Catherine of Alexandria, also spelled Katherine, was, according to tradition, a Christian virgin and martyr, who suffered martyrdom in the early 4th century at the hands of the emperor Maxentius. According to her hagiography, she was both a princess and a noted scholar who became a Christian around age 14 and converted hundreds of people to Christianity.
The Eastern Orthodox Church venerates her as a great martyr and celebrates her feast day on 24 or 25 November, depending on the regional tradition. In Catholicism, Catherine is traditionally revered as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and she is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on 25 November. Her feast was removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969 but restored in 2002 as an optional memorial. In the Episcopal Church, St. Catherine is commemorated on 24 November, together with the martyrs Barbara of Nicomedia and Margaret of Antioch, while in the Church of England her feast day is 25 November.
Some modern scholars consider that the legend of Catherine was probably based on the life and murder of the virgin Saint Dorothea of Alexandria and according to some sources the Greek philosopher Hypatia, despite her death occurring 110 years later, with the reversed role of a Christian and neoplatonist being suggested in the case of the latter. On the other hand, Leon Clugnet, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia, states "although contemporary hagiographers look upon the authenticity of the various texts containing the legend of St. Catherine as more than doubtful, it is not therefore meant to cast even the shadow of a doubt around the existence of the saint".
According to the traditional narrative, Catherine was the daughter of Sabinella and Constus (or Costus), the governor of Alexandria during the reign of the Emperor Maximian (286–305). She was a Greco-Egyptian. From a young age she devoted herself to study. A vision of the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus persuaded her to become a Christian. When the persecutions began under the Emperor Maxentius, she went to the Emperor and rebuked him for his cruelty. The Emperor summoned 50 of the best pagan philosophers and orators to dispute with her, hoping that they would refute her pro-Christian arguments, but Catherine won the debate. Several of her adversaries, conquered by her eloquence, declared themselves Christians and were at once put to death.
The emperor gave orders to subject Catherine to terrible tortures and then throw her in prison. Her legend tells that during the confinement she was fed daily by a dove from heaven, and Christ also visited her, encouraging her to fight bravely, and promised her the crown of everlasting glory. Angels tended her wounds with salve.
During her imprisonment more than 200 people came to see her, including Maxentius' wife, Valeria Maximilla; all converted to Christianity and were subsequently martyred. Maxentius offered Catherine a place in his imperial household, but Catherine refused, declaring that she had dedicated her life to Jesus Christ.
The furious emperor condemned Catherine to death on a spiked breaking wheel, but at her touch it shattered. Maxentius ordered her to be beheaded. Catherine ordered the execution to commence. As per her legend, a milk-like substance rather than blood flowed from her neck.
In the 6th century, the Eastern Emperor Justinian had established what is now Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, which had been originally built encircling the purported burning bush seen by Moses. Countless people make the pilgrimage to the monastery to receive miracle healing from Catherine.
Sometimes cited as a possible inspiration of Catherine, Eusebius wrote around 320 that Maximinus had ordered a young Christian woman to come to his palace to become his mistress, and when she refused he had her punished by having her banished and her estates confiscated. Eusebius did not name the woman but Rufinus of Aquileia names her Dorothea (Δωροθέα) in his translation of Eusebius' work. A sixteenth-century Italian historian, Caesar Baronius (c.1538–1607), suggested that Catherine and Dorothea were the same person and that Catherine (Hecaterina) was her former pagan name while Dorothea (the gift of God) was the name given to her at the time of baptism.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, while not denying her historicity, states that most of the details that embellish the narrative, as well as the long discourses attributed to Catherine, are to be rejected as later inventions. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, no extant written mention of Catherine of Alexandria is known before the 9th century, and "her historicity is doubtful."
Donald Attwater dismisses what he calls the "legend" of Saint Catherine, arguing for a lack of any "positive evidence that she ever existed outside the mind of some Greek writer who first composed what he intended to be simply an edifying romance." Harold Davis writes that "assiduous research has failed to identify Catherine with any historical personage."
Anna Brownell Jameson was the first to argue that the life of Catherine was confused with that of the slightly later neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria. Hypatia was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who was murdered by the Parabalani after being accused of exacerbating a conflict between two prominent figures in Alexandria, the governor Orestes and the bishop Cyril. The idea that Catherine's life was either based on or became confused with the life of the pagan Hypatia has become a popular theory among modern scholars since. However, while Christine Walsh accepts the many parallels between Catherine and Hypatia, she does not believe there is any evidence for or against the idea that Catherine was created based on Hypatia.
The earliest surviving account of Catherine's life comes around 600 years after the traditional date of her martyrdom, in the Menologium, a document compiled for Emperor Basil II in 976, although the alleged rediscovery of her relics at Saint Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai was about 800 and presumably implies an existing cult at that date (though the common name of the monastery developed after the discovery).
In her book The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Early Medieval Europe, Christine Walsh discusses "the historical Katherine": As we have seen, the cult of St Katherine of Alexandria probably originated in oral traditions from the 4th-century Diocletianic Persecutions of Christians in Alexandria. There is no evidence that Katherine herself was a historical figure and she may well have been a composite drawn from memories of women persecuted for their faith. Many aspects of her Passio are clearly legendary and conform to well-known hagiographical topoi.
Her name appears in Greek as Αἰκατερίνη (Aikaterínē) or Ἑκατερίνη (Ekaterínē). The etymology is debated: it could derive from ἑκάτερος (hekáteros, "each of two"); it could derive from the name of the goddess Hecate; it could be related to Greek αἰκία (aikía, "insult, outrage, suffering, torture"); or it could be from a Coptic name meaning "my consecration of your name". In the early Christian era, it became associated with Greek καθαρός (katharós, "pure"), and the Latin spelling was changed from Katerina to Katharina to reflect this.
Catherine was one of the most important saints in the religious culture of the late Middle Ages and arguably considered the most important of the virgin martyrs, a group including Agnes of Rome, Margaret of Antioch, Barbara, Lucia of Syracuse, Valerie of Limoges and many others. Her power as an intercessor was renowned and firmly established in most versions of her hagiography, in which she specifically entreats Christ at the moment of her death to answer the prayers of those who remember her martyrdom and invoke her name.
The development of her medieval cult was spurred by the alleged rediscovery of her body around 800 (about 500 years after her death) at Mount Sinai, supposedly with hair still growing and a constant stream of healing oil issuing from her body. There are several pilgrimage narratives that chronicle the journey to Mount Sinai, most notably those of John Mandeville and Friar Felix Fabri. However, while the monastery at Mount Sinai was the best known site of Catherine pilgrimage, it was also the most difficult to reach. The most prominent Western shrine was the monastery in Rouen that claimed to house Catherine's fingers. It was not alone in the west, however, and was accompanied by many scattered shrines and altars dedicated to Catherine throughout France and England. Some were better-known sites, such as Canterbury and Westminster, which claimed a phial of her oil, brought back from Mount Sinai by Edward the Confessor. Other shrines, such as St. Catherine's Hill, Hampshire were the focus of generally local pilgrimage, many of which are only identified by brief mentions in various texts, rather than by physical evidence.