St. Christopher Cynocephalus in Contemporary Russia (Ignatova)

Listen now!

The early versions of St. Christopher’s legend describe the saint as having a dog’s head. Some accounts claim that Christopher originated from a tribe of dog-headed people. An alternative legend says that Christopher’s beauty was so overwhelming that he asked God to disfigure him. The Catholic Church abandoned the tradition of the dog-headed Christopher, as the 13th-century Golden Legend describes him as a fearsome human giant. 

The fate of Christopher within Russian Orthodox Church is more complex. Icons of the dog-headed Christopher were produced until the 18th century, when representing Christopher as cynocephalus was allegedly banned. Multiple icons with the dog-headed saint can still be found in Russian churches, including the Cathedral of the Archangel in Moscow’s Kremlin, though in some cases a human head was painted over the dog’s head.

In this episode, Polina Ignatova deconstructs the spectrum of diverse roles of St. Christopher in the contemporary societal discourses in Russia. The Old Believers (those maintaining the liturgical practices of the Russian Orthodox Church from before the 17th-century reforms) view Christopher Cynocephalus as the symbol of the true Orthodox tradition. Practicing Orthodox Christians advocate for the dog-headed icons of Christopher as representations of disability. Conspiracy theories link the cult of Christopher to Ivan the Terrible’s oprichnina—a system of mass repressions executed by special soldiers, who distinguished themselves by attaching dogs’ heads to their saddles. This view has been supported and reinforced by Russian far-right propagandist Alexander Dugin. St. Christopher is also associated with the conversion of the Tatars to Christianity, under the xenophobic and pseudohistorical premise that “primitive” tribes required an animalistic symbol of worship. At the same time, following moral panic around quadrobics (a subculture which involves imitating quadrupedal animals) in 2024 with propositions to ban the activity as “harmful” in Russia, some proposed St. Christopher as the patron saint of quadrobers. Combining human and non-human, the hybrid Christopher Cynocephalus thus becomes the symbol for both persecution and inclusion. The proposed episode will contribute to the overall understanding of the use of medieval saints’ cults and medievalisms in the contemporary rhetorics of both the oppression and the opposition to oppression.

Dr. Polina Ignatova is a cultural and environmental historian interested in hybrids, monsters, and the perceptions of the nonhuman creatures. In addition to her academic publications, she enjoys popular history, having published regularly with EPOCH and History Today. She is currently an independent scholar, converting her PhD thesis on walking dead in medieval England into a monograph, exploring further academic opportunities, and building a career as a semi-professional dancer.

Works cited and further resources:

• Freidrich, J., “Saint Christopher's Canine Hybrid Body and its Cultural Autocannibalism,” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, 6:2 (2017): 189–211.

• Ivanov, A. Псоглавцы [Cynocephali] (Azbuka, 2011).

• Medieval Suffering Project: https://www.instagram.com/medieval_suffering/.

• Verkhovskiyi, N. I. (ed.), The Description of the Documents and Cases Held in the Archive of the Most Holy Governing Synod (Simodalnaya Tipographiya, 1879).

• Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Massumi, B. (Continuum, 2004).

Episode transcript (Note: For a time-dynamic transcript, access the episode through a free podcast platform such as Apple Podcasts or Spotify):

Polina: This is The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast, and you're listening to the episode about St. Christopher Cynocephalus in contemporary Russia. My name is Dr. Polina Ignatova. A couple of words about myself. I received my PhD in medieval history from Lancaster University. I later completed my postdoctoral project in environmental history at Linköping University in Sweden.

I'm currently an independent scholar. so today, I'm going to tell you about the receptions and reinterpretations of, St. Christopher's legend in contemporary Russia. I find thinking about the use of medieval saints in modern settings important because as now many of us are living in secularized societies, we tend to forget how much our culture has been affected by the religious Middle Ages and our religious past.

I hope that after listening to this episode, you too will become curious of how saints' cults and traditions are reinterpreted today in various countries, in various media, and in various narratives. The case of Christopher Cynocephalus is especially curious, as you, probably know that cynocephalus means dog-headed.

