Saint Catherine of Alexandria: Philosopher, Mystic, and Martyr

A few days ago, we celebrated World Philosophy Day (4th Thursday of November), a celebration mandated by the UN. Back in university, this was a big day for us philosophy majors. I often wondered why we celebrated it in November (though I’m not complaining, since it’s also my birth month).

Coincidentally or not, today, as I am writing this (25 November), is the memorial of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, who–together with St. Justin Martyr–is honored as the patron saint of philosophers. So, just like modern academics who offer a festschrift to a great thinker, allow me to share this small tribute to the great Alexandrian philosopher-saint.

Catherine: a life disputed

The historicity of Saint Catherine’s life is disputed in modern scholarship. Some argue that she never existed in the way her hagiographies describe. This modern preference for strict historical verifiability is what led the post–Vatican II liturgical engineers to remove her feast from the General Roman Calendar—not a “demotion,” but a cautious adjustment. Later, in 2002, Pope St. John Paul II reinstated her as an optional memorial.

What can be said with certainty is that establishing historical accuracy (using modern methods) for saints from the 4th century is incredibly difficult. Hagiographies evolve over time, and classical writers cared less about micrometric precision than about the impact and meaning of a story.

As Beatie notes: 

“There seems every likelihood, …, that a real woman connected with Alexandria, whose name may have been Katharine, made some gesture during the period of the martyrdoms which caught the folk imagination and lived orally among Greek-speaking Christian congregations in the Near East and Southern Italy, her story taking on more and more the “einfache Form” of Legende toward the eighth century”

(B. Beatie. “Saint Katherine of Alexandria: Traditional Themes and the Development of a Medieval German Hagiographic Narrative” in Speculum, vol. 52, n. 4, Oct. 1977)

Perhaps there was indeed an Alexandrian woman martyred under Diocletian whose story inspired generations. Maybe her name wasn’t Catherine. But that is beside the point. Some modern “historical purists” were more concerned with academic neatness than spiritual enrichment, but I digress.

Now, let us turn to what the hagiographers actually tell us.

The young philosopher

According to tradition, Catherine (or Katherina) was a “princess”, a daughter of a “king” in Alexandria (Egypt). This might be a medieval adaptation, because Egypt by this time was directly under the Roman Empire as such we can surmise that she is indeed of noble birth, patrician, and may be the daughter of the Roman governor of the imperial province of Aegyptus.

Alexandria—home of the Great Library—had long been a city of scholars. Unlike many other Roman provinces, Alexandrian society did not bar women from intellectual pursuits. A century after Catherine, another Alexandrian woman, Hypatia, would become famous for her learning.

Thus, imagining young Catherine arranging her hair while reading Plato’s Republic is not far-fetched. Beautiful, eloquent, intelligent, she was a rising star in Alexandria’s elite. 

However, when she was around 14 years old, she met a hermit named Adrian who guided her to the faith leading to her conversion and eventual baptism.

The young mystic

Shortly afterwards, the young philosopher became a young mystic. She had a vision in which the Virgin Mary offered her a choice of male saints to become his spouse. Having rejected all of them, the Infant Jesus himself appeared and placed a ring to her finger thus making her his own.

This is a typical experience of mystics: the mystical union or wedding. St. Teresa of Ávila had it. Her tocayo, Catherine of Sienna had it. 

This is another problem for the scientific purist of religion, because mystical experience cannot be proven to be merely a hagiographer’s coloring of the story since it is a very intimate religious experience. 

The young evangelizer

Strengthened by both philosophical training and mystical union with Christ, Catherine began converting those she met. By this time, there are already many Christians in the Empire, but most of them are from the plebeians and slaves. Just like St. Justin, Catherine’s “targets” were the rich and famous, the elites.

Charmed by Catherine’s beauty and eloquence, the co-emperor Maximian (co-emperor with Diocletian and father of Constantine the Great’s archrival, Maxentius) sought to make her his concubine (in some versions, he wanted her for his son, Maxentius). However, Catherine, already married to the Son of God, refused the Emperor who styles himself “son of the gods.” Fuming, Maximian ordered her arrested. But the cold prison bars cannot prevent the flame of Catherine’s wisdom and faith.

There, she converted to Christianity everyone who visited her: soldiers, imperial officials, the captain of the imperial guards, and even the empress herself, the wife of Maximian.

The debate 50 v. 1

This really angered the Emperor. So, he sent 50 pagan philosophers to engage Catherine in debate and so persuade her to leave Christ and this foolishness called Christianity and offer sacrifices to the gods. 

We don’t know how long the debate went on, but we can just imagine. I mean, have you seen a philosopher easily capitulating to his opponent in a debate? And there are 51 philosophers here! Anyways, Catherine stood her ground, breaking arguments and counterarguments with cold logic and her ever-burning faith. According to the hagiographers, the result was 1-0 in favor of Catherine. At the end all 50 philosophers converted to Christianity which really really angered Maximian.

