Christina of Markyate

Christina of Markyate was born in Huntingdon, England c. 1095–1100, and died perhaps after 1155. As a young girl or adolescent, named Theodora, she took a vow of chastity, so her parents' attempts to force her unwillingly into marriage led her to run away from home and go into hiding under the care of a hermit, Roger, a monk and deacon of St Albans Abbey, who lived at Markyate, Hertfordshire. During this period of secret confinement, she experienced her first visions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ.

After a protracted process, her husband freed her from her marital obligations, and she was able to emerge from hiding. As her reputation for holiness and her visionary gifts became widely known, a number of other women gathered around her at Markyate, which had been left to her by Roger when he died in 1121 or 1122. Her community received considerable financial support from Geoffry de Gorham or Gorron, Abbot of St Albans, and she formally professed as a nun, in about 1130 or 1131. In 1145, the land on which Markyate stood was formally handed over to the nuns by the canons of St Paul's Cathedral, London, who owned it, in exchange for a nominal rent, and her community was formally consecrated as the Priory of Markyate and dedicated to The Holy Trinity.

There are three important records of her life:

• a Latin manuscript containing an account of her life (first edited by C. H. Talbot; superseded by the edition of Hermite-Leclercq)
• several biographical details in the chronicles of St Albans Abbey
• the so-called St Albans Psalter, which she probably owned

She is also mentioned in two documents dated 1155 which suggest, but do not prove, that she was still alive in that year. [source?]

Further reading

• Talbot, C.H., (editor and translator), The Life of Christina of Markyate – A Twelfth-Century Recluse. Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-19-821274-7.
• Vie de Christina de Markyate, édité et traduit par Paulette l'Hermite-Leclercq & Anne-Marie Legras, Sources d'Histoire Médiévale publiées par l'IRHT, 35, 2 vols. (Paris: CNRS, 2007).
• Watt, D, Medieval Women's Writing. Cambridge, Polity, 2008.
• Medieval Women's Visionary Literature, ed. Elizabeth Petroff. Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-19-503711-1

Dyckhoff, Peter, Christina, Ein Klosterleben im Mittelalter, ISBN 3-7984-0769-X; J. F. Steinkopf Verlag, Kiel; Preis 15,90 EUR

External links

• Map showing Markyate and other places mentioned in the Life of Christina of Markyate
• A Cell of Self-Knowledge
• The St Albans Psalter

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