Saint Catherine of Alexandria

Very little is known about Catherine of Alexandria, and telling history from legend is almost impossible: the written sources all date from centuries later, and the oldest is a Greek passion from the sixth or seventh century. The story makes her very young, highly educated and of noble family, in Alexandria in Egypt, at the beginning of the fourth century. She is said to have gone to argue with the emperor Maximinus Daia to reproach him for the persecution; he set fifty philosophers against her to refute her, and she — so the story goes — won them all over, so much so that they converted and were burned. Then they proposed that she marry him. She refused. She was sentenced to die on a spiked wheel, which according to the story broke; in the end she was beheaded. That wheel became her symbol, and it also gave its name to a pastry, the torta di ruota, and in mechanics to the “Saint Catherine’s wheel.” Her cult was enormous in the Middle Ages: she was one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and one of the voices Joan of Arc said she heard. Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, the oldest Christian monastery still active, bears her name. She is the patron saint of philosophers together with Justin, and of millers, wheelwrights and students. If your name is Catherine, today is your name day.