Saint Catherine of Alexandria: Life, Prayer, Feast

Saint Catherine of Alexandria is the virgin and martyr who, according to her ancient acts, confounded fifty philosophers before the emperor, broke the spiked wheel prepared for her, and was beheaded for Christ about the year 305. She is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, the patroness of philosophers, students and apologists, and her feast is kept on 25 November in the traditional Roman calendar of 1962. Here is her story, what she is patron of, the prayers of her feast, and an honest word on what history can and cannot tell us of her.

Who was Saint Catherine of Alexandria?

The story of St Catherine, as it has been read in the Church for a thousand years, runs thus. She was born of a patrician family of Alexandria, the great city of learning in Egypt, and gave herself from girlhood to study, so that she surpassed in learning the philosophers of her city. Through her studies she came to know of Christianity, and she was converted, the legend says, by a vision of Our Lady and the Holy Child, who received her as His bride.

When the emperor Maxentius began to persecute the Christians, Catherine, then only eighteen years old and of great beauty, went to him in person and rebuked him for his tyranny and for the worship of false gods. Unable to answer her, he summoned fifty philosophers to refute her. Instead it was she who convinced them; they confessed themselves won to the faith of Christ, and the furious emperor had them all burned alive.

Maxentius then tried another way, offering to make her his consort. On her indignant refusal she was scourged and imprisoned. While he was away, the empress and an officer named Porphyry went to see the young prisoner out of curiosity, and both were converted, together with two hundred soldiers of the guard; all of them were put to death.

How did St Catherine of Alexandria die?

Catherine was then condemned to be torn to pieces on a wheel set with spikes, the instrument from which the "catherine wheel" takes its name. When she was bound to it, her bonds were loosed and the wheel broke, its spikes flying off and killing many of the onlookers. She was then beheaded with the sword, and from her severed veins, the story says, flowed not blood but a white, milk-like stream. Her death is placed about the year 305.

All the versions of her acts add that angels carried her body to the summit of Mount Sinai. In the sixth century the Emperor Justinian built a fortified monastery at the foot of the mountain for the hermits who lived there; the body venerated as hers was brought to it, probably in the eighth or ninth century, and the monastery has borne her name ever since. Her relics are still kept there. An old Catholic commentator quoted by Alban Butler explains the angels gently: monks were anciently called "angels" for their heavenly life, and their habit "the angelical habit"; it was the monks of Sinai who carried her body to their monastery.

The collect of her Mass takes up the same tradition with a beautiful thought: as God gave the Law to Moses on the summit of Sinai and willed her body to rest there, so we ask to come, by her prayers, "to the mountain which is Christ."

The prayers of the feast of St Catherine

The collect of the Roman Missal of 1962, proper to her feast:

Collect of the feast, 25 November

Deus, qui dedisti legem Moysi in summitate montis Sinai, et in eodem loco per sanctos Angelos tuos corpus beatae Catharinae Virginis et Martyris tuae mirabiliter collocasti: praesta, quaesumus, ut eius meritis et intercessione ad montem, qui Christus est, pervenire valeamus. Qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

O God, who gavest the law to Moses on the summit of Mount Sinai, and in the same place didst wondrously cause the body of blessed Catherine, Thy virgin and martyr, to be laid by Thy holy angels: grant us, we beseech Thee, by her merits and intercession, to come unto the mountain which is Christ. Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

A prayer to St Catherine of Alexandria

Her name also stands among the holy virgins and martyrs in the Litany of the Saints: Sancta Catharina, ora pro nobis, "St Catherine, pray for us."

To pray to her for nine days, above all before an examination, in doubts against the faith, or for the grace of purity, the full text is in our novena to St Catherine of Alexandria, traditionally begun on 17 November to end on her feast.

What is St Catherine of Alexandria the patron saint of?

Because of her learning and her victory over the philosophers, St Catherine of Alexandria is the patron saint of:

• philosophers, theologians and Christian apologists;
• students, scholars, teachers and schools, and in the Middle Ages the universities, whose faculties of philosophy kept her feast;
• preachers;
• maidens and unmarried young women;
• wheelwrights, millers, spinners and all trades that work with the wheel;
• the dying, for her last prayer was for those who would invoke her.

She is invoked for clearness of mind, against doubt, for holy purity, and for a good death. Alongside St Thomas Aquinas she is one of the great patron saints of students. Alban Butler, who defended the capacity of women for "the sublime sciences," wrote that she is for that reason still regarded as the patroness of Christian philosophers.

