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'I wish to remain single, for I have made a vow of virginity.' This
is the remarkable story of the twelfth-century recluse Christina,
who became prioress of Markyate, near St Albans in Hertfordshire.
Determined to devote her life to God and to remain a virgin,
Christina repulses the sexual advances of the bishop of Durham. In
revenge he arranges her betrothal to a young nobleman but Christina
steadfastly refuses to consummate the marriage and defies her
parents' cruel coercion. Sustained by visions, she finds refuge
with the hermit Roger, and lives concealed at Markyate for four
years, enduring terrible physical and emotional torment. Although
Christina is supported by the abbot of St Albans, she never
achieves the recognition that he intended for her. Written with
striking candour by Christina's anonymous biographer, the vividness
and compelling detail of this account make it a social document as
much as a religious one. Christina's trials of the flesh and spirit
exist against a backdrop of scheming and corruption and
all-too-human greed. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford
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up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Aelred of Rievaulx, like his Cistercian brothers, believed that the
human person is created in the image and likeness of God. He
analyzed the human soul therefore to understand by analogy
something of the being of God. Possessing three
faculties--intellect, memory, and will--the one, indivisible soul
resembles the triune, simple Godhead. In that it is to some degree
incomprehensible, the soul shares in the incomprehensibility of its
Creator. By ascetic discipline and by training their innate
spiritual faculties, the early Cistercians sought to restore
persons to the perfection in which God had created them: to
remember without forgetfulness, to know without error, to love
without satiety.
The Life of Christiana of Markyate gives an exceptionally vivid
account of the struggles of a young girl, vowed at an early age to
celibacy, to escape the matrimonial snares set by her parents and
her friends. She was born of well-to-do burgesses of Huntingdon in
the opening years of the twelfth century, who succeeded in
betrothing her to a local nobleman. But the marriage was not
consummated, and eventually she escaped, became a recluse and a
nun, and the prioress of a small community at Markyate in
Hertfordshire, under the patronage of the abbot and monks of St
Albans, who made the famous St Albans' Psalter for her. The Life,
written by one of her chaplains largely from her own reminiscences,
was discovered, or rediscovered, by C.H. Talbot in a Cotton
Manuscript in the British Library. First published by the Clarendon
Press in 1959, it is now reissued. It is one of the remarkable
discoveries of our time, and a classic of historical literature.
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