The life of this extraordinary saint, so extraordinary that even those who
canonised her--the vulgar and ignorant--called her “The Wonderful,” comes
to us on the best possible authority. Her life was written by Thomas de
Chantpré, or Catimpré, born at Leuve in the Low Countries in 1201; he was
canon in the abbey of Catimpré, and then entered the Dominican Order in a
convent at Louvain, in 1232, and there taught theology. He was a
contemporary and fellow-countryman of Christina; he had all the
particulars necessary from those who had seen and conversed with
Christina, whom he survived by many years. Indeed, she died when he was
aged twenty-three. Christina the Wonderful was born at the village of
Brustheim, near St. Trond in Hesbain, in the year 1150. When aged fifteen
she was left an orphan, the youngest of three sisters, and spent her
childhood in the fields tending sheep and cows. As now, so then, there
were no hedges, and cattle sent into pasture had to be subjected to
supervision lest they transgressed into the land of neighbours. Christina
was employed as thousands of little girls have been employed since in
Germany and Belgium. It was a solitary occupation for a child, and she was
thrown much in on herself, on her own thoughts, her own imaginations.
Nothing remarkable about her was observed till she began to pass from
childhood into womanhood, a critical period, and then it was that her
malady first manifested itself. She fell down one day in a cataleptic fit,
and was taken up as dead. Her sisters, with whom she lived, had her
washed, laid out, placed on a bier, and conveyed to church, where the
funeral mass was ordered to be said.
Christina had been in a cataleptic fit, or had been shamming death. All at
once she scattered the funeral party and the worshippers by a leap off her
bier, in winding-sheet, with a shrill cry, and then by a scramble up one
of the pillars of the sacred edifice, which she managed to surmount. She
then got upon one of the tie-beams of the roof, and there seated herself,
as her biographer tells us, “like a bird.” The congregation, frightened
out of their wits, ran helter-skelter in all directions. One of her
sisters alone had courage to remain, or possibly knew enough of
Christina’s eccentricities not to be alarmed. The priest at the altar
faltered, stopped, turned and looked about him, and went forward headlong
with the service to the end. When he had retired to the sacristy,
probably, Christina’s sister came to him and explained matters. Anyhow we
learn that he reappeared in the church showing no signs of fear, and very
peremptorily ordered the young woman down from her perch, and demanded the
reason of this extraordinary freak. Christina meekly descended, and on
being again asked the reason of her proceedings, condescended to inform
the priest that she had scrambled aloft to escape the strong odour emitted
by the peasants, which to her refined perceptions was especially
repugnant. It must be admitted that it continues the same to the present
day, and that to the noses of those who are not saints.
Christina was now conducted home by her sisters, and was given something
to eat. When she had fed, she told them a long and marvellous story of her
having visited the regions of the dead; she said that she had been in
Hell, where she recognised the familiar features of a good many
acquaintances, no doubt of all such as had slighted and offended her in
the past and were dead. Then she had visited Purgatory, where also she
found herself among acquaintances. After that she ascended to Heaven,
where she was offered her choice, whether she would remain there
eternally, or return to earth and there perform the meritorious work of
liberating, by her prayers and self-tortures, the souls of those still
undergoing purification in Purgatory. With the utmost heroism and
self-denial she chose the latter alternative, probably not to the
satisfaction of her sisters, who seem to have regarded her as a
self-willed, troublesome piece of goods, and would have preferred to have
her at a distance, as an intercessor in heaven, than on earth an object of
much solicitude and annoyance.
She speedily gave them cause enough to regret the choice she had made, for
she took it into her head to race about the country, leaping hedges,
climbing walls, as she pretended, to get away from the scent of men, which
specially distressed her. She did not specify whether this odour was
spiritual or carnal, but left it to be inferred that moral turpitude was
the most odoriferous. She was repeatedly found on the tops of trees, or on
the summit of church towers, balancing herself beside the weathercocks,
gasping for wholesome air.
