Envisioning Episcopal Exemption: The Life of Christina of Markyate

Abstract

This article examines the biography of a twelfth-century English holy woman, theLife of Christina of Markyate—particularly its account of a vision that she had in which she was crowned in the likeness of a bishop's miter—within the context of campaigns undertaken by English monasteries in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries to obtain the papal privilege of full exemption from the sacramental and juridical control of their diocesan bishop. Reading Christina's vision in view of the bids for independence made by St. Albans—the community responsible for commissioning and writing her biography—especially helps to shed light on why theLifeseems to figure her in a distinctly episcopal cast. Significantly, theLife's account of this vision may have been shaped by a miniature cycle of the passion and miracles of St. Edmund, produced by Burycirca1125, seemingly in an effort to provide further confirmation of the abbey's exempt status. In a miniature depicting Edmund's apotheosis, the saint divinely receives a miter-like crown, which is nearly identical in its ornamentation to the one that Christina would later receive. Ultimately under investigation in this article is whether St. Albans' campaign for exemption was one of the influences dictating the composition of theLife of Christina.