Diary Entry: 3rd December, 1993
On the 1st of December while I was working the late shift at Charlestown Library a woman rang up in a frenzied state wondering whether we had a particular book of saints.
Lara, my colleague, who had taken the phone call explained that we did posess the work in our reference section. The woman immediately came in and showed us a paragraph in Denyar's "Lives of the Saints" on a particular saint "Christina of Tyre" and inquired whether the Catholic Church would have any information on this saint in their library. We were not sure whether there was any such library but told her we would search it further.
She was of small build, asian, and told us her name was Paz. She had been having a recurring dream of a woman, dressed in black , being tortured and burned. She had been having this dream for the last six years. She thought she was going insane, I assured her that this was interesting stuff and would look into it further.
After she left, I rang Information Services at Speers Point Library to check Butler's Lives of the Saints which I had believed would supply further info. But the edition that we had only a scant reference about the popularity in both east and west, confusion with Saint Christina of Bolsena and a note on iconography. I later realised that different editions of Butler had different amounts of information on her.
Anyway, the obscurity of the reference made me more interested that this was not a crank. If it had been a more popular saint, perhaps it could have been an example of christian fanatalism, I believe that this was a genuine account.
Diary Entry: Monday 6th December, 1993
On the Friday the 3rd, being a picnic day and having the day off, I went to the University Library to dig up some more information. I came across two works, "The Golden Legend" by Jacobus de Voragine and the english version by William Caxton entitled "The Golden Legend or the Lives of the Saints Englished by William Caxton". Both contained a biography and fuller account of her life and martyrdom.
I was surprised to learn that the Tyre mentioned was not the Phoencian Town but an island located at Lake Bolsena in the northern Lazio region of Tuscan Italy. She died in the year A,D.287 in the reignof Diocletion and that she buried in the Castle of Bolsena, between Viterbo and Civitavecchia, the Tyre of old being razed.
Having read both versions of the tale I discovered a collection of essays entitled "Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe" which included an interesting essay "Martyrdom and the Female Voice" by Kevin Brownlee. He connected Christina of Tyre with an Italian born French writer of the 15th Century Christine de Pisan. She had used the story of Christina in her book "The Book of the City of Ladies" as patron to her medieval celebration of women against the mysogynistic attacks of male society. Christine de Pisan changes the story in parts to bolster her virgin saint, what emerges is a tale of the female voice and its supression by three male torturers, Urbanus (her father), Dyon and Julian.
Today I decided to see if I could find a copy of this book by Christine de Pisan and surprisingly enoughfound one. It was the only copy in the system and located right under my nose at Charlestown. I rang Paz, to let her know what I had found. She told me she had been to the Monastery, but they were not able to tell when this saint had been born or died. She had also rung the Vatican but had found it difficult to speak Italian.
I took the oportunity to ask her about the dreams. She told me that she had one to the library that night because it was too hot at home and had been reading a book on Australian history when she passed the volume on the saints that immediately sparked a remembrance of dreams concerning the saint. She also told me that she had called the woman in black with no face "Santa Maria (or Cristina) della croce" but that the figure told her that her name was "Santa Cristina of Tyre". She wondered what a tyre (as in "car") had to do with it and so was absolutely excited when she found the reference in Denyar.
The iconography of the saint can be found in the mosaics of Ravenna, among the works of Cranach and Paul Veronese. The attributes being a millstone, pincers and arrows. I decide that this story has the capabilities of being an interesting play about three women connected through 2000 years of time as a women's dreaming or notion of herstory that is not a dead thing but a living continuum. The play should be performed on the saint's feast day July 24th, in effect giving the saint her day back.
17th December, 1993
From Oxford Dictionary of Saints by David Hugh Farmer, Clarenden Press 1978, p.77
CHRISTINA (4th Century?), virgin and martyr. There are two claimants to this title who have come to share the same Acts: Christina of Tyre (Phoencia) and Christina of Bolsena in Tuscany. It would seem that the former never existed, while the latter, probably a genuine martyr with a surviving shrine and catacomb, was not called Christina. Both Eastern and Western churches had a cult of Christina on 24 July; the Legend which does duty for both made her the heroine of a series of unlikely tortures endured for refusing to sacrifice to pagan gods; eventually she was shot to death with arrows. The Legend seems to be a conflation of those of Barbara, Catherine of Alexandria and Ursula. Her iconography begins with a mosaic at Ravenna (6th century) in which she has no special attributes. In the 15th and 16th centuries there are notable paintings by Cranach and Paul Veronese, her attributes being a millstone, a wheel, pincers, and arrows.
AA.SS. Iul. V, 495-534; C.M.H. p. 394; Propylaeum, p.304; c. Ricci, Santa Christina e il lago de Bolsena (1928); art. Bolsena in D.A.C.L.; B.T.A., iii. 173-4.
Book of Saints (no author or pub details) p.162
CHRISTINA (St) VM. RM. July 24?
A maiden, perhaps a native of Rome, who was put to death near the Lake of Bolsena in Tuscany. Her legendary acts have been confused with those of St Christina of Tyre, who very existence, however, is very doubtful.
Poem - January 1994
Ripped to shreds
I'll be ripped to shreds
For the joiner be
By the side.
Connecting strands
Of this cloth that binds us
To this world we create
Asunder.
Is it good?
Shall all the gods rejoice at my feet
As Jung picks up the thread
And conjoins
All that was ripped to shreds.
Torn apart limb from limb
Tongue cut out.
O Christina, sing me your song
In the heart of many deaths
Our martyr this day shall
Be joined by this story that unites.
He reached down
To pick up the thread
Once torn asunder
And gives it to me in good cheer.
Diary Note: 26.2.94
At Daves (Cooks Hill Books) Butlers
Lives of the Saints $200
Note of July 24th Christina of Tyre
Martyred in Tyro, a city which stood on an island in Lake Bolsena (and now covered
in water). Relics lie at Palermo, Sicily. See Ughelli, Italia Sacra.
Dream: 3rd June, 1994
The relics of St Christina, a small skeleton of a child on display in a corridor. Behind the display was a television set showing an impassioned man recounting what had happened to the young martyr. Being called by my father and mother outside I was looking through old photos. Back to the relics, I could not keep the stand up and tried enlisting a teddy bear to help keep it up.
Diary Entry: Saturday 5th November, 1994
The "Book of the City of the Ladies" has disappeared from the library catalogue, probably discarded. Night winds are currently prevalent.