The life of St Catherine of Alexandria
Catherine herself was imprisoned and threatened with a wheel of spikes built to tear her apart, but the wheel broke apart before it could be used. The empress herself, along with an officer of the court and many soldiers, were so moved by what they witnessed that they too confessed Christ and were martyred. Catherine was finally beheaded.
Her tradition holds that angels carried her body to Mount Sinai, where her relics were later found and are venerated to this day at the monastery that bears her name. Modern historians have raised real doubts about whether Catherine's story, first recorded centuries after her supposed death, describes an actual historical woman or was shaped from other accounts of Christian martyrs in Alexandria; the Church nonetheless has kept her as one of its most beloved witnesses to the faith for over a thousand years.