Naturally enough her relatives held her to be deranged; and they proceeded
to have her bound, as mad folk were chained and held in bondage till
comparatively recently. But one night she broke away from her prison, tore
off her fetters, declaring that the “odour of men” was suffocating her,
and ran away into the nearest forest, where she swarmed to the tops of
the highest trees and there gasped for untainted air. There for a while
her relatives left her, she must starve or return to them. As Thomas of
Chantpré says, she lived for a while like a bird among the boughs of the
trees, and though sorely in want of food, would not return to association
with odoriferous human beings.
Her biographer gives us an outrageous story which accounts for the way in
which she lived; but in all likelihood she fed on eggs.
After five weeks thus spent, she was recaptured and again put in chains,
stronger than before.
Again she broke loose, ran to Liège, where she rushed headlong into the
Church of St. Christopher, and insisted on the priest whom she found there
giving her the Holy Communion. He naturally enough demurred to do so. Her
wild appearance, with hair flying, her galled wrists, her flashing,
frantic eyes, the condition of dirt and raggedness in which she was, made
him conclude she was an escaped maniac. He made an excuse, and she was
unable to force him to act against his conscience by any representation
she made. Then, as suddenly as she appeared, so suddenly did she rush away
again into another church, where she frightened the priest into
compliance. But what was his disgust and dismay to see the communicant
jump up, leave the church in flying leaps, and run as fast as she could
tear down the steep hill that falls towards the Meuse. He hastily laid
aside his surplice and stole, and ran after her. Then he came on the
priest of St. Christopher, who was also in pursuit, and the two ran after
her to the quay, where she made a plunge, went head foremost into the
water, and swam to the farther shore. The Meuse, as any one who is
acquainted with Liège knows, is no inconsiderable stream there, and the
two priests watched, breathless and alarmed, till the girl had reached the
farther shore. Then only did they breathe freely.
Christina’s conduct became daily more outrageous. She crept into bakers’
ovens, and there howled with pain at the heat, but would not come forth,
till dragged out by the heels. Sometimes she would run into a fire and
kick the brands about with her bare feet. When she saw water hot in large
vessels for a washing, in she leaped, souse, and then shrieked with the
pain. In winter she would run into the river and remain there squealing
with cold, till the parish priest came and ordered her out. One of her
favourite pursuits was to dive under the sluice of a miller’s
water-conduit, and go with the water, head over heels, over the wheel.
These exploits attracted a crowd, and excited her to renewed attempts, not
always most decorous, but greeted with roars of approval and encouragement
to re-attempt the feat.
Another of her freaks was to frequent the places of execution, and climb
the poles with wheels at top on which robbers and murderers had been
broken, and to writhe her own legs and arms in and out of the spokes,
with more dexterity than delicacy, to amuse the vulgar rabble that
followed and applauded her proceedings. Or she would provide herself with
a rope and hang herself between two criminals on the public gallows, with
happy indifference to the savour the corpses emitted. All these
proceedings were, she affirmed, eminently grateful to the souls in
Purgatory, and afforded them consolation and relief.
At night it was her delight to run through the streets of St. Trond, with
all the dogs of the town barking and snapping after her; she led them a
chase over the country, running like the wind, they tearing her tattered
garments, and also biting and wounding her limbs. She, however, seemed
insensible to pain, in her enjoyment of the race. Finally, when exhausted,
she went up a tree like a chased cat.
One great source of entertainment she provided during divine service was
to coil herself up into a ball, so that neither head, hands, nor feet
appeared, and so roll about the church. Then all at once, when no one was
expecting it--snap! out flew head, feet, and hands, and she lay flat on
the floor, rigid as a log of wood, all her limbs extended and motionless.
Another of her devotional vagaries was to pirouette on one toe on the top
of a paling, whilst vociferously praying. All which not only edified the
living, but afforded vast gratification to the souls in Purgatory.
At length her sisters could stand her vagaries no longer,--her biographer
candidly admits that Christina put them to the blush,--and they engaged a
strong man to catch her and chain her up again. He went after her, and she
ran. Unable to catch her, he flung a club at her that brought her down
and, as was thought, broke her thigh. As she could not walk, a cart was
brought to the spot, and she was placed in it and conveyed to a surgeon,
who had a bed of straw strewn for her in his cellar. He put her leg in
splints, but to ensure her remaining quiet and not tearing at the
bandages, bound her hands and fastened them to a ring in the cellar wall.
