Catherine of Alexandria |
Katherine of Alexandria |
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SAINT CATHERINE, Virgin and Martyr |
(St. Catherine, whom the Greeks call Aecatherina, glorified God by an illustrious confeesion of the faith of Christ, at |
Alexandria, under Maximinus II. Her acts are so much adulterated that little use can be made of them.) |
The Emperor Basil, in his Greek Menology, relates with them that this Saint, |
who was of the royal blood, and an excellent scholar, confuted a company of the |
ablest heathen philosophers, whom Maximinus had commanded to enter into a |
disputation with her, and that being converted by her to the faith they were all |
burnt in one fire, for confessing the same. He adds, that Catherine was at length |
beheaded. She is said first to have been put upon an engine made of four wheels |
joined together, and stuck with sharp pointed spikes, that, when the wheels were |
moved, her body might be torn to pieces. The acts add, that at the first stirring of |
the terrible engine, the cords with which the martyr was tied were broke asunder |
by the invisible power of an angel, and, the engine falling to pieces by the wheels |
being separated from one another, she was delivered from that death. Hence the |
name of St. Catherine's wheel. |
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A virgin and martyr whose feast is celebrated in the Latin Church and in the various Oriental churches on 25 November, and who for almost six centuries was the object of a very popular devotion. |
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Of noble birth and learned in the sciences, when only eighteen years old, Catherine presented herself to the Emperor Maximinus who was violently persecuting the Christians, upbraided him for his cruelty and endeavoured to prove how iniquitous was the worship of false gods. Astounded at the young girl's audacity, but incompetent to vie with her in point of learning the tyrant detained her in his palace and summoned numerous scholars whom he commanded to use all their skill in specious reasoning that thereby Catherine might be led to apostatize. But she emerged from the debate victorious. Several of her adversaries, conquered by her eloquence, declared themselves Christians and were at once put to death. Furious at being baffled, Maximinus had Catherine scourged and then imprisoned. Meanwhile the empress, eager to see so extraordinary a young woman, went with Porphyry, the head of the troops, to visit her in her dungeon, when they in turn yielded to Catherine's exhortations, believed, were baptized, and immediately won the martyr's crown. Soon afterwards the saint, who far from forsaking her Faith, effected so many conversions, was condemned to die on the wheel, but, at her touch, this instrument of torture was miraculously destroyed. The emperor, enraged beyond control, then had her beheaded and angels carried her body to Mount Sinai where later a church and monastery were built in her honour. |
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