MARTYR CHRISTINA

Saint Christina is one of the famous virgin martyrs of the Ancient Church. Like them, she suffered from the extreme pagan cruelty of her relatives. Unlike other virgin martyrs, her contemporaries, she was punished by her parents not only for her faith in Christ, but also because of her father’s extreme avarice. Paganism, this constant combination of religiosity and love of money, subjected Saint Christina to unspeakable torments. The opposition to the consumerism of her contemporaries makes her testimony unusually relevant and modern.

1 On August 6, the Church celebrates the memory of the holy martyr Christina. St. Christina suffered during the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus (193–211). Very early, at only fourteen years of age, she consciously converted to the faith, for which she suffered greatly.

2 St. Christina’s father was a Roman magistrate. This meant that, among other things, he held judicial power. A notable feature of his character was his insatiable passion for collecting statues and images of various deities.

3 It is unclear whether he was a fanatical pagan or a personification of Paul’s words: “The love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). His daughter’s name, “Christina,” derived from the word “Christian,” suggests his likely indifference to religion itself. But the loss of his possessions and family honor enraged him and robbed him of his humanity.

4 According to biblical tradition, Christians considered the Roman holy images to be evil idols. Christina destroyed this entire collection, exchanging what she couldn’t destroy for money and distributing it to the needy.

5 The enraged father hung them on iron hooks and ordered them burned. In this way, he literally took revenge for the fact that some of the idols had been melted down for the benefit of the poor. It was a cruel and sophisticated torture. When he saw that his daughter didn’t give in to her pain and didn’t ask for mercy, he flew into a rage and died of a stroke.

6 Christina’s case was handed over to his successor, who initially tried to persuade the girl. He was genuinely surprised by her complete disregard for her aristocratic origins. When she resisted his persuasions, he immediately displayed unprecedented cruelty. The magistrate ordered her to be placed in an oven for several days. But the saint would not submit.

7 She was then thrown among poisonous snakes. The reptiles, however, paid no attention to the girl and attacked the guard like a hostile creature. He fell dead, and Christina, in a spontaneous act of mercy, revived him with prayers. But he was clearly a fanatical idol worshipper and immediately ordered the girl’s tongue to be torn out. As a result of all this torture, the saint was executed with three arrows, one of which pierced her heart. This is how she is traditionally depicted in iconography.

8 In liturgical calendars, the holy martyr is called “Christina of Tyre.” The city of Tyre is located in Phoenicia, in the territory of present-day Lebanon. It is mentioned in the Holy Scriptures and even in the Psalms. Apparently, the addition of “Tyre” to the martyr’s name was a source of pride for the inhabitants of this region of the Middle East, who therefore venerated the martyr as their own countrywoman.

9 However, it is very likely that the word “Tyr” comes from the name of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Hence the veneration of the martyr Christina in many places in Italy, Sicily, and southern Gaul, the center of which was and remains the city of Bolsena in the Lazio region. Bolsena was a place of pilgrimage and repository of the saint’s relics for centuries. Perhaps this very city was the site of her martyrdom.

10 In the 5th/6th-century Basilica of San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Christina is depicted in a famous mosaic among the great holy virgin martyrs approaching Christ in glory. It is surprising that the memory of Saint Apollinaris, the first bishop of Ravenna and apostolic disciple, is celebrated on the eve of the commemoration of Christina’s martyrdom. Recently, archaeologists in the Italian town of Bolsena discovered a very ancient sarcophagus on which the name of the holy martyr is engraved in a slightly modified form.