St. Catherine of Alexandria

On November 25 the Church honors St. Catherine of Alexandria, the 4th-century virgin martyr who, according to the passio tradition, was a learned young woman of Alexandria — and therefore of the philosophical capital of the late ancient world — who publicly disputed with the pagan philosophers of the city and, by the grace of God, confounded them all. For her faith she was condemned to be broken on a spiked wheel — the "Catherine wheel" — which, at her prayer, was shattered by an angel, and she was then beheaded.

Tradition holds that after her death angels carried her body to Mount Sinai, where, in the 6th century, the Emperor Justinian built the Monastery of St. Catherine over the traditional burial site. The monastery at Saint Catherine — the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one of the great repositories of Christian art, manuscripts, and icons — holds the relics attributed to her, and keeps her feast on November 25. In Alexandria itself, the city of her disputation, the Catholic cathedral carries her name.

Catherine's cult spread rapidly in both East and West, and November 25 is kept where her name is over the door: at the metropolitan cathedral of Cartagena in Colombia, and at the pilgrimage church of Stary Wielislaw in Poland, which holds a Pieta. The Church of St. Catherine at Bethlehem, beside the Basilica of the Nativity, carries her dedication as well. Joan of Arc named Catherine of Alexandria as one of the voices she heard. She is patron of philosophers, students, preachers, wheelwrights, and librarians, and one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers invoked in medieval devotion. Her feast was suppressed in the 1969 calendar reform (because her passio is legendary and no historical details can be verified), but restored by John Paul II in 2002 as an optional memorial, recognizing the devotion of centuries.