St. Catherine of Alexandria

St. Catherine of Alexandria is venerated as a virgin martyr of the early fourth century, said to have died in Alexandria, Egypt, around the year 305 during the persecutions of the Roman emperors. No contemporary records of her life survive, and her story comes to us from Greek hagiographical accounts written centuries later; the Church honors her while acknowledging that the details of her life are largely traditional. According to tradition, Catherine was a noblewoman of exceptional learning who converted to Christianity as a young woman. When the emperor began persecuting Christians, she is said to have confronted him publicly and to have debated fifty pagan philosophers summoned to refute her — converting many of them by the force of her arguments. Legend relates that she was condemned to die on a spiked wheel, which shattered at her touch, and that she was then beheaded. The "Catherine wheel" of her iconography, and of later fireworks, takes its name from this account. However thin its historical foundations, devotion to Catherine became extraordinarily widespread. She was among the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, counted as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and hers was one of the voices St. Joan of Arc said guided her. According to tradition, angels carried her body to Mount Sinai, where the great monastery built by Emperor Justinian in the sixth century came to bear her name; St. Catherine's Monastery still claims her relics and remains a pilgrimage destination at the foot of the mountain of Moses. Because of the legendary character of her acts, her feast was removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969, but Pope St. John Paul II restored it in 2002 as an optional memorial on November 25, in recognition of her enduring place in Christian devotion, especially in the East. She is honored as a patroness of philosophers, students, and unmarried women.