Portal:Catholicism/Patron Archive/November 25
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Saint Catherine of Alexandria, also known as Saint Catherine of the Wheel and The Great Martyr Saint Catherine (Greek ἡ Ἁγία Αἰκατερίνη ἡ Μεγαλομάρτυς) is a Christian saint and martyr claimed to have been a noted scholar in the early 4th century. She was one of the saints to speak to Saint Joan of Arc. The Orthodox Churches venerate her as a "great martyr," and in the Roman Catholic Church, she is traditionally revered as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.
St. Catherine's life is mostly composed of legends which have many different variations. The most popular version is as follows. Legend states that Catherine was the daughter of Constus, governor of Alexandria in Egypt. She is said to have received a "most splendid education." She declared to her parents that she would only enter into marriage with someone who surpassed her in reputation, wealth, beauty and wisdom. Catherine's mother was secretly a Christian, and sent her to a hermit who told her of a youth who surpassed her in everything, such that "His beauty was more radiant than the shining of the sun, His wisdom governed all creation, His riches were spread throughout all the world."[1]
Having received a vision that urged her baptism, she became a Christian and was transported to heaven in vision and betrothed to Christ by the Virgin Mary (this ancient theme of a mystical marriage to a deity is familiar in the ecstatic mythology of the eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia).
Catherine's story goes on to relate how she is said to have visited the current Roman Emperor Maxentius and to have attempted to convince him of the error of his ways in persecuting Christians. Her legend states that Catherine succeeded in converting his wife, the Empress, and also many pagan wise men sent to dispute with her by the Emperor, all of whom were subsequently martyred. Upon the failure of the Emperor to woo Catherine, he ordered Catherine into prison, and when the people who visited her converted, she was condemned to death on the breaking wheel (an instrument of torture). The wheel itself broke when she touched it, so she was beheaded.
In an elaboration of the legend, angels carried her body to Mount Sinai, where in the 6th century AD, the Eastern Emperor Justinian established Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, the church being built between 548 and 565. Saint Catherine's Monastery survives, a famous repository of early Christian art, architecture and illuminated manuscripts.
Her principal symbol is the spiked wheel, which has become known as the Catherine wheel, and her feast day is celebrated on 25 November in most Christian churches. However, her feast is celebrated on 24 November in the Russian Orthodox Church because Empress Catherine the Great did not wish to share her patronal feast with the Leavetaking of the feast of the Presentation of the Theotokos.
Attributes: the "breaking wheel"; sword; with a crown at her feet; hailstones; bridal veil and ring; dove; scourge; book; woman arguing with pagan philosophers
Patronage: apologists, craftsmen who work with a wheel (potters, spinners, etc.), archivists, dying people, educators, girls, jurists, knife sharpeners, lawyers, librarians, libraries, Balliol College, maidens, mechanics, millers, nurses, philosophers, preachers, scholars, schoolchildren, scribes, secretaries, spinsters, stenographers, students, tanners, teachers, theologians, University of Paris, unmarried girls, haberdashers, wheelwrights, Żejtun, Żurrieq
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