Christina of Persia

Saint Christina of Persia (in Syriac Kreshtina, born Yazdoi) was a Persian noblewoman of the Sasanian empire, from Karka d'Beth Slokh (now Kirkuk), in the region of Beth Garmai, honoured after her death as a virgin martyr, in the sixth century. She is remembered on 13 March by the Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Serbian Church, while the Synaxarion of Constantinople and other calendars give 14 March.

Life and martyrdom

Her father, Yazdin, son of Mihrzbiroi, was the governor of Nisibis. She turned from Zoroastrianism to the Church of the East and was killed for refusing to consummate a marriage with a nobleman. According to a Greek martyrology, she was beaten to death with rods. The exact date of her death is not known, but probably it was in the reign of Khosrau I (531 to 579). One Serbian source places her in the fourth century, which does not fit the others.

Not long after her death, Babai the Great (died 628) wrote her life and the act of her martyrdom in Syriac. Today only the preface survives. Since Babai lists, in his life of George of Izla (martyred in 615), all the hagiographical works he had written up to then, he must have written Christina's life after that date. According to Babai, she was called Yazdoi "when she was pagan", but "in her new birth of adoption, as a token of life, chose to be called Christina, a name that shall not pass".

Commemoration

The Roman Martyrology describes her thus: in Persia, Saint Christina, martyr, who was beaten with rods and completed her witness of martyrdom under King Khosrau I of the Persians. In the Georgian Orthodox Church her feast was, in the early seventh century, on 15 March. Some versions of the tenth-⁠century church calendar of Ioane-⁠Zosime give 14 March. The Synaxarion of Constantinople of the Eastern Orthodox Church also gives 14 March.