Abstract
Christina of Markyate (c. 1096–c. 1160), born in Huntingdon, was a twelfth-century recluse and founder of a women’s priory at Markyate, not far from St Albans Abbey. We know of her from her Life (extant in one fourteenth-century manuscript) authored by a monk of St Albans, possibly Robert de Gorron, and probably written in the 1130s or early 1140s when she was still alive. The Life seems to have been written in the hope that Christina would become a new patronal saint for St Albans, but that hope was not realized and there was no posthumous cult. The Life describes Christina’s youthful flight into reclusion from an arranged marriage and her subsequent intense spiritual friendships with Roger the hermit and Abbot Geoffrey of St Albans, who may have adapted the luxurious St Albans Psalter for her readership: the Psalter certainly became closely associated with Christina and her community. Using established hagiographic paradigms, the Life constructs Christina as both a virgin martyr and a desert ascete. In addition, it sheds light on the complex relationship between “native” English religiosity (often constructed as eremitic) and the new Norman church.
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References
Manuscripts
London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius E.1
Primary References
The Life of Christina of Markyate. 2008, trans. by C.H. Talbot, with intro. and notes by S. Fanous and H. Leyser. Oxford: OUP.
Reginald of Durham. 2022. The Life and Miracles of Saint Godric, Hermit of Finchale, ed. and trans. by M. Coombe. Oxford: OUP.
Vie de Christina de Markyate. 2007, ed. and trans. into French by P.L’Hermitte-Leclercq and A-M. Legras, with commentary by P.L’Hermitte-Leclercq. Paris: CNRS.
Secondary References
Bugyis, K.A.-M. 2017. The Author of the Life of Christina of Markyate: The Case for Robert de Gorron (d. 1166). Journal of Ecclesiastical History 68 (4): 719–746.
Fanous, S. 2005. Christina of Markyate and the Double Crown. In Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Holy Woman, ed. S. Fanous and H. Leyser, 53–78. London: Routledge.
Geddes, J. 2005a. The St Albans Psalter: the abbot and the anchoress. In Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Holy Woman, ed. S. Fanous and H. Leyser, 197–216. London: Routledge.
Geddes, J. 2005b. The St Albans Psalter: A Book for Christina of Markyate. London: British Library.
Hayward, P. 1999. Sanctity and Lordship in Twelfth-Century England: St Albans, Durham, and the Cult of Saint Oswine, King and Martyr. Viator 30: 105–144.
Head, T. 1990. The Marriages of Christina of Markyate. Viator 21: 75–101.
Hollis, S., and J. Wogan-Browne. 2005. St Albans and Women’s Monasticism: Lives and their Foundations in Christina’s World. In Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Holy Woman, ed. S. Fanous and H. Leyser, 25–52. London: Routledge.
Jaeger, S.C. 2005. The Loves of Christina of Markyate. In Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Holy Woman, ed. S. Fanous and H. Leyser, 99–115. London: Routledge.
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Watt, D. 2007. Medieval Women’s Writing. Cambridge: Polity.
Further Reading
Cartlidge, N. 1997. Medieval Marriage: Literary Approaches, 1100–1300. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
Elkins, S.K. 1988. Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Holdsworth, C.J. 1978. Christina of Markyate. In Medieval Women: Dedicated and Presented to Professor Rosalind M. T. Hill on the Occasion of her Seventieth Birthday, ed. D. Baker, 185–204. Oxford: Blackwell.
Jones, E.A. 2019. Hermits and Anchorites in England: 1200–1550, trans. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Millett, B. 1993. Women in No Man’s Land: English Recluses and the Development of Vernacular Literature in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. In Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, ed. C.M. Meale, 86–103. Cambridge: CUP.
Wogan-Browne, J. 2001. Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary Culture. Oxford: OUP.
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Whitehead, C. (2023). Christina of Markyate. In: Sauer, M.M., Watt, D., McAvoy, L.H. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_14-2
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Christina of Markyate- Published:
- 05 November 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_14-2
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Christina of Markyate- Published:
- 29 July 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_14-1