Apologists, craftsmen who work with a wheel (potters, spinners, etc.) , archivists, attorneys, barristers, dying people, educators, girls, jurists, knife grinders, knife sharpeners, lawyers, librarians, libraries, maidens, mechanics, millers, nurses, old maids, philosophers, potters, preachers, scholars, schoolchildren, scribes, secretaries, spinners, spinsters, stenographers, students, tanners, teachers, theologians, turners, the University of Paris, wheelwrights, Zejtun and Malta.  | She was remembered
on the 25th of November,
however this was
removed from
the calendar and
her cult was
suppressed in
1969. |  | | early 1900 | | Holliday for lesbians? |
The"Catherine" photo postcards from the 1920 period are the most attactive ones, the present often a young lady under a lace hat Go to the Catherines in our StoreClick here She was apocryphal and came from nobility. She was schooled in science and oratory, and she converted to Christianity after receiving a vision. When she was 18 years old, during the persecution of Maximus, she offered to debate the pagan philosophers. Many were converted by her arguments, and immediately martyred. Maximus had her scourged and imprisoned. The empress and the leader of Maximus' army were amazed by the stories, and so they went to see Catherine in prison. They converted and were martyred. Maximus ordered her broken on the wheel, but she touched it and the wheel was destroyed. She was beheaded in c305 BCE in Alexandria Egypt, and it was said that her body whisked away by angels. She was immensely popular during the Middle Ages. There were many chapels and churches devoted to her throughout Western Europe, and she was reported as one of the divine advisors to Saint Joan of Arc. Her reputation for learning and wisdom led to her patronage of libraries, librarians, teachers, archivists and anyone associated with wisdom or teaching. Her debating skill and persuasive language has led to her patronage of lawyers. And her torture on the wheel has led to those who work with them asking for her intercession. While there may well have been a noble, educated, virginal lady who swayed pagans with her rhetoric during the persecutions, the accretion of legend, romance and poetry has long since buried the real Catherine. Today, the big glamorous fashion houses in the centre of Paris are celebrating this ancient holiday again: not with ladies on a catwalk wearing the typical Saint Catherine bonnets, but by showing large and eccentric hats in their shop-windows. One more reason to visit Paris during the month of November…. 
|
