Saint Crispina of Thagora

Saint Crispina of Thagora was a wealthy Christian woman of Roman Africa, a wife and mother. During the persecution under the emperors Diocletian and Maximian she refused to offer sacrifice to the gods, and in 304 she was beheaded. The Church commemorates her on December 5.

She came from Thagora in Numidia, today the town of Taoura in Algeria, not far from Thagaste, the hometown of Saint Augustine. We do not know the year of her birth, the name of her husband or the number of her children. Augustine, who about a hundred years later preached on the day of her feast, said that she was a woman of illustrious family, very rich and used to comfort. He also asked his listeners whether there was anyone in Africa who did not know her.

We know the course of her trial from the acts of her martyrdom, written down not long after the events and valued as a trustworthy witness to that persecution. According to them, on December 5, 304, Crispina stood at Theveste, today Tebessa in Algeria, before the proconsul Anullinus, accused of having scorned the law of the emperors. The proconsul demanded that she offer sacrifice to the gods for the welfare of the rulers. She answered that she had never done so and never would, because she offered sacrifice only to the one true God and to his Son, Jesus Christ.

Anullinus called her stubborn and insolent and reminded her that all Africa had offered sacrifice. Crispina replied that she worshiped the Lord who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them. To humiliate her, the proconsul ordered her head to be shaved. When he threatened her with beheading, she said that she would thank her God if this befell her.

The proconsul had the record read aloud and pronounced the sentence: death by the sword. Crispina blessed God for freeing her from the hands of the judge. She made the sign of the cross on her forehead, stretched out her neck and was beheaded.

What the acts leave unsaid we learn from Saint Augustine. In sermons on two psalms, preached on the day of her feast, he related that Crispina rejoiced when she was seized, when she was led before the judge, thrown into prison and condemned. He said that she left behind her weeping children, to whom she seemed a cruel mother, and that she chose to live forever rather than to live a little longer on earth. In another sermon he set her beside Saint Agnes: in the time of persecution, he recalled, not only Agnes the virgin was crowned, but also Crispina, a married woman.

Crispina has been venerated as a saint since antiquity, without a formal canonization. The day of her death was already being kept in Africa in Augustine’s time, and at Tebessa there remain the ruins of a great ancient basilica that scholars connect with her cult. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her as the mother of a family who would not offer sacrifice to idols and was beheaded by order of the proconsul Anullinus.