It’s Doggityday!

Posted on August 23, 2023 by Stella

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11 Responses to It’s Doggityday!

  1. Lucille's avatar Lucille says:
    August 23, 2023 at 12:07 am

    This dog attends college classes 😂

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  3. WeeWeed's avatar WeeWeed says:
    August 23, 2023 at 7:22 am

    .

    ☞Saint Guinefort was a 13th-Century French greyhound who received local veneration as a folk saint after miracles were reported at his grave.
    ☞According to the legend, Saint Guinefort was a greyhound owned by a wealthy knight living in a castle in Lyon. One day, the knight ventured beyond the walls to go hunting, leaving his infant child in the care of his loyal companion. Upon returning from a successful hunt, he went to the nursery and discovered a scene of utter chaos. The child was nowhere to be found; the crib overturned, & Guinefort was covered in blood.
    ☞The knight thought that Guinefort killed his child & drew his sword, quickly striking the animal down. His son suddenly cried out from underneath the crib & was found completely unharmed next to the bloody remains of a venomous snake. Realizing that Guinefort had saved the infants life & that he killed his faithful dog under false pretenses, the knight decided to honor him. He dropped him into a well, filled it in with stones, & planted trees around it making a shrine.
    ☞The story of Guinefort’s bravery spread quickly throughout the city, & soon enough he became recognized by the locals as a patron saint of infants. People would travel to his shrine & bring their children to be healed of ailments.
    ☞For a hundred years, the locals continued to pray for his intercession & to bring their children to be healed. The legend spread to Etienne of Bourbon, a Dominican Inquisitor noted for being a historian of Mediæval-Era heresies. He came to Lyons & declared that the veneration of Guinefort was heretical, saying that those who prayed for his intercession were actually invoking demons. He ordered the dogs remains to be exhumed, burnt, & the shrine destroyed.
    ☞ “The local peasants, upon hearing of the dog’s noble deed & innocent death, began to visit the place & to honor the dog as a martyr in quest of help for their sicknesses & other needs. They were seduced & often cheated by the Devil so that he might in this way lead men into error.” — Etienne of Bourbon, De Supersticione: On Saint Guinefort.
    ☞Despite the actions of Etienne, the legend persisted until around the 1930s, & some still venerated the supposed dog-saint. Formally, Saint Guinefort was never canonized by the Catholic Church, or by any other church. The process of canonization requires evidence of a pious life & the performance of miracles — along with being a human rather than a dog. However, the process was not in place at the time, when saints were commonly declared by locals spontaneously.
    ☞The photograph depicts an icon of a cynocephalic (dog-headed) saint, identified as Saint Christopher rather than Saint Guinefort himself, but serving as an example of cynocephaly in the iconography of saints. From the collection of the Byzantine & Christian Museum in Athens, Greece.
    ☞According to Wikipedia: In the Eastern Orthodox Church, certain icons covertly identify Saint Christopher with the head of a dog. The background to the dog-headed Christopher is laid in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, when a man named Reprebus, Rebrebus or Reprobus (the “reprobate” or “scoundrel”) was captured in combat against tribes dwelling to the west of Egypt in Cyrenaica. To the unit of soldiers, according to the hagiographic narrative, was assigned the name numerus Marmaritarum or “Unit of the Marmaritæ,” which suggests an otherwise-unidentified “Marmaritæ” (perhaps the same as the Marmaricæ Berber tribe of Cyrenaica). He was reported to be of enormous size, with the head of a dog instead of a man, apparently a characteristic of the Marmaritæ. This Byzantine depiction of St. Christopher as dog-headed resulted from their misinterpretation of the Latin term Cananeus (Canaanite) to read canineus, that is, “canine.”

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  4. czarina33's avatar czarina33 says:
    August 23, 2023 at 9:39 am

    Hannah and Cher Chez zooming this morning

    View post on imgur.com

    Liked by 4 people

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