St Catherine among the Fourteen Holy Helpers and the voices of St Joan

From the time of the Crusades until the eighteenth century St Catherine was one of the most popular saints of the West. Churches without number were dedicated to her; her feast was kept with great solemnity; Adam of St Victor wrote a sequence in her honour, and Bossuet one of his celebrated panegyrics. She was counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers, the saints whom Christians of the Rhineland and of all Germany invoked together in pressing needs.

She was also, with St Margaret and St Michael the Archangel, one of the three heavenly voices that guided St Joan of Arc. Joan heard St Catherine and St Margaret from her thirteenth year until her death at the stake, and named them before her judges.

Symbols of St Catherine of Alexandria

She is shown as a young princess, crowned, holding the palm of martyrdom, with a broken spiked wheel at her side and the sword of her beheading, often with a book for her learning, and sometimes treading on the emperor Maxentius. In the scene of her "mystical marriage" the Christ Child places a ring on her finger. The great painters loved her: Raphael's St Catherine of Alexandria (about 1507) leans on her wheel in ecstasy, Caravaggio painted her kneeling beside the broken wheel with the bloodied sword, and Artemisia Gentileschi painted herself as St Catherine. The St Catherine of Alexandria medal, with the wheel on its face, is worn by students and by young women who take her as patroness.

St Catherine and the 1962 calendar: the view of tradition

It must be said plainly, as Butler's revisers already said in 1956: "not a single fact about the life or death of Catherine of Alexandria has been established." Her acts are late; the earliest calendars of the East do not name her, and her cult in the West began only about the eleventh century. What we have related above is the story as the Church received and read it, not a historical record.

For that uncertainty her feast was removed from the general calendar in the reform of 1969, then restored in 2002 as an optional memorial. The calendar of 1962 never lost her: she keeps her feast on 25 November, with her proper collect, as she had for centuries. The Church has never denied her sanctity nor forbidden her invocation, and the devotion of a thousand years, of the universities, of St Joan of Arc, rests on firmer ground than our knowledge of her biography.

She should not be confused with St Catherine of Siena, the Dominican mystic of the fourteenth century (declared a Doctor of the Church in 1970), whose feast falls on 30 April. For the other saints of the traditional calendar, month by month, see our guide to the Catholic saints.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the feast day of St Catherine of Alexandria?

Her feast is on 25 November. In the traditional Roman calendar of 1962 it is a feast of the third class, with the Mass Loquebar of a virgin martyr and her proper collect; see our traditional Catholic calendar of 1962.

When was St Catherine of Alexandria born?

The year of her birth is not known. Her acts say she was eighteen when she was martyred, about the year 305, which would place her birth near the year 287; but the date rests only on the legend.

What is St Catherine of Alexandria known for?

For her learning and her defence of the faith: the legend tells that she confounded fifty philosophers before the emperor and converted them. She is also known for the spiked wheel that broke when she was bound to it, for her beheading, and for the tradition that angels carried her body to Mount Sinai.

When was St Catherine of Alexandria canonized?

Never by a formal process, which did not exist in the early centuries. Like the other ancient martyrs she was venerated as a saint by the custom of the Church, and her name is in the Roman Martyrology and the Litany of the Saints.

Is St Catherine of Alexandria a Catholic saint?

Yes. She is honoured in the traditional Roman Missal and Breviary on 25 November, invoked in the Litany of the Saints, and counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers. She is equally venerated by the Eastern Churches.

Why is she shown with a wheel?

Because she was condemned to be torn apart on a spiked wheel, which broke at her touch. The broken wheel became her emblem, and the patron of every craft that works with a wheel.

Did St Catherine of Alexandria really exist?

The Church has venerated her for a thousand years and has never denied her existence, but no fact of her life can be proved from early documents. One may honour her with full confidence while keeping legend distinct from history, as the traditional hagiographers themselves did.

The Iter Fidei app carries the novenas, the prayers to the saints, the Roman Missal of 1962 and the traditional calendar with the feast of St Catherine on 25 November. Join early access here.

Sources. Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, 25 November (St Catherine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr). Roman Martyrology, 25 November. Roman Missal (1962), Proper of Saints, 25 November. The Litany of the Saints. Bonaventure Hammer, O.F.M., The Fourteen Holy Helpers. The acts of the trial of St Joan of Arc (1431).