The Cult of Saint Catherine
by Anthony Smith (staff) | Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
Despite a life shrouded in mystery, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the Virigin Martyr executed by a Roman emperor, has long been esteemed by eastern Christians and – at least since the Crusades by those in the West too – on her 25 November feast day.
The story of Saint Catherine’s life, if she ever existed, will never be known for certain. Some scholars believe she was invented by early Christians as a counterpart to Hypatia of Alexandria, the first recorded female mathematician, murdered in 415 AD by a Christian mob for being a defender of the ‘pagan’ sciences against religion. Yet, veneration of this saint endures and has resulted in notable beliefs and traditions, not least in Rome itself.
The Dispute of Catherine of Alexandria with the philosophers, by Jacopo Tintoretto (www.jacopotintoretto.org)
The ‘life’ of Saint Catherine
A noble, beautiful, pious, intelligent young woman, torn from her home to satisfy the craven desires of a wicked tyrant – it sounds like a familiar story, and duly the legend of St Catherine covers well-trodden territory. The martyrologies of other early virgin saints like St Agnes of Rome, St Agatha of Sicily and St Lucy (also from Sicily) are of a similar vein.
Catherine, goes the story, was noble-born in Alexandria, Egypt, and converted after having a vision of the Madonna. She denounced the emperor (see ‘Maxentius or Maximinus Daia?’ below*), who had killed 50 of her followers, for persecuting Christians.
The tongue-tied emperor called on 50 (pagan) philosophers to rebuke her arguments, but they too confessed themselves won over by the young woman’s reasoning. Yet so enamoured by Catherine was he that the emperor offered to make her his imperial consort if she would renounce her faith and become his wife.
Martyrdom
She refused, was thrown into prison yet still managed to convert the jailer, the emperor’s wife ‘Faustina’ and a high-ranking military officer called Porphyrius. Infuriated further, the emperor ordered her execution on the breaking wheel, a spiked instrument of torture, yet this broke apart upon touching her, showering and killing unfortunate bystanders in a shower of spikes. She was finally beheaded, on 25 November, 310 AD.
Saint Catherine of Alexandria refusing to worship the Idols, by Jacopo Tintoretto (www.jacopotintoretto.org)
To Christians, the emperor’s blind rage against St. Catherine is symbolic of “the anger of the world in the face of truth and justice” and is, therefore, expected by those who live a truthful and just life.
A legend… takes its time
There is no record of devotion to Catherine in the first few centuries after her death. In the mid-sixth century, the Byzantine emperor Justinian consecrated a monastery to her in Sinai where legend has it angels carried and deposited her mortal remains. In the tenth century, veneration of St Catherine became widespread in the east, spreading to the west after the crusades. New churches were dedicated in her honour and her feast day was to become a solemn day of holy obligation.
Eventually she became listed as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers of mankind among all saints, and patroness of a whole range of people from young maidens to philosophers and theologians to wheelwrights, millers and other workmen (due to the breaking wheel, also often depicted in church artwork of St Catherine). Dominicans venerate her as do the French; it was Catherine (alongside St Margaret) who spoke to Joan of Arc and even today young unmarried Parisian women hold her in great esteem.
Photo of Pifferari in Rome in 1858 by Carlo Baldassare Simelli
A Roman tradition: the coming of the ‘pifferari’
The church of Saint Catherine dei Funari in Rome was built by one of Michelangelo’s apprentices, Guidetto Guidetti, in 1549-64 on the site of an older monastery, not far from the Jewish Ghetto. The ‘funari’ were the ropemakers who worked nearby among the ruins of the Theatre of Balbus. A women’s refuge was founded next door by St Ignatius de Loyola, Spanish founder of the Jesuits.
Writers and artists staying in Rome in the 1700s and 1800s recorded a local phenomenon in dozens of sketches, paintings (the ‘Goethe in Rom’ website has a wonderful selection) and poems: the coming of the ‘pifferari’ (pipers or penny-whistlers). The arrival of these strangely-clad country minstrels from the Abruzzo region always fell on St Catherine’s Day, traditionally the start of winter and of the lead up to Christmas.
With their music and lively attire these pifferari caught the eye, American tourist William Gillespie wrote in ‘Rome as Seen by a New Yorker’ (1845) that they would have caused a sensation on Broadway. They even inspired the great local Roman poet Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli to write the famous sonnet reproduced below.
Li Venti Scinque Novemmre
Oggiaotto ch’è Ssanta Catarina
se cacceno le store pe le scale,
se leva ar letto la cuperta fina
e ss’accenne er focone in ne le sale.
Er tempo che ffarà cquela matina
pe Nnatale ha da fallo tal`e cquale.
Er busciardello cosa mette ? bbrina ?
La bbrina vederai puro a Nnatale.
E ccominceno ggià li piferari
a ccalà da montagna a le maremme
co cquelli farajòli tanto cari.
Che bbelle canzoncin Oggni pastore
le cantò spiccicate a Bbetlalemme
ner giorno der presepio der Zignore.
The 25th November
Today on Saint Catherine’s Day
we roll out the mats for the stairs,
we take off the thin cover from the bed
and we light the fireplace in the halls.
The weather that morning
will be exactly the same on Christmas.
And what does the almanac say? Frost?
The frost you’ll see on Christmas as well.
And the pipers will start already
leaving the mountains and the valleys
wearing their beloved cloaks.
What lovely songs! Every shepherd
sang them just so in Bethlehem
on Christ’s Nativity day.
By Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli (Translated by Valeria Cristina Mecozzi)
*Maxentius or Maximinus Daia?
Most sources quote Maxentius (306-312 AD) as ruler at the time of Catherine’s death. Maxentius, however, was a usurper whose power base was Italy and who never held authority, not even in name, in Egypt. More likely it was Maximinus Daia who ruled Syria and Egypt from 308 to 313 as junior emperor to his uncle Galerius, a renowned persecutor of Christians. Early Church historian Eusebius records (circa 320 AD) that Maximinus Daia had an ‘insane passion’ for a noble-born Christian girl of Alexandria (without specifying her name), but exiled her and seized her wealth when she refused his advances. The girl may also have been Dorothea, another early church virgin martyr, whose story may have inspired Catherine’s.
