Christina was still young, in just her early twenties, when she experienced her first vision – accompanied by a massive seizure so severe that witnesses believed that she had died. However, at her funeral, but according to Thomas de Cantimpré (a contemporary who was a monk, and the first one to write down her story after her actual death): “she arose full of vigor, stupefying with amazement the whole city of Sint-Truiden, which had witnessed this wonder. She levitated up to the rafters, later explaining that she could not bear the smell of the sinful people there.”
In her visions, Christina saw Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. She said that as soon as her soul was separated from her body, angels conducted it to a very gloomy place, entirely filled with souls enduring such torments that it was impossible to describe them. She claimed that she had been offered a choice of either remaining in heaven or returning to earth to perform penance in order to deliver souls from the flames of Purgatory. Christina decided take the latter option, at which point she awoke from her stupor (as related above).
Christina told those around her that she had returned to life for the sole purpose of bringing relief to the departed and conversion to sinners. To this end, she renounced all of life’s comforts, reduced herself to extreme destitution, dressed in rags, lived without home or hearth, and not content with these privations eagerly sought out all that could cause her suffering. At first, she fled human contact and, suspected of being possessed, was jailed. Upon her release, she took up the practice of extreme penance. She eventually died in 1224.
