ABSTRACT
Sometime in the 1160s, a monk of St Albans composed an account of the life of this woman with whom he had been personally acquainted. Born into a family of the Anglo-Saxon elite during the early years of the century and christened Theodora, she had decided at a young age to dedicate herself to the religious life and so had vowed herself to virginity. Her parents, however, had determined that she should be married to a man from their district named Burthred. Their attempts to force their daughter into such a socially suitable match proved unsuccessful. Theodora eventually escaped the control of both her family and her putative secular spouse through a campaign which involved both court actions and outright deception. Thereafter she lived as a religious recluse, that is as a sponsa Christi in the language of the hagiographer. She spent time at several hermitages, first in the vicinity of her hometown of Huntingdon and then near the Abbey of St Albans. There, at the insistence of Abbot Geoffrey, she was formally consecrated as a virgin in a ceremony which was compared to a wedding. Still later, the abbot appointed the former anchoress – now known as
Christina, a name which reflected her intimate personal relationship with her true spouse – to be prioress of a newly founded convent at Markyate.
