Talk:Catherine of Alexandria

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:

[edit] Existence

St. Catherine of Alexandria did exist, and in fact it was readded to the catholic calender. the article is biased.

To be NPOV, it needs to have all perspectives. Your addition that it was readded to the Catholic calendar adds this perspective. The article does not explicitly state that she does not exist, but it does use language suggesting she may have not existed. Since the article explains why it suggests this, the article is NPOV. If you were to change the article to state that she absolutely did exist, that would be POV. The POV could be made a little more neutral, however, your suggestion is to make it POV in the other direction. -- JamesTeterenko 03:05, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

The problem lies with the word APOCRIPHICAL which implies that the saint is fictious maltesedog 20:34, 16 June 2005 (UTC)

I assume you meant apocryphal - and Catherine is definitely apocryphal, she is not mentioned in biblical canon. The article looks NPOV to me.

Yes I meant apocryphal. English dictionaries define "Of questionable authorship or authenticity." Texts not included in the Bible are known as apocryphal texts. We are not dealing with texts.

To become a Saint, she would have had to have been extensively researched, and, I believe, to have at least one verified miracle. So it is highly likely that she does exist.

Actually, that's not true: the formal process of canonization was arrived at relatively late in Christianity... in the early centuries, people were affored the title "Saint" by popular acclamation--the people of thus-and-such a town have a story of thus-and-such a folk hero/ine whose virtues they sing, and they call this person "Saint X," and many of the early saints' stories are of dubious authenticity. But a failure to mention her in the Bible has nothing to do with it, of course... less than 1% of saints are Biblical. :Just out of curiousity, has anyone knowledge of why her feast was re-added to the liturgical calendar? Makrina 03:06, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (Online) entry on [Saint Catherine of Alexandria[1]]:
Although contemporary hagiographers look upon the authenticity of the various texts containing the legend of St. Catherine as more than doubtful, it is not therefore meant to cast . . . doubt around the existence of the saint. But the conclusion reached when these texts have been carefully studied is that, if the principal facts forming the outline are to be accepted as true, the multitude of details by which these facts are almost obscured, most of the wonderful narratives with which they are embellished, and the long discourses that are put into the mouth of St. Catherine, are to be rejected as inventions, pure and simple.
It seems that although her existence can't be proven, it is taken that the existence of so many accounts, although, as the article states, fantastical and widely variant is evidence that such a person must have existed. However, I am not certain if the article I have cited reflects the scholarship that led to her removal and return to the liturgical calendar. It is also seems obvious that this source is biased until or unless the Roman Catholic Church has published a clear reasoning for its actions. Further research in that vein might prove fruitful. In addition, if we could find some primary sources that mention Catherine, it would aid in structuring this article. Thank you. L Hamm 03:07, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
According to John Delaney, in his Dictionary of Saints, p. 131: Venerated in the East since the tenth century, nothing of any certainty is known of her. Her unreliable legend has her born in Alexandria of a patrician family and converted to Christianity by a vision. The text also indicates she died c. 310 AD, I'm curious as to where this date came from. Thank you. L Hamm 03:12, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Restructure

I just wanted to put it out there that I've done a lot of major restructuring work with this article, including changing section names to better elucidate their contents, adding a lot of content to the "life and legend" section to put her life into more context (well, that is, the legend of her life, but nevertheless, the article's extent of information on her legend before only started at her martyrdom), adding real footnotes (there were manual, really primitive ones before), and making an image gallery. I personally think that the article is on a much better track than it was before the edits, but I invite anyone to revisit what I did in the history and bring up any issues you may have here on the talk page. --Alekjds 02:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

:Note: I also wanted to move the current infobox image to the gallery and replace it with perhaps the one by Caravaggio, which better illustrates her principal iconographical attribute (the wheel). However, I wanted some feedback before switching the two. --Alekjds 03:02, 31 December 2006 (UTC) Actually I'm just going to be bold and do it. --Alekjds 07:24, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Information in support of the non-existence of St. Catherine

Though the possible falsification of her myth is explored further down in the article, I think it still leans a great deal more toward validating her existence. I have some information that could be taken into account when editing the article that I'd like to share: In Donald Attwater's "The Penguin Dictionary of Saints" published in 1965, he states that even Catholic scholars admit that the legend of St. Catherine is "preposterous." Her myth is explained further in Barbara G. Walker's "Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" as follows, "At Sinai, the original center of Catherine's cult, the Asiatic Goddess was once portrayed as the Dancer on the Fiery Wheel at the hub of the universe. A Greek convent of priestess-nuns at Sinai in the 8th century A.D. called themselves kathari, 'pure ones,' a word akin to the Kathakali temple-dancers of India, who performed the Dance of Time in honor of Kali, Goddess of the karmic wheel. The figure of the wheel figured prominently in beliefs of medieval Gnostics who called themselves Cathari, and revered St. Catherine almost as a female counterpart of God. Perhaps for this reason, in the 15th and 16th centuries, after the Cathari were exterminated, Catholic prelates made efforts to have St. Catherine eliminated from the canon." (Walker 149) Jessica 20:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)