St. Catherine of Alexandria

St. Catherine of Alexandria (died c. 305, by tradition) was, according to her widely beloved legend, a young noblewoman of Alexandria in Egypt, learned in philosophy and eloquent beyond her years. When the emperor Maxentius persecuted the Christians, she boldly rebuked him and, in a celebrated disputation, confounded a panel of the empire's finest pagan philosophers summoned to refute her, converting several of them — and even the empress — to Christ by her arguments and her steadfastness.

Refusing the emperor's offer of marriage and enraging him by her constancy, she was condemned to be broken on a spiked wheel, which — tradition holds — shattered at her touch, so that she was finally beheaded; the device gave its name to the "Catherine wheel." Though the historical details of her acts are uncertain, her cult was immense throughout the Middle Ages, and she was numbered among the Fourteen Holy Helpers and honored as a patron of philosophers, scholars, students, and theologians, one of the voices St. Joan of Arc claimed to hear.