While the United States celebrates the secular holiday of
Thanksgiving this Nov. 25, many Catholics and other Christians around
the world will celebrate the memorial of St. Catherine of Alexandria, a
revered martyr of the fourth century.
St. Catherine was the subject of great interest and devotion among
later medieval Christians. Devotees relished tales of her rejection of
marriage, her rebuke to an emperor, and her decision to cleave to Christ
even under threat of torture.
Pope John Paul II restored the
celebration of her memorial to the Roman Catholic calendar in 2002.
Catherine's popularity as a figure of devotion, during an era of
imaginative hagiography, has obscured the facts of her life. It is
likely that she was of noble birth, a convert to Christianity, a virgin
by choice (before the emergence of organized monasticism), and
eventually a martyr for the faith.
Accounts of Catherine's life also agree on the location where she was
born, educated, and bore witness to her faith.
The Egyptian city of
Alexandria was a center of learning in the ancient world, and tradition
represents Catherine as the highly educated daughter of a noble pagan
family.
It is said that a vision of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus
spurred her conversion, and the story has inspired works of art which
depict her decision to live as a virginal “spouse of Christ.”
The Emperor Maxentius ruled Egypt during Catherine's brief lifetime, a
period when multiple co-emperors jointly governed the Roman Empire.
During this time, just before the Emperor Constantine's embrace and
legalization of Christianity, the Church was growing but also attracting
persecution.
Catherine, eager to defend the faith she had embraced, came before
Maxentius to protest a brutal campaign against the Church. At first, the
emperor decided to try and persuade her to renounce Christ.
But in a
debate that the emperor proceeded to arrange between Catherine and a
number of pagan philosophers, Catherine prevailed– with her skillful
apologetics converting them instead.
Maxentius' next stratagem involved an offer to make her his mistress.
She not only rebuffed the emperor, but also reportedly convinced his
wife to be baptized.
Enraged by Catherine's boldness and resolve, the Emperor resolved to
break her will through torture on a spiked wheel.
Legends say that she
was miraculously freed from the wheel, either before or during torture.
Finally, she was beheaded.
Maxentius later died in a historic battle against his Co-Emperor
Constantine in October of 312, after which he was remembered
disdainfully, if at all. St. Catherine, meanwhile, inspired generations
of philosophers, consecrated women, and martyrs.
Ironically, or perhaps appropriately –given both her embrace of
virginity, and her “mystic marriage” to Christ– young women in many
Western European countries were once known to seek her intercession in
finding their husbands. Regrettably, the torture wheel to which she
herself may have been subjected was subsequently nicknamed the
“Catherine wheel,” and used even among Christian kingdoms.
Today, St. Catherine of Alexandria is more appropriately known as the
namesake of a monastery at Mount Sinai that claims to be the oldest in
the world.
SIC: CNA/INT'L