EBNER, êb'ner, CHRISTINA: Prioress of Engelthal, near Nuremberg; b. at Nuremberg Mar. 28, 1277; d. at Engelthal Dec. 27, 1356. She was the daughter of a Nuremberg patrician. In 1289 she entered the convent of Engelthal, whence the fame of her holiness spread as early as 1297; in 1345 she became prioress. She lived for many years an ascetic life and had visions and inner experiences which have been preserved in her own records and those of her confessor, the Dominican Conrad von Füssen. In her biographies of deceased sisters she introduces a circle of God-seeking women who had been filled with the spirit of mysticism. Christina's spiritual memoirs relate the events of the time and thus offer material useful for the historian. She also wrote on earthquakes and the Black Death (1348). The last days of her life were enlivened by a visit of Henry of Nördlingen (1351), whose congenial thought and feeling confirmed her inner life. Her memoirs are written in noble and at times poetical language and show a woman deeply in earnest and of fine taste and education.

(PHILIPP STRAUCH.)

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: G. W. K. Lochner, Leben und Geschichte der Christina Ebnerin, Nuremberg, 1872; K. Schröder, Der Nonne von Engelthal Büchlein Von der Genaden Ueberlast, Tübingen, 1871; R. A. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics, i. 223-224, 8th ed., London [1905].