ABSTRACT
These are some key moments from pivotal relationships in Christina of Markyate’s life. The first concerns her initial glimpse of the man who was to become her spiritual advisor for a number of years, the hermit Roger. It is an instant blistering with the heat of their shared spiritual vocation. The second describes the behaviour of the nameless cleric to whom Christina was entrusted after Roger’s death, afflicted by a different kind of heat – a demonic fire which caused his feelings for his spiritual confidante to burst their restraints and overturn his reason. Christina’s life was, in fact, a veritable roller coaster of volatile emotions. Her relationships with the various clerics who offered her spiritual direction and support contributed to this tumultuous ride, and provide us with some memorable vignettes of the deeply affective turn that spiritual direction took in Christina’s experience. But is the shape these relationships assume unique to her particular spiritual odyssey?
