Christina the Astonishing

NAME Christina the Astonishing, also known as Christina Mirabilis (Latin for "Christina the Wonderful"). No surname is recorded; she is known entirely by her epithet. (1)

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Christina was a medieval mystic and holy woman famous for her seemingly supernatural survival of a fatal seizure, after which she claimed to have visited Purgatory, Hell, and Heaven. She became a local legend for her "astonishing" behavior, which included flying into trees to avoid the "stench" of sinful humans, crawling into ovens, and enduring extreme physical penance without injury.

BIRTH Circa 1150 (some historians, including the French scholar Sylvain Piron, suggest her birth may have been closer to 1170), in Brustem (also spelled Brusthem), near Sint-Truiden, in the diocese of Liège, in what is now Belgium. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND Christina was born into a peasant family of religious character. She was the youngest of three daughters. No further details about her parents' names or occupations survive in the historical record, other than that both parents died while Christina was still a teenager. (2)

CHILDHOOD Orphaned at approximately the age of fifteen, Christina and her two older sisters were left to fend for themselves. Christina took on the work of herding livestock to pasture. Her childhood was shaped by poverty, rural labour, and early religious devotion. (1)(2)

EDUCATION No formal education is recorded. Christina grew up in a rural peasant community in 12th-century Belgium, where literacy and schooling for girls of her class would have been essentially non-existent. Her knowledge of theological matters — Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory — appears to have been absorbed through the oral religious culture of her time and through what her hagiographers describe as direct mystical experience. 

CAREER RECORD 1170s: Christina suffered a massive seizure while working in the fields and was declared dead. During her funeral mass at the church of Sint-Truiden, she suddenly "levitated" to the rafters, claiming she could not stand the smell of the congregation's sins. 

1180–1220, She lived as a wandering ascetic and "holy fool." Christina was initially imprisoned by local authorities who believed she was possessed or insane, but she was released after a priest intervened. 

1220–1224, Christina spent her final years at the Convent of St. Catherine in Sint-Truiden. Though not a formal nun, she was deeply respected by the community, and even local royalty, such as Count Louis of Loon, sought her spiritual counsel

APPEARANCE No contemporary physical description survives. Her hagiographer Thomas of Cantimpré describes her as someone who reduced herself to extreme physical destitution — dressed in rags, emaciated from fasting and self-mortification. One account describes her body as having been "curled up like a hedgehog" during one of her penitential episodes, her limbs then springing back to their normal position. (3)

Saint Christina the Astonishing (Mirabilis) church photo By Patrick3Lopez 

FASHION Christina deliberately wore rags and the most degraded clothing she could find, as part of her rejection of worldly comfort. This was not poverty born of necessity alone — it was a conscious spiritual statement. (2)

CHARACTER Contemporary accounts portray Christina as simultaneously frightening and holy. She was said to find the smell of human beings so intolerable that she would flee to treetops, church steeples, and remote places to escape other people. She was twice jailed by townspeople who believed her possessed. Yet the prioress of Saint Catherine's testified that, despite all her extraordinary behaviour, Christina was humbly and fully obedient to any command given to her. Cardinal Jacques de Vitry described her as genuinely moved by compassion for souls in torment. (4)

SPEAKING VOICE Christina was reputed to speak rarely, and when she did, she often made unintelligible noises. During her penitential ordeals in fire, witnesses reported that she uttered frightful cries. She also chanted psalms aloud — accounts place her standing on fence posts singing liturgical chants. (5)

SENSE OF HUMOUR The hagiographic accounts present a figure consumed by penitential urgency, with no space for levity.

RELATIONSHIPS Christina appears to have had no romantic attachments. She lived as a virgin throughout her life. 

Her most significant human relationship was with the community at the Convent of Saint Catherine in Sint-Truiden, where she ended her days. 

Cardinal Jacques de Vitry, who met her in person and recorded accounts of her life, can be counted among those who took a serious interest in her. 

