St Catherine of Alexandria was an 18-year-old virgin who died a martyr during the rule of the 4th century Roman Emperor Maxentius.
According to tradition, the saint was sentenced to death by being rolled on a spiked wheel but the device shattered during her execution so she was beheaded instead.
The “Catherine Wheel” firework takes its name from the ordeal she was intended to suffer for her faith.
Scholars are sceptical about legends derived from the life and death of St Catherine because they are not supported by any reliable authority, with Butler’s Lives of the Saints dismissing her Acts as “absolutely worthless”.
Yet since the 10th century the saint has been venerated by the Church in the East and from the times of the Crusades to the 18th century she was even more popular in the West.
According to tradition, she was a member of a patrician Roman family of Alexandria and an avid student who discovered Christianity through her studies and converted after receiving a vision of Blessed Virgin Mary with the Child Jesus.
When Maxentius began persecuting Christians, Catherine, purportedly of great beauty, went to the Emperor to rebuke him for his tyranny. They argued about Roman gods and Maxentius unsuccessfully summoned 50 philosophers to oppose her (allegedly executing them after their failure).
Maxentius then tried to win over Catherine with the offer of a consort’s crown and when she refused he had her beaten and thrown into jail. The wife and an officer of Maxentius visited Catherine and they became Christians and, according to the legend, paid with their lives when Maxentius discovered their conversions.
St Catherine was martyred soon afterwards and in the 8th or 9th century her relics were taken by monks to the monastery in Sinai that has since borne her name.
Numerous churches have been dedicated to her honour and her feast was for centuries kept with great solemnity.
She is a patron saint of women students, female virgins, philosophers, preachers, apologists, wheelwrights and millers, among others, and she is also included among the Fourteen Holy Helpers, the saints who are grouped together in the belief that their intercession is particularly effective, especially against disease.
The saint is often invoked alongside St Christopher and St Barbara in prayers of protection against a sudden and unprovided-for death.
St Catherine was among the angels and saints who in 1425 appeared to the 13-year-old St Joan of Arc to tell her that she had been chosen to drive out the English from France and take the Dauphin Charles to Reims for his consecration as King.