Christina of Markyate

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Christina of Markyate (c. 1097 -1161) founded a Benedictine community of religious women. She was the prioress of a small community at Markyate, Hertfordshire, under the patronage of the abbot and monks of St Albans, who made the famous St Albans' Psalter for her.

Her religious life began when she escaped marriage and ran away from her family's house to live with a local hermit. In his cell she lived in hiding for four years in a closet that measured about 14 inches (a span and a half) on a side, in which she fasted, meditated, and experienced visions of Jesus Christ. After these four years, her husband freed her from her marital obligations, and she was able to participate in regular monastic life.

[edit] External links

• A Cell of Self-Knowledge
• The St Albans Psalter

[edit] Further reading

• Talbot, C.H., (editor and translator), The Life of Christina of Markyate - A Twelfth-Century Recluse. Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-19-821274-7.
• Medieval Women's Visionary Literature, ed. Elizabeth Petroff. Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-19-503711-1