The early versions of St. Christopher's legend originating from the sixth century described the saint to have a dog's head. Some accounts claim that Christopher originated from the tribe of dog-headed people. An alternative legend says that Christopher's beauty was so overwhelming that he asked the gods to disfigure him.

The Catholic Church, as you well know, abandoned this tradition of the dog-headed Christopher, and the thirteenth-century Golden Legend describes him as a fearsome human giant instead The fate of Christopher within Russian Orthodox Church is more complex. Icons of the dog-headed and occasionally horse-headed Christopher were produced until the eighteenth century, when the Russian Orthodox Church attempted to ban representing Christopher as cynocephalus.

Multiple icons with the dog-headed saint can still be found in Russian churches, including the Cathedral of the Archangel in Moscow Kremlin, though in some cases, a human head was painted over the dog's head. In this podcast episode, I deconstruct the spectrum of diverse roles of St. Christopher in the contemporary societal discourses in Russia.

I argue that the public knowledge about Christopher is sporadic and unsystematized, resulting in the image of saint being used by both the oppressors and the oppressed. I will begin with the role of St.

Christopher within the community of the Old Believers. I will then proceed to the question of whether or not the representations of St. Christopher were indeed banned by the Russian Orthodox Church. And I will later discuss the contemporary associations between St. Christopher and disability, the saint's role in the far-right propaganda, and finally, St. Christopher as the representation of inclusivity. In the conclusion, I will briefly touch upon the methodology of analyzing the contemporary interpretations of saint's lives.

Let's start with St. Christopher and the Old Believers. You need to know that in the second half of the seventeenth century, Russian Orthodox Church approved a series of reforms which revised Russian liturgical practices, bringing them closer to the Greek ones.

Those included, for example, introducing the three-finger sign of a cross instead of the two-finger sign and pronouncing hallelujah three times instead of two during the service. The Old Believers were those who refused the reforms and chose to maintain the old liturgical practices. And as the result, until 1905, they were severely persecuted, which involved imprisonment, penal transportation, and death penalty.

In 1971, local council of the Russian Orthodox Church decreed the old liturgical practice as an acceptable form of worship and canceled the seventeenth century anathemas against the Old Believers. Today, following the Russian government's general tendency towards encouraging the religious worship among the population, the Old Believers have been offered multiple media platforms for self-promotion.

From April 2025, the international Old Believers can even apply for a simplified procedure to obtain Russian citizenship. The issue of the dog-headed St. Christopher is raised at the website starove.ru, affiliated with one of the Old Believers churches, namely the Russian Orthodox Old Rite Church. The website positions the Old Believers as the Orthodox Christians who since the 17th century have been protecting the Orthodox belief from misinformation and false knowledge.

One of the articles shared on the website looks into the tradition of St. Christopher Cynocephalus, citing a member of public's complaint about being unable to buy an icon featuring the dog-headed Christopher and blaming the so-called New Believers for revising St. Christopher's representations.

Therefore, for the Old Believers, Christopher Cynocephalus is a positive figure associated with the pre-reform practices of Russian Orthodox worship. However, the revisions of St. Christopher's tradition, for which the Old Believers accused the Russian Orthodox Church, were not associated with the 17th-century set of reforms.

These revisions were actually proposed later by the Holy Synod, the Holy Synod was the highest governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church between 1721 and 1917. So in 1722, the Holy Synod, uh, quote, "had an honest discussion," end of quote, about, quote, "the imperfections in the holy images which require corrections," end of quote.

The dog-headed representations of St. Christopher were among the icons which became criticized by the Synod as being, quote, "contrary to the nature, history, and the truth itself," end of quote. The proposal of the Synod to ban these images was never implemented because the governing Senate, Russia's highest legislative body between 1711 and 1917, was concerned about the potential unpopularity of such measures.

Instead of imposing the bans, the Senate recommended to correct or remove the undesired icons gradually and discreetly. The relevant decree was issued with significant reductions, focusing mainly on the removal of the low-quality or so-called ugly icons and forbidding the techniques used to produce them.

