From all accounts she must have been something special–tall, beautiful, rich of noble rank and smart.  She was educated in the fine arts of rhetoric, philosophy, medicine.  She studied all the big names–Homer, Virgil, Aristotle, GalenShe spoke a slew of languages as Alexandria was a cosmopolitan hot-spot at that time. By our standards she would have had an Ivy League education.  She was good with words, especially in argument.  As usual in the life of women saints, the time came when she had to be married.  Catherine, intelligent as she was as well as independent, would have nothing of it.  Her parents, of course, nagged her and nagged her as they did not want all that wealth to be squandered or go to the wrong heir.  In order to appease them, she struck a deal–she would marry only if they could produce a suitor her equal on four counts–beauty, intelligence and wisdom, noble rank and wealth. Her argument was as she was peerless in those departments why should she condescend to marry anyone less than her equal.  As you girls have probably figured out, a man that gets a 10 in all departments is extremely hard to find.  If he is good-looking he is probably dumb; if wise, he is poor and of low class.  If rich, probably ugly and unmannered. And so it was with Catherine; her parents were unable to find a man her equal on all four criteria.  So she got away with not marrying.

That is until her mother took her to visit a wise elder outside the city limits. On his first meeting with the maiden, the ascetic understood right away her maturity and nobility of character.  He involved her in an argument. “I know of the suitor you are looking for,” the elder prodded. “He is wise beyond measure, his beauty eclipses the sun, his treasure on earth never diminishes and is distributed across the ends of the earth, and his nobility is infinite.” intrigued the young maid asked what any girl would ask, “Um, can I see his picture?” The elder then gave her an icon of the Mother of God carrying the Christ Child and told her to go to her bedroom, lock the door and pray the entire night to the Mother of this Prince so that she might have a vision of Him.  And that is what she did.

It is at this part of Catherine’s story where the famous accounts of her betrothal to Christ appear.  After her all night vigil, she fell asleep and had a vision.  She dreamed she saw the Queen of Heaven holding the child but He had His back to her. Every time she would turn to sneak a peak He would turn away.  The Child would have nothing to do with her and instructed her through the supplications of His mother to do away with this poor, ignorant, contemptible person by following the instructions of the elder.  As there is no better motivation than an insult, Catherine returns to the elder is taught the ways of the faith, becomes baptized.  She locks herself up a second time petitioning for a vision of the Prince in an all night vigil and receives another vision.

It is this vision that has been made famous in many a Renaissance painting and Byzantine icon.  She is declared the mystical bride of Christ and is given a ring of promise.  She is instructed by the Christ Child to take no other man for her husband as He was to be her eternal bridegroom. Sure enough, when she awoke Catherine had the same ring in the vision on her finger.

It would remain for Catherine to prove her love of Christ in the remaining portion of her life.  Indeed during the century she lived the Emperor Maximius issued a decree that all subjects had to either sacrifice to the pagan gods or else face death.  Bold Catherine walked into the emperor’s palace and confronted him directly. Imagine the nerve — a young intelligent imposing young woman — walking into the palace and taking on not only the emperor himself but from the Synaxarion and other sources a horde of his counselors.  The Emperor believed she was Athena incarnate as no mortal woman would have the guts to talk to any man let alone the emperor in public.  Following his advisor’s suggestions that to engage with a woman in debate would be a public relations fiasco, she was thrown into prison.

The Emperor summoned fifty of his best philosophers the next day in a battle of words to put the clever upstart to shame.  As the sources have it, during the night an angel appeared to Catherine in her cell consoling her and prophesying that she would emerge victorious in the debate but would receive a martyrs’ crown as her “Sophia” came from God. Although the details of the debate are not fleshed out, Catherine emerged the victor leaving the fifty philosophers speechless.

Humiliated at their defeat, Maxemius had them all sentenced to death on the spot.  The rhetoricians it seems not only were defeated but actually convinced by Catherine’s arguments and falling down on their knees, they begged for God’s mercy. In one shot, she had converted fifty of the most intelligent intellectuals of her day.

The story continues with the conversion of the Empress, the wife of Maxemius.  Intrigued by her reputation, the Empress desired to visit Catherine in the high-security cell she was kept.  In order to gain entry she had to be accompanied by Porphyrios, a high-ranking military officer and two hundred soldiers.  The grace infused in her allowed her to convert all her night visitors.

 Brought before the Emperor again, Catherine engaged in more verbal wrangling.  This time the Emperor seduced by her charm tried to convince her to marry him.  When she remained steadfast in her faith, one of the king’s engineers designed a torture device specifically for her–a double wheel with blades to which her body would be cut as it would be pulled in opposite directions.

  At this prospect, the Empress asked that Catherine’s life be spared.  Enraged at his wife’s audacity he had her put to death.  The empress’s example of sacrifice prodded Porphyrios and his two hundred soldiers to confess the faith.  At this betrayal, Maxemius ordered the immediate beheading of his officer and his men outside the city walls.

Now the story reaches the martyrdom of the saint herself.  The king using all forms of flattery and appeals to her graces as gifts of Hermes continued to press for her conversion.  She was eventually led outside the city followed by an entourage of weeping noblewomen where she was beheaded.  Before her execution, she prayed that all the people of the world might know their Creator, the true God.  Angels carried her body to the top of Mt Sinai where on the highest peak which bears her name they buried her.  It took three hundred years for the monks of the Transfiguration Monastery at the foot of the mountain to uncover her relics.  Her remains were taken to the main church of the monastery where since the eleventh century it has borne her name–St Catherine’s.