One great source of entertainment she provided during divine service was to coil herself up into a ball, so that neither head, hands, nor feet appeared, and so roll about the church. Then all at once, when no one was expecting it—snap! out flew head, feet, and hands, and she lay flat on the floor, rigid as a log of wood, all her limbs extended and motionless. Another of her devotional vagaries was to pirouette on one toe on the top of a paling, whilst vociferously praying. All which not only edified the living, but afforded vast gratification to the souls in Purgatory.
At length her sisters could stand her vagaries no longer,—her biographer candidly admits that Christina put them to the blush,—and they engaged a strong man to catch her and chain her up again. He went after her, and she ran. Unable to catch her, he flung a club at her that brought her down and, as was thought, broke her thigh. As she could not walk, a cart was brought to the spot, and she was placed in it and conveyed to a surgeon, who had a bed of straw strewn for her in his cellar. He put her leg in splints, but to ensure her remaining quiet and not tearing at the bandages, bound her hands and fastened them to a ring in the cellar wall. In the night she succeeded in disengaging her hands. Then she ripped off the bandages, threw away the splints, and stood up. Her thigh was not broken. She got a stone, and with it broke a way through the wall of the cellar, and escaped into the open country once more.
After this her relatives gave up all further attempts to control her.
Finding herself unmolested, she ventured back to the haunts of men, and begged for food or whatever she required. If refused what she wanted, she became angry and took it. Few dared resist her importunities or violence. When she had a sleeve of her gown torn off she went to the first woman she encountered and asked for hers. If not at once given, she rushed at the person, and with teeth and claws tore the sleeve off the gown, and then, with crazy laughter, she slipped her own bare arm into it. Her dress was a mass of tatters and incongruous patches, sewn on with willow-bark thread, or pinned together with thorns. Her hair, dark, utterly uncombed, hung wildly about her head, and fell over her tanned, dirty face. Her limbs were covered with scars. One day she visited the parish church of Wellen, near St. Trond, and finding the cover off the font, and the sacred vessel pretty full, since the recent benediction of the sacred water, with one jump reached the brim, and then flopped herself down in the hallowed water. This, says her biographer solemnly, had the effect of subduing in her the more extraordinary manifestations of ecstatic devotion; and after this souse in the baptismal water, she professed herself less distressed by the odour of human beings.
She was not gracious to those who gave her food. As she ate what she had begged, she growled, “Why am I eating this nastiness? Why am I thus plagued?” and told them that what they gave her tasted like the insides of newts and toads.
Her biographer assures us that “she avoided, with the utmost solicitude, all human honour and praise,” but it would be hard to find that either was shown or offered her whilst alive; for then she certainly was esteemed crazy. Only after her death did it occur to people that she was a saint.
In her old age she was often given shelter by the kind sisters of St. Catherine at St. Trond, and she returned their hospitality by her amusing antics. One day, as she was talking with them, she suddenly curled herself up into a ball, and began to roll round the room, “like a boy’s ball, without any token of her limbs appearing.” Then, all at once, she expanded flat on the floor, and ventriloquised. “No voice or breath issued from her mouth and nose, but only her breast and throat resounded with an angelic harmony.” She concluded this exhibition by singing the “Te Deum” from the pit of her stomach, and then jumped up and ran away.
We can understand that at a time when hysterical disorders were completely misunderstood, such marvellous contortions and tricks were reputed to be due to spiritual agency, either divine or diabolic. Towards the close of her days she spent most of her time in the Convent of St. Catherine, and she was there when attacked by her mortal sickness.
When she was apparently insensible the Superior, Sister Beatrice, said to her, “Christina! you have always been obedient to me; return now to life, I have something I desire to ask of you.”
Then Christina opened her eyes and said, “Why have you disturbed me? Be quick, I cannot tarry; tell me what you want, that I may be gone.”