In the night she succeeded in disengaging her hands. Then she ripped off
the bandages, threw away the splints, and stood up. Her thigh was not
broken. She got a stone, and with it broke a way through the wall of the
cellar, and escaped into the open country once more.
After this her relatives gave up all further attempts to control her.
Finding herself unmolested, she ventured back to the haunts of men, and
begged for food or whatever she required. If refused what she wanted, she
became angry and took it. Few dared resist her importunities or violence.
When she had a sleeve of her gown torn off she went to the first woman she
encountered and asked for hers. If not at once given, she rushed at the
person, and with teeth and claws tore the sleeve off the gown, and then,
with crazy laughter, she slipped her own bare arm into it. Her dress was a
mass of tatters and incongruous patches, sewn on with willow-bark thread,
or pinned together with thorns. Her hair, dark, utterly uncombed, hung
wildly about her head, and fell over her tanned, dirty face. Her limbs
were covered with scars. One day she visited the parish church of Wellen,
near St. Trond, and finding the cover off the font, and the sacred vessel
pretty full, since the recent benediction of the sacred water, with one
jump reached the brim, and then flopped herself down in the hallowed
water. This, says her biographer solemnly, had the effect of subduing in
her the more extraordinary manifestations of ecstatic devotion; and after
this souse in the baptismal water, she professed herself less distressed
by the odour of human beings.
She was not gracious to those who gave her food. As she ate what she had
begged, she growled, “Why am I eating this nastiness? Why am I thus
plagued?” and told them that what they gave her tasted like the insides of
newts and toads.
Her biographer assures us that “she avoided, with the utmost solicitude,
all human honour and praise,” but it would be hard to find that either was
shown or offered her whilst alive; for then she certainly was esteemed
crazy. Only after her death did it occur to people that she was a saint.
In her old age she was often given shelter by the kind sisters of St.
Catherine at St. Trond, and she returned their hospitality by her amusing
antics. One day, as she was talking with them, she suddenly curled
herself up into a ball, and began to roll round the room, “like a boy’s
ball, without any token of her limbs appearing.” Then, all at once, she
expanded flat on the floor, and ventriloquised. “No voice or breath issued
from her mouth and nose, but only her breast and throat resounded with an
angelic harmony.” She concluded this exhibition by singing the “Te Deum”
from the pit of her stomach, and then jumped up and ran away.
We can understand that at a time when hysterical disorders were completely
misunderstood, such marvellous contortions and tricks were reputed to be
due to spiritual agency, either divine or diabolic. Towards the close of
her days she spent most of her time in the Convent of St. Catherine, and
she was there when attacked by her mortal sickness.
When she was apparently insensible the Superior, Sister Beatrice, said to
her, “Christina! you have always been obedient to me; return now to life,
I have something I desire to ask of you.”
Then Christina opened her eyes and said, “Why have you disturbed me? Be
quick, I cannot tarry; tell me what you want, that I may be gone.”
Then the Superior put the question, received her reply, and the next
moment the poor clouded spirit fled. She died on 24th July 1224, at the
age of eighty-four.
Twenty-five years after her death an old woman told the Superior, “I have
come to you with a divine revelation, to say that the body of that most
holy woman, Christina, is not receiving proper respect from you. If you
neglect to give it sufficient honour it will fare ill with you.”
On the strength of this vague message the body of the poor old creature
was dug up, and enshrined. Miracles attended the elevation of the bones,
and thenceforth St. Christina the Wonderful came to be regarded as a saint
in the Low Countries. Her body is still preserved as that of one of the
elect of God in the Church of St. Catherine at Milin, near St. Trond; and
her name has been inserted in a good number of martyrologies--amongst
others, that of France. It is not in the Roman Martyrology, where,
however, she has a better right to figure than have St. Symeon Salos and
St. Nicolas of Trani, who were loose fishes as well as fools.