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St. Crispina of Thagora

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Saints and feasts

St. Crispina of Thagora

Martyr

Crispina was a Christian wife and mother in Roman Africa. Her refusal to offer pagan sacrifice led to her trial and martyrdom at Theveste in 304.

Sources

The life below remains the existing Butler-based reading, with its edition citation. The profile preserves the feast date and source title already listed in the library. Additional personal dates and historical details are shown only when separately documented.

Family life: Wife and mother
Butler cites St Augustine’s remembrance of her marriage and children.

Butler sourceAlban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 5, “St Crispina, Martyr,” pp. 119-120.

Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1846)Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 5, “St Crispina, Martyr,” pp. 119-120.

The reading

ⓘ Butler source

Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 5, “St Crispina, Martyr,” pp. 119-120.

Crispina was a married woman of standing in Roman Africa and the mother of several children. Butler cites St. Augustine’s remembrance of her courage and the surviving account of her final examination. She was brought from Thagora to Theveste to answer before the proconsul Anulinus.

The magistrate ordered her to offer sacrifice in obedience to the imperial edicts. Crispina remained determined to worship God and to observe the law of Christ. Threats, public humiliation and the prospect of death did not change her confession. Butler’s account records her refusal to treat a forced act of sacrifice as genuine devotion.

After the proceedings were read aloud, the proconsul pronounced sentence of death. Crispina gave thanks to God and was led to execution. Butler places her beheading on December 5, 304, and names both the acts of her trial and St. Augustine as witnesses to the memory of this African martyr.

Historical note

An original Novena Regina reading adapted and summarized from the cited pre-1962 source. This is not a transcription of Butler’s words.

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