Saint Catherine of Alexandria

Virgin and Martyr
(died c. 305)

Saint Catherine of Alexandria is one of the most celebrated martyrs of the early Church and was among the most widely venerated saints of the medieval West, numbered among the Fourteen Holy Helpers and the saints who spoke to Saint Joan of Arc. She is said to have been a noble and learned young woman of Alexandria in Egypt who, at the time of the persecution of Maxentius, presented herself at court and challenged the emperor's persecution of Christians with arguments drawn from philosophy and Scripture.

The emperor, unable to answer her arguments himself, summoned fifty of the most learned philosophers and rhetoricians in his realm to debate her. Catherine's learning and eloquence were so superior that she not only defeated them in argument but converted all fifty of them to Christianity, for which they were immediately martyred. This tradition gave her the patronage of philosophers, scholars, and all who work with the intellect.

She herself was then subjected to torture and was condemned to be broken on a spiked wheel, but the wheel is said to have shattered at her touch. She was finally beheaded, and milk rather than blood is said to have flowed from her wounds. Her body was miraculously translated by angels to Mount Sinai, where the great monastery that bears her name, the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world, was built over her tomb.

The monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, with its extraordinary library and its collection of ancient icons, remains one of the most important Christian sites in the world. Catherine was removed from the universal Roman Calendar in 1969 due to uncertainty about the historical details of her life, but she continues to be venerated throughout the Catholic world and is honoured on November 25th in traditional calendars.