The only motif which did get banned was the representations of the four evangelists by using only their animalistic symbols. And overall, the Russian Orthodox Church appeared to be uneasy with animals, showing up in icons. In the follow-up instructions, the synod also decreed that Saint Modestus of Jerusalem, for example, should not be presented as accompanied by cattle.

The architect Ivan Petrovich Zarudny, or in some sources, Ivan Petrov Zarudnev, was appointed to oversee that the artists follow the new rules of producing icons. In his quest against the inappropriate icons, Zarudny encountered multiple difficulties, including his brief arrest following the artists' collective complaint about Zarudny taxing them illegally.

Therefore, the proposal to ban the representations of Christopher has never been fully implemented. Although in some of Christopher's icons, a human head was painted over the dog's head. As the majority of the surviving icons of St. Christopher Cynocephalus have not been amended, the practicing Orthodox wonder about the meaning of Christopher's unusual appearance today.

For example, in twenty twenty-four, a user, Yana, posted a question regarding the appearance of Christopher on the questions and answers section of the Russian Orthodox largest online portal, Azbuka Very, which is translated as the Alphabet of Faith. Yana inquired if one could use the icon of St. Christopher Cynocephalus for Christian worship. She criticized the icons depicting Christopher as an attractive man and argued that the dog's head could symbolize a genetic illness or a disfigurement acquired later in life. For Yana, the dog-headed Christopher became the symbol of inclusivity and body positivity.

Yana's question was answered by priests, or we should be careful here, persons positioning themselves as priests on the website, as one never knows when reading Internet posts. Unfortunately, the majority of them stated that Christopher's dog head is ahistorical, and therefore, the dog-headed icons were rightfully banned.

One commenter went so far as to suggest that the vintage icon of Christopher Cynocephalus, owned by Yana, should be either hidden or burned. The other one said that Yana's interest in Christopher can be interpreted as temptation, even calling it, quote, "pathological," unquote, since there are many other saints, and Christopher is not her patron saint.

Yana's argument that people with disfigurements are still created in the image of God, since the phrase concerns the soul and not the physical appearance, apparently infuriated yet another user. They commented that the image of God refers to the beauty standards set by Jesus Christ, apparently implying good hair, healthy body and a six-pack.

While the users commenting on Yana's post referred to the decision, to ban representing Christopher with a canine head proposed by the synod, none of them, in fact, seemed to be aware that the said decision was never implemented. The Old Believers, as well as the Russian Orthodox who follow the new rites, tend to refer to 1971, when the anathemas against the Old Believers were revoked as the year of Christopher Cynocephalus' so-called rehabilitation.

However, the relevant document produced by a local council of the Russian Orthodox Church does not mention St. Christopher at all. Overall, contrary to the popular belief reinforced through online posting, the practice of representing Christopher with a dog's head is not connected to the 17th-century reform of the liturgical practices, and the association between Christopher's dog head and the Old Believers appears to be a modern phenomenon.

Now let's move on to Saint Christopher and the far-right propaganda. As we have seen, there is visible absence of references to any systematized and reliable historical sources in the contemporary Russian narratives featuring Christopher Cynocephalus. This means that the saint is not associated with any particular historical period.

Instead, Christopher is represented as a figure from the mythical or legendary prehistory and imaginary of the time before history proper. The far distance from the present allows to comfortably accommodate Christopher as an imaginary monstrous being lurking in the past. This, combined with the tendency to view Christopher Cynocephalus as an aberration resulting from the old and the so-called incorrect liturgical practices rather than a legitimate saint, has allowed to appropriate his image for pseudo-historical narratives, including far-right propaganda.

For example, conspiracy theories link the cult of Christopher to Ivan the Terrible's Oprichnina. Oprichnina was a system of mass repressions executed by special soldiers called Oprichniki. These soldiers distinguished themselves by attaching dogs' heads to their saddles. There is no historical evidence which could prove the link between Christopher and Oprichnina.