MONEY AND FAME Christina lived in self-imposed destitution and subsisted on the charity of others, reportedly begging for food. 

She was famous — or notorious — across the region of Sint-Truiden during her lifetime, but her wider fame came posthumously through the hagiography written by Thomas of Cantimpré in 1232, eight years after her death. 

FOOD AND DRINK Christina is described as surviving on alms — whatever bread and scraps she could beg. Fasting was central to her penitential practice, and she reportedly lived at times on almost nothing. 

MUSIC AND ARTS Christina was described as standing on fence posts and chanting the Psalms — this appears to have been both a spiritual practice and a form of self-imposed penance. 

LITERATURE The primary literary record of Christina's life is the Vita Christinae Mirabilis (Life of Christina the Astonishing), written in circa 1232 by Thomas of Cantimpré (c.1201–c.1272), a Dominican theologian and professor of theology at Louvain. 

Cardinal Jacques de Vitry (c.1160–1244), who knew Christina personally, also wrote accounts of her. A modern edition of the Latin text, with commentary by French historian Sylvain Piron, has re-examined the chronology of her life. An English translation, The Life of St. Christina the Astonishing, was edited by Margot H. King and published in Toronto in 1999. (6)

NATURE Christina's relationship with the natural world was extreme. She immersed herself in frozen rivers for days at a time in winter, took refuge in trees and on rooftops, and lived outdoors without shelter for extended periods. One account places her in the Meuse River, where she was carried by the current to a mill wheel. 

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Christina's "hobbies," if they can be called that, were her extraordinary penitential practices: psalm-chanting on fence posts, climbing to heights to escape the smell of people, and her terrifying bouts of self-mortification. These were understood as spiritual exercises, not recreation. 

MIRACLES Christina the Astonishing — and one does feel the name rather gives the game away — acquired a reputation for miracles so enthusiastic that even seasoned medieval biographers occasionally seem to pause for breath. Most of what we know comes from Thomas of Cantimpré, who, to be fair, appears to have written it all down with a straight face.

Her most famous moment occurred at her own funeral, which is already a strong opening. After being quite confidently dead following a seizure, Christina chose the Agnus Dei as the ideal moment to sit up in her coffin — as one does — and then float gently upwards to the roof beams. When asked (one assumes with some urgency) why she had taken to perching like an anxious pigeon, she explained that she couldn’t bear the smell of sinful people. This is the sort of comment that tends to thin out a congregation rather quickly.

Fire, it turns out, presented no difficulty. Christina would stroll into furnaces and fireplaces with the casual air of someone checking on a casserole, roll about in the flames, and emerge apparently unharmed. Observers did report that she looked alarmingly injured at first, but the wounds obligingly vanished moments later, which must have been reassuring, though perhaps not enough to encourage imitation.

Cold and fast-moving water were similarly unpersuasive adversaries. She spent extended periods immersed in freezing rivers, survived being dragged around a mill wheel (which feels like something best avoided even on a good day), and generally behaved as though the laws of nature were polite suggestions rather than binding agreements.

Prayer, for Christina, was also a slightly more athletic affair than most of us manage. According to Thomas, her body would gather itself into a kind of compact ball — “like hot wax,” he says, which is not an image that improves with reflection — before springing back again, hedgehog-like. One suspects the local congregation watched all this with the fixed smiles of people determined not to ask follow-up questions.

Levitation was less a one-off miracle and more a recurring lifestyle choice. She was frequently found at inconvenient heights, clinging to trees or beams “like a sparrow,” which suggests either remarkable holiness or a profound misunderstanding of personal safety.

At one point, when deprived of food, water, light, and, rather ambitiously, air, she is said to have been sustained by a mysterious sweet oil produced by her own body. It nourished her and healed her wounds, which is convenient, if difficult to replicate in modern dietary plans.

There were, of course, the more traditional miracles as well: healings, prophecies, and the conversion of sinners — the latter being, in many ways, the most impressive, since it’s notoriously harder than levitating. Even after her death in 1224, miracles were reported at her tomb, involving oil, bread, and the general sense that Christina was not quite finished astonishing people just yet.

