A detailed account of the martyrdom was written by Simeon Metaphrastes († c. 956), with discussions between the learned men and the lady, and with further incidents including the conversion of the general, Porphyrios; the interest which the Augusta took in Katherine; the fashioning of spiked wheels for torturing the saint, which broke of their own accord; the flow of milk instead of blood when she was beheaded, a proof of her virginity; and the taking up of the body of the saint after death by angels who carried her to Mount Sinai.[229]
On turning to the writers who lived about the time alleged, we find that Emperor Maximianus, as recorded by Eusebius (c. 320), actually visited Alexandria, where he seized high-born women for adulterous purposes. Among them was a most distinguished and illustrious lady who overcame his intemperate and passionate soul. “Honourable on account of wealth and parentage, she esteemed all things inferior to chastity, and the emperor, who could not bring himself to put her to death, punished her with exile and confiscated her property.”[230] Eusebius did not mention the lady’s name, but the details of his story fit the legend and may underlie it.
The name Aekatherina (i.e. the pure one) was rendered in Latin as Katherina or Catherina. Her association with Sinai added the cult of a Christian saint to that of Saleh, Moses and Mohammad. It was chiefly the veneration of St. Katherine which brought pilgrims to Sinai during the Middle Ages. According to Giustiniani certain knights, as early as 1063, banded together in a semi-religious order to guarantee safe conduct to these pilgrims in Sinai, in the same way as the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre protected the pilgrims to Jerusalem.[231] The date mentioned seems rather early and may need revision.
A great impetus was given to the cult of St. Katherine in Europe by the visit to Rouen of the hermit Simeon about the year 1026. His journey was described in an account by Eberwein, abbot of St. Martin’s at Trèves, who knew him,[232] and in the Translation of the Relics of St. Katherine to Rouen, which was written soon after the event.[233]
From these accounts we learn that Simeon was from Constantinople, and went to Bethlehem and then to Sinai, where he served for several years in the convent before he became a hermit near the Red Sea. But here he was so much disturbed by the sailors and others who came for the oil (? petroleum), that flowed from the rock near his cell, that he removed first to the summit of Mount Sinai, where the Law was given, a place deserted because of the restless Arabs, and then to the convent itself. It was the time of the great famine in Egypt, (probably that of 1017), but in the convent there was plenty of food for the brethren and for the Arabs who crowded there with their wives and children.
From the Chronicle of Hugo of Flavigny (c. 1096) we learn that it was customary for the monks at the convent to take turns in ascending the mountain on the sabbath, in order to celebrate mass at the shrine of St. Katherine and collect the oil that flowed from the bones.[234] This shows that the body of the saint at this time lay enshrined on a mountain which was probably the Gebel Musa itself. For an ancient prayer contains the words “Lord, who didst give the Law to Moses on the summit of Mount Sinai, and who, on the same spot, didst deposit, through thy holy angels, the body of the blessed Katherine, virgin and martyr.”[235] At a later date we hear of bodies of saints lying enshrined in the small church that stood on the summit of the Gebel Musa. The fact that oil flowed from the bones is told of many saints. Contrary to the usually accepted belief, the scientific explanation is probably as follows. The body lay in a coffin of cedar wood or other wood that is naturally charged with oil. If the heat generated in the coffin is great, it would cause the oil to ooze and collect on the bones or any other cold substance, forming into drops.
The monk Simeon was serving his turn at the shrine, and drawing off the oil that had collected into a glass phial, when three small (finger) bones of the saint came loose and were carried down with it. Simeon took charge of them as a priceless treasure. As an envoy was needed to go to Normandy to collect the usual alms, he started, carrying the relics with him. He travelled by way of Egypt, but the Italian galley in which he sailed was seized by pirates. He escaped by jumping overboard and eventually reached Antioch, where he fell in with a band of pilgrims, with whom he journeyed to Normandy by way of Belgrad and Rome. In the meantime, Duke Richard III, duke of Normandy (993-1026), had died, but an abbey was in course of construction near Rouen, and Simeon deposited the relics with the abbot Isambert before he left for Verdun and for Trèves. The relics worked wonders. Isambert suffered from toothache and was divinely directed to the oil which brought him relief. Other miraculous cures followed. And the Abbey of the Trinity near Rouen gained such renown that it came to be known as the Abbey of St. Katherine.[236]
Photo: Exclusive News Agency.
Fig. 17.—Chapel on Gebel Musa.