Monastic Standing
Christopher is remembered as the superior, or abbot, of the monastery on Mount Mela, where he governed the community in the second half of the seventh century. The records that name him preserve his office and his association with that mountain monastery but supply no fuller account of his ascetic life or of the circumstances of his leadership.
The mountain monastery with which he is associated is, in later tradition, identified with the community on Mount Mela in the region of Pontus, a foundation that came to far greater prominence in subsequent centuries. The sources that mention Christopher, however, do not connect him to any of the events for which that house later became known, and they record his name without further elaboration.