Commontide
Proper 28
Liturgical Color: Red
The 24th Sunday after Trinity
Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people, that bringing forth in abundance the fruit of good works, they may be abundantly rewarded when our Savior Jesus Christ comes to restore all things; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
Virgin and Martyr
Ecumenical Commemoration
Catherine of Alexandria was a learned young Christian woman of Roman Egypt, remembered as a virgin martyr who died in the persecutions of the early fourth century. For more than a thousand years the church loved her as the wise maiden who out-argued the emperor's philosophers and went to her death rather than deny Christ, and she became one of the most honoured saints of all Christendom: patron of scholars, philosophers, and students, one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and the saint whose relics are kept at the great monastery on Mount Sinai. Her feast is November 25.
Catherine of Alexandria does not appear in any patristic source, Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, Jerome's De Viris Illustribus, or the Depositio Martyrum. The earliest mention of her appears in Byzantine sources from the 9th century onward — several centuries after her alleged death. The Passio Catharinae Alexandrinae, the principal narrative source, is a medieval composition with no historical foundation and no claim to documentary authority.
According to the Passio, Catherine was the learned, beautiful daughter of a pagan king of Alexandria. She possessed great eloquence and learning, converting to Christianity after a vision of the Virgin Mary. When she refused to marry and instead devoted herself to Christianity, she attracted the enmity of the pagan emperor (variously named in different versions). According to legend, she was imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured. Fifty pagan philosophers were sent to convert her, but she was so eloquent that she converted them instead, and they too were martyred. She was condemned to death on a spiked wheel, but the wheel broke. She was finally executed by sword.
None of these details appear in any early source. The narrative elements — the wheel torture, the debate with philosophers, the broken wheel — are all literary topoi of medieval hagiography. Catherine may have been a real Christian woman, but all biographical and narrative details are apocryphal.
Traditionally, Catherine is portrayed as an intellectually brilliant young woman of noble birth, devoted to Christianity and virginity. According to legend, she engaged in philosophical debate with pagan scholars and defeated them through eloquence, converting them to faith. She is said to have been tortured on a spiked wheel (Catherine wheel), which miraculously broke, failing to harm her. She was ultimately executed by sword. Medieval art depicts her with the broken wheel and often with a crown, emphasizing her royal birth and spiritual victory. She became the patroness of students and learning, the patroness of craftspeople (particularly those involved with wheels), and the patroness of virgins.