St. Catherine of Alexandria

By the account the Church reads, a young noblewoman of Alexandria of great learning who confronted the emperor at a pagan festival, was set to debate fifty philosophers, and converted them, and they were burned for it. A spiked wheel meant for her broke, and she was beheaded. The tradition holds that angels carried her body to Mount Sinai, and the monastery there has borne her name since the Middle Ages and keeps her relics. Historians cannot find her in the early record, and the Church keeps her anyway as what she has always been in the liturgy: the patron of those who seek wisdom and a witness that learning belongs to Christ. Feast: November 25.