Saint Catherine of Alexandria, as her story goes, lived in the fourth-century A.D. If you need some orienting, that puts her in north Egypt under the rule of the late Roman emperors. She was born pagan*, but converted to Christianity. Emperor Maximinus challenged Catherine, a well-educated and intelligent woman, to disputation (a battle of wits). His aim was to sway her from her faith. Maximinus was not up to the challenge and Catherine tidily bested him and, subsequently, his stable of scholars. Like any reasonable Roman emperor, Maximinus reacted to this intellectual defeat with astonishingly cruel violence and had Catherine executed. (More on this in a moment.)
Despite the perpetuation of this story, Catherine is one of those saints about whom the verifiable historical record remains mute. Her cult and reputation rely on tradition and the legacy of storytelling. This historical dubiousness presented no real problem in terms of her medieval importance as a saint. In a practical sense sainthood at that time time relied much on the belief of those praying to the saint and only secondarily on the real-world legitimacy of the saint his- or herself. Thirteenth-century inquisitor, Stephen of Bourbon, was reminded of this pesky fact when he discovered a shrine to St. Guinefort, a greyhound, in southern France. (Pictured hilariously above.) Stephen attempted to eradicate the dog saint's cult by destroying the shrine. However, historian Jean-Claude Schmitt found evidence of Guinefort's cult at this same site well into the twentieth-century. Sorry Stephen, but after they die (and even if they never actually lived), saints take on lives of their own.
So, as I was saying, Catherine of Alexandria's questionable historical basis did not hinder her from becoming a very popular saint in the Middle Ages. Like many good martyrs, she had the added glamour of having suffered a gruesome fate. According to legend, Catherine was broken on the wheel. As far as I have been able to divine, the wheel was first used in ancient Greece (if anyone has good information on its origins, please share). It enjoyed special success in medieval and early modern Europe. The criminal/heretic/uppity woman to be punished would be strapped to said wheel, arms and legs stretched out. The happy executioner would then break each of the criminal's limbs in turn by hitting them with a heavy stick or mallet, often in several places per limb. The limbs would then be woven into the spokes of the wheel and the whole thing - suffering person, wheel and all - would be hoisted up somewhere for all to see. Death could occur early on in the breaking process or hours (even days) after the wheel-cum-criminal had been erected - this largely depended on the skill of the executioner and how protracted the authorities intended the criminal's suffering to be. In any event, this was one hell of a way to go and Catherine became so associated with this hideous form of torture and death that the breaking wheel was often referred to as the Catherine wheel.
I have already posted a previous entry to The Celery Museum regarding a sensational book that was given me about the art of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. I returned to this book and, this time, found inspiration in Simone Martini. Among the myriad of figures he executed for the basilica's Chapel of St. Martin is Catherine of Alexandria, looking regal indeed and holding a quill, for her learning, and a miniature Catherine wheel, for her martyrdom. In the image below, Catherine (right) shares pictorial space with Mary Magdalene (left).
Martini's Catherine has suffered some damage over the years. Her garments are mottled, as is the background, giving everything a washed out look. I hope I have revivified her a little bit. She was fun to paint. Here's my Catherine partially done:
And here is my Catherine finished:
As a side note, Catherine bears some correspondences to an actual historical figure, Hypatia of Alexandria. Hypatia, like Catherine, was a well-educated Egyptian woman who lived in the fourth century AD. In fact, Hypatia was a bona fide scholar and philosopher. In an interesting twist, Hypatia, a pagan, was beaten and tortured to death by an angry Christian mob (predominantly monks, it seems). I enjoy imagining the labyrinthine corridors of cultural transmission that could have turned Hypatia into Catherine.
* Gosh, I hate that word...I will have to work on some better nomenclature. "Pagan" seems equivalent to "not Christian". It conveys very little but Christian arrogance. For the purposes of describing Catherine, I imagine "pagan" means she was a polytheist who worshipped any of a number of the gods from the Roman pantheon (which was itself pretty derivative - I understand god swapping and coopting around the antique Mediterranean to have been pretty de rigueur).
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