medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Saturday, July 26, 2008, at 5:48 am, John Briggs wrote:
> John Dillon wrote:
> >
> > Yesterday (24. July) was also the feast day of:
> >
> > 6) Christina the Astonishing (d. 1224?). According to her Vita by
> > Thomas of Cantimpré (BHL 1746), whose historical accuracy is open to
> > question, C. (in Latin, Christina Mirabilis) was a
> > twenty-one-year-old Flemish orphan of peasant stock when she suffered
> > a seizure that caused her to be taken for dead. A funeral was held
> > and during the service she awoke and levitated. When called down by
> > a priest she landed on the altar and announced that she had seen
> > Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. Continuing to levitate and to engage in
> > other extraordinary feats, C. then lived as solitary at Looz and
> > finally at the monastery of St. Catherine at
> > Sint-Truiden/Saint-Trond.
>
> It has to be said that even in the credulous days before Vatican II,
> Christina (1150-1224 according to my source - but then, like Buffy,
> she died
> twice...) failed to make it into the Roman Martyrology.
It should also be said that the RM's elogium of Bl. Christina (my not noting before that she is a Beata was an oversight) omits the sensationalistic details and merely says that she was called _Mirabilis_ on account of (unspecified) marvels operated by her in her mortification of her body and in her mystic ecstasies. Its elogium of St. Joseph of Copertino (18. September; "the flying friar") similarly omits the latter's reported levitations, dwelling instead on his poverty, humility, and charity to God's needy.
I've recently gotten the impression that the "new" RM, either in 2001 or in its revision of 2004, has found room for a number of Flemings previously omitted, just as in 2004 it certainly added a number of Italo-Greeks. If that's so, then Christina may have come in more as a member of a previously under-represented category than as an ecstatic _per se_. Which is not to say, of course, that the RM's editors were unaware of her recent gain in popular attention.
Best again,
John Dillon
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