Christian

Christian (also called Crispin, in Polish Krystyn) was a lay brother and one of the Five Martyred Brothers of Poland, killed in the night of 10 to 11 November 1003, most probably at Święty Wojciech near Międzyrzecz.

He was born around 980 or later, probably in a village near the hermitage. In the monastery he was a servant and cook, a young lay brother. The hermitage had been founded by two Italian monks, Benedict and John, disciples of Saint Romuald, sent by the emperor Otto III to Duke Boleslaw the Brave for mission, and it also had two Polish novices, the brothers Isaac and Matthew.

A group of men, called bad Christians by the sources, set out to rob the hermits, on the rumor that they had the silver of Boleslaw, which they did not have. They entered the cell of Benedict and John and killed them, then cut down Isaac and pierced Matthew in the courtyard, and last they killed Christian, who lived nearby. The murderers divided among themselves the precious vestment, but found no silver. The next day, Christians of the neighborhood found the crime, and the culprits were quickly caught. The five were buried on 13 November, four in wooden coffins in a common grave under the church floor, and Christian in a place in the monastery, then moved to the others.

Their veneration spread in Poland, Bohemia, Moravia and Italy. Three of them, Isaac, Matthew and Christian, are the first canonized saints from the territory of present-⁠day Poland. The cathedral of Saint Wenceslas at Olomouc had Christian as patron. He is a saint of the West; no Orthodox synodal canonization is known.