November 25th. St. Catherine of Alexandria.

Tradition has it that she was a Christian of noble birth, living in the 4th. century, who declared herself a Bride of Christ, refused to marry the Emperor and successfully argued her case against fifty wise men sent to convince her of the error of her ways. She was tortured on a wheel (hence the Catherine Wheel of firework displays) but the wheel broke apart and she was ultimately beheaded. The cult of St. Catherine centres on the famous monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai which bears her name. Although scholars maintain that none of this story is true.(and she was indeed removed from the revised Roman Calendar in 1969), she enjoyed immense popularity thanks to the influence of the Crusaders and the widely distributed medieval "Golden Legend" with its lives of saints. She was the patron of, among others, wheelwrights and philosophers; in England alone there are even now nearly 40 sets of medieval wall-paintings of her life.