Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 1.djvu/193

179 B. CHRISTINA VISCONTI 179 years old Christ appeared to her in a dream, and bade her belong to Him only. She was so impressed with the splendour of her vision that she lost all bodily feeling for three days, and never rested until she joined the Begnines. At thirteen she went to Cologne, un- known to her parents. When her mother found her, and entreated her to return home, she would not. The Beguines advised her to go, but she said she pre- ferred to suffer hunger and poverty alone with Christ rather than live in comfort mth her parents. She fasted rigorously and prayed much. After two years of this life, wonderful temptations befell her. The devil used to take the form of St. Bartholomew, and advise her to kill herself. For six months she suffered from a constant desire to commit suicide, to which succeeded temptations to doubt certain points of the Catholic faith. Her doubt of the presence of Christ in the sacrament of the altar was removed by a miracle in answer to her prayer, for at the elevation of the Host she saw in the hands of the priest a little child, who said to her, ** I am Jesus." Next came illusions. When she was going to eat she saw a toad, a serpent, or a spider on the bread or other food. Her disgust at it was such that she could not eat. In this way she suffered severely from hunger. A priest, fearing she would die of inanition, advised her to put the food in her mouth, notwith- standing her disgust. As soon as she did so, she felt on her tongue the cold body of a reptile, and excessive sickness was the consequence. If she had broth, she fancied it was full of worms, and when she was going to drink, she heard a voicD from the cup saying, "If you drink me, you drink the devil." Her parents were angry with her for leaving them against their will. The Beguines thought she was mad and epileptic, and constantly ridiculed her, thinking she affected to be considered pious. When she had been with them for five years, they sent her back to Stommeln, where she lived for many years, still wearing the dress of a Beguine. She had bleed- ing from the nose and mouth, and other 1 bodily ailments, and used to remain rigid and apparently insensible for days and sometimes weeks together, during which she had visions, sometimes of the Passion of Christ. She was tempted by the devil with false consolations, and with persuasions to longer fasts and severer penances than it was possible for so fragile a creature to endure. Her Life is one of the longest in the Bollandist Collection, and is chiefly taken up by her extraordinary tempta- tions and her combats with devils. In 1269 she was marked with the stigmata, which her biographer, Peter of Dacia, a Dominican friar of Cologne, declares that he and other credible per- sons saw. She had many ecstasies. By her sufferings she released the soul of her mother and several others from pur- gatory. Christina's body was translated to Nideck, and afterwards to Jiilich. She is commemorated at Jiilich, in the diocese of Cologne, and claimed by the Dominicans as a member of their order. Her Life in the AA,SS., from con- temporary authors, and partly dictated by herself. Her Life, by Peter von Dacien, brought out in German by Wol- lersheim, from the MS. preserved at Jiilich, and extensively quoted in Proger's Deutsche Mystik der Mittelalter. B. Christina (13) Visconti, Feb. 14. Of the Third Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, "f c, 1453. Of the noble family of the Yisconti of Milan . To avoid marrying, she fled from home with a confidential maid-servant. She assumed the black habit of the Augustinians, which did not wear out in ten years of very hard usage. After living several years hidden in the woods, eating what the7 could find, they stayed some time ia Bome, and visited the holy places and sacred relics with great delight and devotion. They then went to Assisi, where a great festival was to be held, and an indulgence granted in the church of the Portiuncula. There the crowd was so great that Christina was pushed and crushed, and could hardly get away, and lost her companion. She sought her in vain all over Assisi, Spoleto, Montc- falco, Bome, and many other places. She spent nearly a year at Spoleto with a pious woman, from whom she had