Saint Catherine the Great Martyr of Alexandria
Great Martyr, philosopher of Alexandria
- Feast day
- November 25
- Lived
- c. 287–305
- Patronage
- Students, philosophers, teachers, unmarried women
Saint Catherine, learned in philosophy, rhetoric, medicine and astronomy before she was twenty, defeated fifty pagan philosophers in public debate and converted them all — and was martyred with them.
Life
Of noble Alexandrian family, Catherine refused every suitor, saying she would marry only one wiser, nobler and more beautiful than herself. A hermit showed her an icon of Christ and the Theotokos, and she received baptism and, in a vision, a ring — the tradition of her mystical betrothal to Christ.
She confronted the Emperor Maximinus over the sacrifices; he summoned fifty rhetoricians to refute her, and she convinced them instead. They were burned. Catherine was scourged, imprisoned, and condemned to a spiked wheel that shattered at her touch, killing the executioners. She was finally beheaded, and milk rather than blood is said to have flowed.
Sinai
Her relics were discovered on the mountain in Sinai next to Horeb, and the ancient monastery of the Burning Bush at the foot of Sinai — founded by Justinian in the sixth century and never once destroyed or abandoned since — bears her name. It houses the greatest collection of early icons in the world.