Feastday: July 24
Birth: 3rd Century
Death: 3rd Century
Few details are known of St. Christina but she lived during the third century and was the daughter of a rich and powerful magistrate believed to have been named Urbain. He was deep in the practices of heathenism and had a number of golden idols, which he distributed among the poor.
Though his lovely daughter had drawn the eye of several suitors by the time she reached the age of 11-years-old, Urbain wanted her to be a pagan priestess.
He locked his daughter in a room filled with gold and silver idols, then ordered her to burn incense before them.
Saint Christina often peered at the world outside her window and decided there must have been a great creator of the world. Turning to the idols, she came to believe they could only be false as they were forged by man.
She began to pray to the creator of the world and asked him to reveal himself to her. That was when she felt an intense love blaze from deep within her heart. She began to fast and continued to pray.
An angel came to St. Christina and taught her the Gospel of Christ. It then called her a bride of Christ but warned she would suffer for her faith.
Knowing the Truth, St. Christina smashed the false idols and threw them through the window. When her father came to visit and discovered the missing idols, he questioned St. Christina but she refused to speak to him.
After sending the servants in to speak to her, Urbain learned of her new faith. Enraged, he began to slap his daughter's face until she began to speak - but her words were to proclaim her new faith and to share the Truth. She also admitted to destroying the idols.
Urbain executed the servants who tended St. Christina and beat her before throwing her in prison. St. Christina's mother came to the prison and pleaded for her daughter to renounce her faith but St. Christina refused.
The next day, Urbain took St. Christina to trial and ordered her to worship the pagan gods and beg for forgiveness.
Rather than following her father's orders, St. Christina held fast to her Christian faith and was ordered to be tortured.
She was tied to an iron wheel above an extreme fire. As she was raked through the flames, her body was burned but she did not die. She was thrown into a prison cell and that night an angel appeared. Her wounds were healed and she was fed food the angel brought with it.
The next day, when her father found her unharmed, he ordered a stone to be tied around her neck and she was thrown into a lake. As she sank, an angel sustained then untied her. When she reappeared above the water, Urbain attributed her survival to sorcery.
He decided to execute her the following morning but that night he died suddenly.
The region's governor was sent to execute St. Christina's punishment in her father's stead but she survived every torture. When fellow believers discovered the miracles, they began to gather at her cell.
During her time in captivity, she converted nearly 300 people until a new governor arrived and resumed her torture. When she survived five days in a red-hot furnace, she was finally executed with a sword.
Prayers to St. Christina
O Venerable Christina,
You appeared as a shining dove,
With a pair of golden wings
Alighting in the Highest Heavens.
Therefore we celebrate your glorious feast
And bow before the place that holds your relics.
Pray that we may receive grace and healing for body and soul.
Christina of Bolsena, also known as Christina of Tyre, or in the Eastern Orthodox Church as Christina the Great Martyr, is venerated as a Christian martyr of the 3rd century. Archaeological excavations of an underground cemetery constructed at her tomb have shown that she was venerated at Bolsena by the fourth century.
Life
The existence of Christina herself is poorly attested. Some versions of her legend place her in Tyre (Phoenicia), other evidence points to Bolsena, an ancient town in central Italy, near an Etruscan site called Volsinium, with catacombs in which archeologists have found the remains of an early Christian church and the tomb of a female martyr. Inscriptions found on the site confirm that this martyr had a name like Christina and that the local community was venerating her as a saint by the end of the fourth century. Some corroborating evidence is provided by a sixth-century mosaic in the basilica of St. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, which includes in its procession of virgins a saint named Christina, wearing a martyr's crown.
Life of Saint Christina
Christina is an early virgin Christian martyr. By the ninth century, an account of her martyrdom was composed, which developed many variants. According to these, she was born either in Tyre (Eastern stories) or in Persia (Western stories) during the 3rd century or 5th century.
She was born into a rich family, and her father was governor of Tyre. By the age of 11 the girl was exceptionally beautiful, and many wanted to marry her. Christina's father, however, envisioned that his daughter should become a pagan priestess. To this end he placed her in a special dwelling where he had set up many gold and silver idols, and he commanded his daughter to burn incense before them. Two servants attended Christina.
Saint Christina giving her father's idols of gold to the poor, 17th-century painting in the National Museum in Warsaw
Martyrdom of St Christina San Zanipolo Venice, Italy.
According to accounts, one time Christina was visited by an angel, who instructed her in the true faith. The angel called her a bride of Christ and told her about her future suffering. Christina smashed all the idols in her room and threw them out the window. In visiting his daughter, Christina's father, Urbanus, asked her where all the idols had disappeared. Christina was silent. Then, having summoned the servants, Urbanus learned the truth from them.
Urbanus had his daughter tortured because of her faith, but God thwarted his efforts on several occasions. The nature of the torture varies with each telling, and can include iron hooks, grilling by fire, placement in a furnace, torture on the wheel, assault by snakes, assailment by arrows, and other assorted methods which she survives. After her father's death, his successor, Dion, continued to torture her. Christina is eventually beheaded.
Catholic Church
The entry for her in the 2004 Roman Martyrology is very brief: "At Bolsena in Tuscany, Saint Christina, Virgin and Martyr". She was once included in the General Roman Calendar. The Tridentine Calendar gave her a commemoration within the Mass of the Vigil of Saint James. When in 1955 Pope Pius XII suppressed this vigil, the celebration of Saint Christina became a "simple" and in 1960 a "commemoration". The 1969 revision omitted her from that calendar, "because nothing is known of this virgin and martyr apart from her name and her burial at Bolsena", but not from the Martyrology, the official list of recognized saints. According to the present rules in the Roman Missal, Saint Christina may be celebrated with a "memorial" everywhere on her feast day, unless in some locality an obligatory celebration is assigned to that day.
Relics
Relic of Saint Christina at the Maronite Cathedral "Our Lady of the Seas" in Tyre, Lebanon
Toffia in the Province of Rieti displays her relics in a transparent urn. Palermo, of which Christina is one of four patron saints, also claims to hold her relics.
The Eastern tradition that connects Christina with Tyre, Lebanon may be due to confusion with the name of a locality near Bolsena.
Contrary to local belief, Christina of Bolsena is not the saint whose remains are interred in The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Cleveland, Ohio.
Miracle of Bolsena
A second legend is connected to Christina. The Eucharistic miracle, depicted in Raphael's The Mass at Bolsena, is often considered to be the catalyst for the Feast of Corpus Christi, recalls an event in the Umbrian region of Italy in 1263. A priest named Peter from the city of Prague nurtured doubts regarding the transubstantiation of the Host during Mass, and during his pilgrimage toward Rome prayed to be relieved of his questions. While saying the words of consecration in the Basilica of Santa Cristina at Bolsena, the Host dripped blood on his hands and on the cloth below.
