Of St. Bernard in General, St. Bernards, Wolves, Domini canes and An Apology Concerning Dog-Face

Today is the feast of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Every day this great saint would wake up and ask himself, "Why am I here" and unlike most existentialists, he always had an answer: "to lead a holy life." He revived and reformed the great order of the Cistercians, as well as helping bring about the foundation of the Knights Templar at the Council of Troyes. The Templars had nothing to do with any of that baloney in the Da Vinci Code, pace Dan Brown, though, if Umberto Eco is to be believed, nonetheless "The Templars have something to do with everything." (See this link for a source to satisfy all your Templar memorabilia needs, yeah right, like you have any...). St. Bernard composed a marvellous rhythmic prayer to the members of Christ Crucified and is patron of all professions associated with bees, especially wax-melters and candlestick-makers (probably because of his mellifluous, or honeyed, tongue). One of his emblems is a white dog, which goes along well with the wolf of St. Francis, the swan of St. Hugh and the black-and-white Dominican hound of St. Dominic. And of course, there's a whole breed of canine named after the guy. Woof!

Speaking of dogs and saints, today is also another feast of the martyr St. Christopher, who is said, according to some rather dubious legends, to have belonged to a race of men with dog's heads instead of human ones. Though perhaps this is a garbled version of another account which reduces this rather fabulous image to merely being a facial deformity (at least according to the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate's website, which sports one of these odd icons). An even more clear and less weird picture of the linguistic origin of this strange story about cyncecephoroi and cannibals comes from here. Check it out. I'm afraid in the past I've given the saint a terrible time about his curious physique (sorry, Chris). Strictly speaking, the canons of iconography dictate he be depicted with a normal face, though not everyone seemed to pay attention to this.

Today is also the feast of the Martyrs of Thrace, a Persian martyr named Heliodorus and another St. Bernard, this one a Cistercian from Valdeiglesias, who is patron of the town of Candelada in Spain. Today is also the feast of St. Gobert, a Benedictine monk, a former count and crusader, who died in Brabant in the Low Countries in 1263. Today is also the feast of St. Lucius, a martyr who is not to be confused with the more famous and dubious St. Lucius of Britain (otherwise Llewrug Mar, or, the Great, grandson of St. Cyllinus), the legendary first Christian king of the island who seems to be associated with the Grail legend and was eventually been made bishop of Chur, where he was martyred about 176. But that's not our St. Lucius. The odds are he's probably just a duplicate of King Abgar the Ninth of Edessa, anyway. Drat.