Some versions of her legend place her in Tyre (Phoenicia), while other evidence points to Bolsena, an ancient town in central Italy near an Etruscan settlement called Volsinium.

Inscriptions at the site confirmed the martyr had a name like "Christina", and that the local community was already venerating her as a saint by the end of the fourth century.

Some corroborating evidence is also provided by a sixth-century mosaic in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, which includes a procession of virgins, one of which is a saint named Christina wearing a martyr's crown.

Then, under another judge, her father's successor, she constantly endured more severe tortures; lastly … behind the burning furnace, where she remained unharmed for five days, after the serpents had been overcome by the power of Christ, she completed the course of her martyrdom … being pierced with arrows.Christina was once included in the General Roman Calendar; the older Tridentine calendar gave her a commemoration within the Mass of the Vigil of Saint James the Great.

Palermo, of which Christina is one of four patron saints, also claims to enshrine her relics at the Church of Santa Cristina Gela, an Arbëresh village 20 kilometres south of the city.

In the Umbria region in 1263, a priest named Peter from Prague harboured doubts on the Real Presence of Christ in the Host during Mass via transubstantiation.

Peter said Mass at the Basilica of Santa Cristina in Bolsena: as he repeated the Words of Institution, the Host dripped the Precious Blood on his hands, and spilling onto the corporal beneath.