A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Catharine St., of Alexandria
CATHARINE ST.,
Was a noble virgin of Alexandria. Having been instructed in literature and the sciences, she was afterwards converted to Christianity, and by order of the Emperor Maximilian she disputed with fifty heathen philosophers, who, being reduced to silence by her arguments and her eloquence, were all to a man converted, and suffered martyrdom in consequence. From this circumstance, and her great learning, she is considered in the Romish church as the patron saint of philosophy, literature, and schools. She was afterwards condemned to suffer death, and the emperor ordered her to be crushed between wheels of iron, armed with sharp blades; the wheels, however, were marvellously broken asunder, as the monks declare, and, all other means of death being rendered abortive, she was beheaded in the year 310, at the age of eighteen. Her body being afterwards discovered on Mount Sinai, gave rise to the order of the Knights of St. Catharine.