Instead, we know that dogs' heads were intended to symbolize that Oprichniki were as faithful to Ivan the Terrible as dogs would be to their master. However, the link between Christopher and Ivan the Terrible was further supported and reinforced by the Russian far-right propagandist Alexander Dugin, who views Ivan the Terrible as a visionary A blog post by a LiveJournal user further associates the icons of the dog-headed Christopher with the forced conversions of Tatars to Christianity, which occurred during Ivan the Terrible's reign in connection with the siege of Kazan in 1552.

The post creates an ahistorical and xenophobic narrative claiming that the so-called primitive Tatar tribes required an animalistic symbol of worship, and hence the icons representing Christopher with a dog's head were employed to encourage conversions. This is obviously incorrect, as by the 16th century, Tatars have long been predominantly Muslim, meaning that for them worshiping any image at all, let alone the image of a dog-headed Christian saint, would be considered sinful.

The association between Christopher Cynocephalus and oppression, xenophobia, and white supremacy is reflected in contemporary Russian fiction literature. The horror novel Pskoglavtsy, which is directly translated as Cynocephali, published in 2011, is set in a fictional village built on a site of the abandoned Old Believer sketes or isolated monastic communities.

The narrative begins with protagonists discovering a fresco of the dog-headed Christopher among the church ruins. It becomes a harrowing symbol as the locals believe that their settlement is haunted by dog-headed people who used to catch runaway prisoners but these days guard the village, preventing the inhabitants from leaving.

As the village is surrounded by peat fires, and peat fires are a serious environmental problem occurring in Russia every summer, the area is covered by smoke, which prevents the protagonists from seeing the alleged cynocephali. The novel concludes with the moral message that anyone who behaves in a morally compromised way can turn into a dog-headed creature, though it is unclear if a dog's head is used as a metaphor.

The image of cynocephali as former prison guards preventing the villagers' mobility in the novel's context points towards contemporary Russia's systems of oppression built upon the Soviet legacy. In this case, cynocephali and St. Christopher himself becomes representations of monstrous inhumanity. The relationship between the oppressors and the oppressed often produces media representations of monstrosity as each side dehumanizes the other.

In 2024, Russian society saw a moral panic surrounding quadrobics, a subculture which involves imitating quadrupedal animals. Thus, in October 2024, the State Duma started developing a legislation banning, quadrobics as, quote, a destructive ideology, end of quote. In response to the debate surrounding quadrobics, the Russian-speaking popular history project Medieval Suffering, or Страдающее Средневековье, posted an image with a dog-headed Christopher's icon accompanied by a caption: "Saint Christopher Cynocephalus, the patron saint of quadrobers."

All the above case studies demonstrate that the best way to describe Christopher Cynocephalus' role in the contemporary Russian media is by employing the rhizomatic model proposed by Deleuze and Guattari. This means that Christopher's legend does not evolve in a linear process, but instead develops chaotically like a rhizome, or a horizontal system of roots growing in all direction and not having one particular beginning root.

Within medieval history as a discipline, saint's traditions tends to be researched and explained as tree-like structures, meaning that various versions of the same legend, such as the Catholic representations of Christopher as a giant and the Orthodox portrayal of Christopher as a dog-headed hybrid, stem from the same root.

Meanwhile, Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic model allows to view various representations of Christopher Cynocephalus in the contemporary Russian context as interconnected clusters developing in all possible directions. So, for example, the above-mentioned sources discussing Christopher no longer need to refer to the late antique legend of the dog-headed saint as the original source.

While the websites affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church and the Old Believers narrate St. Christopher's legend, they do not provide references to historical sources and cite private blogs instead. Meanwhile, pseudo-historical propaganda writings offering very inaccurate accounts of St.

Christopher's early modern cults similarly do not provide references to any historical materials. In these circumstances, blog posts, pseudo-scholarly articles, and works of art, the icons representing Christopher Cynocephalus found in Russian churches and passed through generations in the Orthodox families, become sources of new textual and artistic representations of the saint.

With a lack of systematized historical information about Christopher Cynocephalus, his dog's head becomes employed in the narratives created, by both the oppressors and the oppressed, being a representation of body positivity and inclusion, as well as a symbol of cruelty and persecution.

And also feel free to get in touch with me if you want to discuss the dog-headed St. Christopher. Thank you.

Listen now!