Catherine was the daughter of Cestus, a wealthy
patrician of Alexandria, the capital of Egypt and metropolis of the arts and
sciences. She was widely admired not only for her noble birth but also for the
exceeding beauty and intelligence that God had given her. Taught by the best
masters and most illustrious philosophers, she learnt while still a girl to
follow complex lines of argument and obtained a perfect understanding of the
philosophical systems of Plato, Aristotle and their followers. She also
excelled in the literary sphere, was familiar with the works of all the great
poets from Homer to Virgil and was capable of discussing every subject, in a
variety of languages learned from scholars and foreign visitors to the great
city.
In her quest for knowledge, she had made herself
acquainted with all the physical sciences, especially medicine, and there was
no area of human wisdom beyond the range of her penetrating intellect. By the
time she was eighteen, even the most learned scholars were in awe of her
intellectual accomplishments. All this, combined with noble birth, beauty and
wealth, made her an enviable match and there were suitors in plenty for her
hand. But having a presentiment of the excellence of virginity, Catherine
refused them all and made it a condition with her parents that she would accept
none but a youth who equaled her in nobility, riches, beauty and wisdom.
Her mother, in despair of finding such a one, sent her
to seek the advice of a holy Christian ascetic who lived not far from the city.
He told Catherine that he did indeed know a man such as she was looking for,
and possessed of that surpassing wisdom which is the very source and spring of
all things visible and invisible—wisdom neither gained nor appropriated, but
his eternal possession. He is noble also above all that we can think of, for He
has authority over the whole universe and has made the world by his own power.
Master of the worlds, principle of all wisdom and of all knowledge, He is also,
the Elder told her, the most beautiful of the children of men (Psalm 44:3), for
He is God incarnate: Son and eternal Word of the Father, who became man for our
salvation and who desires to espouse every virginal soul.
As he bade her farewell, the ascetic gave her an icon
of the Mother of God carrying the divine Child in her arms. That night the
Mother of God appeared to Catherine, but Christ turned away and would not look
at her, saying that she was ugly and unclean because she was still subject to
sin and death. Grief-stricken, she went back to the ascetic who instructed her
in the mysteries of the faith and gave her new birth unto eternal life in the
waters of Baptism. Then the Holy Virgin appeared to Catherine again with Christ
in her arms, who said to His Mother with joy, “Now I will accept her as my most
pure bride for she has become radiant and fair, rich and truly wise!” In token
and pledge of this heavenly betrothal, the Mother of God put a ring upon the
finger of the maiden and caused her to promise to take no other spouse upon the
earth.
Now in those days the Emperor Maximin (305-311), like
Diocletian before him, tried to make all his subjects show their submission to
his power by offering idolatrous sacrifices under pain of torture and death.
When these impious rites were taking place in Alexandria, Catherine appeared
before him in the temple and declared her allegiance, but severely reproved the
idolatrous ceremonies. Struck by her beauty as much as by her boldness, the
Emperor listened as she developed her argument, and he was overcome by her
wisdom. Accepting her offer to engage the foremost scholars and orators of the
Empire in public disputation, Maximin sent heralds all over the Roman world to
bring together scholars, philosophers, orators and logicians. There arrived at
Alexandria fifty in all, who presented themselves before the Emperor and the
crowd that gathered in the amphitheater, to confront the slender young girl.
Alone, but radiant with the grace of the Holy Spirit, she was in no fear of
them, having been assured by the Archangel Michael in a vision that the Lord
would speak through her mouth and cause her to overcome the wisdom of the world
by the Wisdom that comes from on high. In that strength, Catherine showed up
the errors and contradictions of oracles, poets and philosophers. She showed
how they had recognized for themselves that the so-called gods of the pagans
are demons and the expression of human passions. She even referred in support
of her arguments to certain oracles of Sibyl and Apollo, which dimly tell of
the divine Incarnation and life-giving Passion of the Son of God. Overthrowing
their myths and fables, she proclaimed the creation of the world out of nothing
by the one, true, eternal God, and the deliverance of man from death by the
Incarnation of the only Son of the Father.
Having run out of arguments, the fifty orators were
reduced to silence. Recognizing their error, they asked the Saint for Baptism,
to the fury of the Emperor, who condemned them to be burnt alive on November
17. Finding Catherine immune to flattery, Maximin had her tortured and thrown
in to prison, while a dreadful instrument of torture was constructed of four
spiked wheels connected by an axle. Catherine was attached to this machine as
soon as it was ready, but an angel came to free her and the death-dealing
chariot hurtled down the slope killing many pagans on its way.
Seeing the feats of the holy Martyr, Maximin’s own
wife was converted and visited Katherine in prison, escorted by the commander
Porphyrius, a close friend of the Emperor, and by 200 soldiers, all of whom
became disciples of Christ. Katherine received them with joy and foretold that
they would soon bear away the crown of valiant athletes of the faith. The
Emperor was enraged at such defiance within his household. Forgetful of all
human feeling, he had his own wife cruelly tortured and beheaded on November
23. On the following day Porphyrius and his company were put to death. On
November 25, Catherine was brought forth from her dungeon to appear at the
tribunal, fairer and more radiant with heavenly joy than when she had entered
it, for she saw that the day of her union with Christ had come at last. She was
taken outside the city and, after a last prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord who
had revealed to her the inexhaustible treasures of true wisdom, she was
beheaded in her turn.
Her body was then conveyed by two angels from
Alexandria to Mount Sinai. There, it was discovered in the eighth century by an
ascetic who lived in the vicinity. The precious relic was later transferred to
the Monastery that the Emperor Justinian had founded in the late sixth century.
It is there to this day, giving forth a heavenly scent and working countless
miracles.
Adapted
from The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, Vol. 2
Source:
http://www.goarch.org/special/katherine/index_html
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