The young martyr and the Catherine Wheel

The Emperor then ordered that everyone who converted–even his own wife–be tortured and killed. For Catherine, he reserved an original and cruel torture: the “Catherine wheel,” a contraption made of wheels into which knives or spikes had been driven. The idea was to roll this over her over and over again, thus inflicting excruciating pain and prolonging it until death comes.

Here, the hagiographers may have really colored the story, but who knows? Well, according to them, the angels assisted Catherine by sending a storm that showered rocks and lightning on the wheels and killed some of the soldiers. What we can be sure of is that the wheel might not really be effective or it might have taken too long for the patience of a man as patient as Maximian that in the end, he ordered her decapitated (the only death sentence for a Roman).

Crusader and helper

Her remains were then transported (either by angels, as the Orthodox tell us, or by other Christians of her time) and buried near Mt. Sinai later to be found by monks of the Monastery of the Theotokos that Justinian founded. Being so much associated with St. Catherine, the monastery changed its name to the Monastery of St. Catherine, the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the world (although latest reports have said that Egyptian authorities are now evicting the monks from this famous site). 

St. Catherine, as one can easily imagine, was greatly venerated in the East. Her cult spread to the West when the crusaders reached the Holy Land and as far as the Sinai peninsula. By the High Medieval Age, it was common to see images of her in parish churches and she was considered one of the “Fourteen Holy Helpers,” a group of saints invoked in daily necessities and petitions (e.g. St. Christopher for those who will travel, etc.). 

A girl in Sienna was born in 1347 was named after her and she will live her life identifying herself with our Alexandrian philosopher. She would also in her own turn become a saint: St. Catherine of Sienna.

A victim of modernity

Catherine was so widely venerated that even after the Reformation, many protestant (High Church) denominations continued their veneration of her such as the Anglicans and the Swedish. Sadly, in the Roman tradition, despite her popularity, St. Catherine became a casualty of the 20th-century obsession with historical-critical methods.

As we have already discussed in our Vatican II miniseries, the 20th century was dominated by the desire to “return to the sources,” a ressourcement in theology, liturgy, etc. That is why the earlier gothic style vestments went back in fashion (and is still today) and the roman style fiddleback chasuble became rarer as the time went by. This ressourcement coupled with St. John XXIII’s aggiornamento inspired the Conciliar years to review everything in christianity, as in EVERYTHING. This includes martyrology, or the list of saints.

Some theologians and liturgists by this time were so impacted by the historico-critical method that originated in protestant biblical scholarship that they also wanted to apply it to their field. So began the dismissing of everything “mythical” or “carolingian, medieval additions.” When the Consilium reformed the General Roman Calendar, they took off the feasts of many saints who are no longer in their favor because their wisdom does not allow it. One of them was St. Catherine of Alexandria.

This, however, does not mean that Catherine suddenly became a “not-saint.” Even the modern liberal theologian knows that he cannot do it. But by striking her out of the General Calendar, a statement was made.

But, veneration to this great woman continued in the East and in our Protestant brothers and sisters. It also persisted in France, Russia, Germany, and even in the Philippines there are old parishes dedicated to her. So, when St. John Paul II revised the Paul VI’s Missal in 2002, he restored St. Catherine in the General Calendar, albeit only as an optional memorial.

Catherine: a woman of valor; a woman that is our model

Because of this “roman snub,” I did not have any idea before who Catherine of Alexandria was until this morning when I celebrated Mass. Whenever I can, I choose to celebrate the optional memorials because: a) they are just once a year so just give them to that saint; and b) repeating the whole week the propers of Sunday is just too lazy for my preference. That is how I came across Catherine of Alexandria.

What struck me about Catherine was not merely her philosophical skill but her movement from intellectual curiosity to mystical depth.

Karl Rahner famously said:

“The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.”

We do not believe because we grasp dogma perfectly. We believe because we have encountered a Person—Jesus Christ. We accept the dogma and doctrines of the Church even if we do not understand them fully because of him. We accept the Church’s social and moral teaching because we have encountered Jesus Christ. Doctrine becomes intelligible only through relationship.

As Hans Urs von Balthasar teaches: we first encounter Beauty, not abstract Truth. Beauty draws us in—through liturgy, art, holiness—and only then do we grasp the Good, and finally the True. 

We come across this mystical experience of Beauty that tells us that there is something beyond what we see. That is why, there are so many converts coming from churches that celebrate the liturgy well. Then from Beauty we go and engage our life’s moral choices in accordance with this Beauty. Only in having immersed ourselves in this divine Beauty and Good can we accept the Truth behind it, that is doctrine.

Christ is the One, the Beautiful, the Good, and the True—the Way, Truth, and Life.

Anyways, I digress. St. Catherine, patroness of philosophy, please intercede for us.