Christina of Persia
The Holy Martyr Christina of Persia
Martyr · d. 4th century, in Persia
Commemorated 13 March — Martyrdom by scourging in Persia
Christina (fourth century) was a martyr of Persia, a young woman who was scourged to death for confessing her faith in Christ during one of the great persecutions of the Church of Persia under the Sasanian kings. Of her life almost nothing is transmitted beyond the manner and the constancy of her death; the Church keeps her honoured memory on March 13.
Christina belongs to the martyrs of the Church of Persia, which under the Sasanian dynasty — and above all in the long persecution of Shapur II in the fourth century — gave the faith a great host of confessors and martyrs, second only to the martyrs of the Roman world. Her surviving notice is of the briefest, in the manner of the synaxaria: she was a Christian woman of Persia who, seized in the persecution and refusing to renounce Christ, was scourged — beaten with whips or rods — and died under the blows, receiving the crown of martyrdom. No account preserves her city, her family, or the name of her judge; the Church remembers her as one who bore witness to Christ with her body and was faithful unto death, a young woman crowned among the martyrs of the Persian Church.
The record is thin, and honestly so: Christina of Persia is one of the many saints of whom the Church keeps the name, the place, and the crown, and little more. Her short Life is not a sign of a small sanctity but of the great silence that covers so many of the martyrs of the East.
Feast and commemoration
Christina is commemorated on March 13 (church date; Old Calendar civil March 26), together with the translation of the relics of Nicephorus of Constantinople and the martyrs of the day. The Greek, Slavic, and Antiochian calendars keep her on this day. Because March 13 falls within the Great Fast, its commemoration is generally kept on a weekday of Lent, when the full Liturgy is not served and no fixed Epistle and Gospel are appointed; the martyr's office is joined to the Lenten order.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy ewe-lamb Christina cries out to thee, O Jesus, with a great voice: I love thee, O my Bridegroom, and in seeking thee I contend; I am crucified and buried with thee in thy baptism, and I suffer for thy sake, that I may reign with thee; I die for thee, that I may live in thee. Accept me as a spotless sacrifice, offered to thee with love. By her intercessions save our souls, O merciful One.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Christina is depicted as a young woman martyr: a maiden in tunic and maphorion, holding the cross of martyrdom in her right hand, of youthful and serene aspect; where the scene is narrative, she is shown bound and scourged. No securely identified early portrait icon of her has been found for storage here; the saint wants an icon.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with the great Christina of Tyre, Great Martyr (kept July 24), the celebrated virgin-martyr who broke her father's idols — a different and far more fully attested saint. This Christina is the martyr of Persia, of the fourth century, of whom only the fact of her scourging is transmitted.