Thursday, July 24, 2025

It is the 24th of July 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

The Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave (formerly of the Birthday Party and now with the Bad Seeds) has long had a fascination with the dark and macabre elements of Christianity (I kid you not, our friends over at Mockingbird have- I have over a dozen articles on the artist and his relationship to Christianity).

But what caught my attention years ago was a track from his 1992 “Henry’s Dream” called “Christina the Astonishing” with its lyrics

Christina the Astonishing
Lived a long long time ago

She was stricken with a seizure

At the age of twenty-two


They took her body in a coffin

To a tiny church in Liege

Where she sprang up from the coffin

Just after the Agnus Dei


She soared up to the rafters

Perched on a beam up there

Cried, “The stink of human sin

Is more that i can bear”

Christina the Astonishing

Was the most astonishing of all

She prayed balanced on a hurdle

Or curled up into a ball


She fled to remote places

Climbed towers and trees and walls

To escape the stench of human corruption

Into an oven she did crawl

And you would forgive a modern singer-songwriter for punching up a story for dramatic effect, but Cave does the opposite. “Christina Mirabilis,” as she was known in the Low Countries around the Netherlands and Flanders, is one of the more curious saints' stories of the Middle Ages (and yes, if you’re counting, it’s three days in a row of wild stories about saints that can cause problems for the modern historian).  

As usual, we have one source for the life of Christina- a French Dominican, Thomas de Cantimpré, came to inquire about the stories he had heard about Christina and wrote a life of the woman in 1232, just 8 years after her death, and he claims to have interviewed eyewitnesses. The story goes like this: Christina is the third of three girls born in modern-day Belgium to parents of good repute. But they die, and the girls have to take care of themselves. Christina, the youngest, is told to tend the flocks, and it is here that she has intense experiences in times of devotion to Christ. So much so that it sapped her body, and at either 12 or 22, she died.

At which point, cue the song…” she sprang up from the coffin… soared up to the rafters” and only came down when a priest commanded it and used the Eucharist wafer to bait her. She claims to have been taken to the afterlife, seen the terrors of purgatory, and come back to warn people and to assist them in good lives and deaths. At first, it was said she levitated amongst trees and couldn’t be too close to people because she could “smell their sins”. She throws herself into water and fire and is unharmed- the play was that she could show and experience the terrors of purgatory for the still living.

She is restrained by her sisters and other church leaders and is able to escape- they eventually pray that she would be “tempered”- a little less extreme, and it seems that she was for a period. After a series of prophecies, she fell in with the Count of Looz- and while she couldn’t forgive his sins, she heard them and helped him in his last days.  

Her last days, well… the story goes she dies- again, only to be interrupted by a sister who wanted to ask her one last question. She comes back, goes again, and then, after years of being buried, when she is moved, her casket is opened, and something happens, but Thomas writes “but we cannot speak further of these matters”.

A modern translator of the life of Christina the Astonishing has noted that “three or four centuries later, she could have been burned as a witch, nowadays might have been on medication, or in an institution, or even living rough, in the Middle Ages, moved from cow to castle, an honored and valued member of the society”

I am, while a modern fellow, opposed to chronological snobbery, which assumes the moderns always know best. The story of Christina the Astonishing is one of a local saint- yes, her story has been told but there is no “official sainthood” and while she is in the Roman Martyrology not even Catholics are required to believe everything about her- but her story reveals something about the Medieval faith, the place of the supernatural and women- even when acting strangely, could be held in esteem.

She’s unofficially the patron saint of people judged insane on account of their religious devotion- for those suffering, for those who will suffer, for the holy fools and the wrongly accused and never understood. Her death is now over 800 years away (801 today), but we can still ask questions and learn from her and the type of literature produced about her.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Psalm 85:

I will listen to what God the Lord says;

    he promises peace to his people, his faithful servants—

    but let them not turn to folly.

Surely his salvation is near those who fear him,

    that his glory may dwell in our land.

Love and faithfulness meet together;

    righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Faithfulness springs forth from the earth,

    and righteousness looks down from heaven.

The Lord will indeed give what is good,

    and our land will yield its harvest.

Righteousness goes before him

    and prepares the way for his steps.

  

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 24th of July 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who doesn’t smell of sin as much as he does of musk, oak, and coffee- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man, reminding you that a key feature of the Middle Ages was smelling bad… I’m Dan van Voorhis. 

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.