Christina (baptismal name Theodora) was born around 1097 to an Anglo-Saxon noble family of Huntingdon — daughter of Autti and Beatrix, members of the Anglo-Saxon urban noble class of mid-Mercian England.
From early childhood — per the Vita Sanctae Christinae, the principal 12th-century Latin biography preserved in an unique manuscript at the British Library — Theodora-Christina undertook the decision to remain a virgin consecrated to God, rejecting the marriage that her parents had arranged with the young nobleman Burhred of Bedfordshire.
The consequent family crisis extended through her young adult years: her parents repeatedly attempted to force the marriage; the young Burhred attempted to rape her in the nuptial chamber; the corrupt local bishop Ranulf Flambard of Durham also attempted to seduce her. Christina escaped from Huntingdon in male disguise around 1115 — fleeing to the anchorite cell of the hermit Eadwin at Flamstead in Hertfordshire.
After years of hidden anchorite-life under several successive hermit-mentors (Eadwin of Flamstead, then Roger of Markyate), Christina established her own anchorite cell at the forest-hermitage of Markyate in Hertfordshire around 1131. The community that gathered around her cell became the Benedictine women's-priory of Markyate — affiliated with the nearby Abbey of St. Albans (the principal English Benedictine abbey of the period, the head-abbey of the English Benedictine reform).
Christina became the personal spiritual confidante of Abbot Geoffrey of Gorham of St. Albans (abbot 1119–1146) — and the deep spiritual friendship between the anchorite-prioress and the Benedictine abbot produced the famous St. Albans Psalter (c. 1130, one of the greatest medieval English illuminated manuscripts), produced at the St. Albans scriptorium for Christina's personal devotional use. The St. Albans Psalter — now preserved at the Cathedral of St. Godehard in Hildesheim, Germany — includes the unique opening illustration portraying the Christina-Geoffrey personal friendship.
Christina died at Markyate around 1155. Her Vita Sanctae Christinae, composed shortly after her death, survives in an unique manuscript at the British Library (London, BL Cotton Tiberius E I) and is one of the principal English 12th-century women's-anchorite hagiographical texts.