*

**Known today as.** An image of St. Christopher carrying the Christ child across a river.

Kind: Sacramental

## What was it used for?

Worn and carried by travelers for protection on the road.

## What does modern science say?

His feast was left out of the Roman general calendar in 1969 for want of historical record, but his medal remains among the most popular.

## What lore surrounds it?

The Middle Ages held that whoever looked on his image would not die that day, which is why vast paintings of him were set on church walls facing the door, to be seen by all who passed.

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia says that of St. Christopher “almost nothing certain is known about his life or death,” and that the legend of the child who “continually grew heavier, so that it seemed to him as if he had the whole world on his shoulders” may have arisen when the name, “at first understood in the spiritual sense of bearing Christ in the heart, was in the twelfth or thirteenth century taken in the realistic meaning.” “His statues were placed at the entrances of churches and dwellings, and frequently at bridges; these statues and his pictures often bore the inscription: ‘Whoever shall behold the image of St. Christopher shall not faint or fall on that day.’” He is invoked “against lightning, storms, epilepsy, pestilence, etc.”, and “coins with his image were cast at Würzburg, in Würtemberg, and in Bohemia.”

## Sources

- Duffy, E. (1992). *The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580*. Yale University Press.
- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Christopher, Saint.” newadvent.org/cathen/03728a.htm

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*St. Christopher medal.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/st-christopher-medal

Historical description, not medical advice.