All of which leaves us with a slightly awkward question. Either this is a breathtaking catalogue of divine intervention, or medieval Belgium was a far more eventful place than any of us have been led to believe. Possibly both.

SCIENCE AND MATHS She had no interest in science, but her life has been analyzed by modern psychologists and medical professionals as a potential case of catalepsy or schizophrenia—though her followers argue these labels fail to explain her miracles.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Christina's theology was experiential rather than academic. Her vision during her apparent death — of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory — shaped her entire subsequent life. Her mission, as she expressed it, was to perform living penance on behalf of souls in Purgatory, to accelerate their release.

Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) cited Christina and Cardinal Jacques de Vitry as twin witnesses to the reality of Purgatory, writing: "God willed to silence those libertines who make open profession of believing in nothing, and who have the audacity to ask in scorn, Who has returned from the other world?" (4)

POLITICS Christina took no interest in political life, but her reputation for holiness brought her into contact with those who did. Records note that civic and religious leaders of her region sought her advice, and she was summoned to the deathbed of a local count to hear his confession — a striking level of trust in a woman of her social standing (7)

SCANDAL Christina was twice arrested and imprisoned by the townspeople of Sint-Truiden, who believed she was either insane or possessed by the devil. On one occasion, she reportedly fled a priest who refused her Holy Communion and threw herself into the Meuse River. Her behaviour caused widespread alarm throughout her lifetime. (8)

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Christina suffered a catastrophic seizure in her early twenties, severe enough that she was declared dead. Whether this was epilepsy, catalepsy, or another condition has been debated by later commentators. 

Throughout her adult life she subjected her body to extreme physical ordeals — fire, ice, and the mill wheel — all reportedly without permanent injury. 

She lived to approximately 74, a remarkable age for a medieval peasant woman.

HOMES For much of her adult life, Christina had no fixed home. She lived without shelter, sleeping outdoors or in tombs. She spent her final years at the Dominican Convent of Saint Catherine in Sint-Truiden.

TRAVEL Her travels were limited to the region of modern-day Belgium, specifically the areas surrounding Sint-Truiden and the Meuse River.

DEATH Christina died on July 24, 1224, at the Dominican Convent of Saint Catherine in Sint-Truiden, of natural causes, aged approximately 74. Her feast day is observed on July 24. Her relics have been preserved in the region. 

LEGACY Christina the Astonishing has been recognised as a saint since the 12th century. She was considered a saint in her own time, and for centuries following her death, as confirmed by her appearance in the Fasti Mariani Calendar of Saints of 1630 and in Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints (Concise Edition), published in the 18th century. Though never formally canonized through the modern Vatican process, she is commemorated in the current edition of the Roman Martyrologium on July 24. She is invoked as patron of the mentally ill, mental health workers, and millers. 

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Nick Cave wrote and recorded the song "Christina the Astonishing," included on the album Henry's Dream (1992), performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. 

Poets Jane Draycott and Lesley Saunders re-told her story in the poetry collection Christina the Astonishing. 

Christina is the subject of a school pageant in the episode "The Astonishing" of the Showtime television series Nurse Jackie. 

Christina appears in B.R. Yeager's novel Negative Space (2020), published by Apocalypse Party. 

ACHIEVEMENTS Her primary achievement was the spiritual impact she had on the 13th-century church. She challenged the religious status quo and provided a vivid, if harrowing, example of the "Apostolic life" of poverty and suffering. 

Christina remains a patron saint for those suffering from mental illness and millers (due to her association with Sint-Truiden's mills).

Sources: (1) Wikipedia (2) Encyclopedia.com (3) Thomas de Cantimpré, Life of St. Christina (Archive.org PDF) (4) Catholicism.org (5) National Catholic Partnership on Disability (6) Goodreads – The Life of St. Christina the Astonishing (7) Holy Irritant – Christina the Astonishing (8) Britannica