Talk:Catherine of Alexandria

message: I just wanted to put it out there that I've done a lot of major restructuring work with this article, including changing section names to better elucidate their contents, adding a lot of content to the "life and legend" section to put her life into more context (well, that is, the legend of her life, but nevertheless, the article's extent of information on her legend before only started at her martyrdom), adding real footnotes (there were manual, really primitive ones before), and making an image gallery. I personally think that the article is on a much better track than it was before the edits, but I invite anyone to revisit what I did in the history and bring up any issues you may have here on the talk page. --Alekjds 02:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Note: I also wanted to move the current infobox image to the gallery and replace it with perhaps the one by Caravaggio, which better illustrates her principal iconographical attribute (the wheel). However, I wanted some feedback before switching the two. --Alekjds 03:02, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restructure 

message: Though the possible falsification of her myth is explored further down in the article, I think it still leans a great deal more toward validating her existence.  I have some information that could be taken into account when editing the article that I'd like to share:
In Donald Attwater's "The Penguin Dictionary of Saints" published in 1965, he states that even Catholic scholars admit that the legend of St. Catherine is "preposterous."  Her myth is explained further in Barbara G. Walker's "Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" as follows, "At Sinai, the original center of Catherine's cult, the Asiatic Goddess was once portrayed as the Dancer on the Fiery Wheel at the hub of the universe.  A Greek convent of priestess-nuns at Sinai in the 8th century A.D. called themselves kathari, 'pure ones,' a word akin to the Kathakali temple-dancers of India, who performed the Dance of Time in honor of Kali, Goddess of the karmic wheel.  The figure of the wheel figured prominently in beliefs of medieval Gnostics who called themselves Cathari, and revered St. Catherine almost as a female counterpart of God.  Perhaps for this reason, in the 15th and 16th centuries, after the Cathari were exterminated, Catholic prelates made efforts to have St. Catherine eliminated from the canon." (Walker 149) Jessica 20:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Information in support of the non-existence of St. Catherine 

message: Unless someone can produce evidence that Catherine has been known in English (rather than Greek) as The Great Martyr Saint Catherine, this name should be deleted.  Deipnosophista (talk) 11:22, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name 

message: The first two footnotes lead nowhere. This should be corrected or the dates of birth and death corrected. How serious are those two sources, anyway? This question also applies to the third footnote. --Ivbauer (talk) 12:02, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources 

message: There's been a fair amount of back and forth regarding information on this film.  Much of it inadequately sourced.  I've given it a bit of thought.  This article is about Catherine of Alexandria, not about the film.  If the film has independent notability, an article on the film can contain facts regarding the production.  At this time I've yet to see that independent notability and we should be careful not to coatrack non-notable events into a slightly related article.  I intend to trim it back to a bare-boned sentence: A movie project about Catherine, called Katherine of Alexandria, began production in January 2010.  using the only live link (IMDB) as the ref.--Cube lurker (talk) 13:07, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Media - Katherine of Alexandria film 

message: Since when do the sceptical musings of a historian called Harold T. Davis undermine and override the Roman Catholic Church? All sorts of parallels may be drawn between different people and different lives, and the fact that there are parallels between the life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria and the life of Hypatia of Alexandria is one of the many coincidences that are rampant in the world. It is absolutely ludicrous to place the kind of emphasis that this article does on Davis' theory that St. Catherine was "invented specifically" to form "an exemplary counterpart to Hypatia in the medieval mindset". 
The emperor who sentenced St. Catherine to death has been identified as Maxentius. According to the traditional narrative of St. Catherine's life, among the multitude of people that St. Catherine converted to Christianity was the wife of Maxentius, the Roman Empress, who was subsequently executed by her enraged husband. This empress was Valeria Maximilla, who, as it turns out, mysteriously disappeared from the historical record before her husband Maxentius was routed by Constantine (c.312), close to the time that St. Catherine's own martyrdom is traditionally placed (c.310). The fact that Maxentius's wife disappeared from the chronicles of history is most intriguing and significant when one bears in mind that no "contemporary" chronicles of the martyrdom of St. Catherine have apparently been found either. How convenient that Valeria Maximilla should suddenly vanish from the annals of time, along with all mentions of the Saint who was responsible for her becoming a Christian! It is reasonable to surmise that perhaps Maxentius didn't want history to remember the accomplishments of St. Catherine, which after all, included not only the conversion and martyrdom of hundreds in his court, but also the conversion and martyrdom of his own wife.  
If one Harold T. Davis could suggest that Hypatia of Alexandria inspired Christians to "invent" St. Catherine of Alexandria, one could just as easily suggest that Hypatia - who was born many decades after the martyrdom of St. Catherine - was herself inspired by what she had heard about St. Catherine, and sought to model herself after the Saint. For the record, there is no certainty as to when Hypatia was born either - her birth date is set "c.350-370" - so much for meticulous historicity! And since no one save a smattering of non-believers like Harold T. Davis doubt the life and martyrdom of St. Catherine - who was sent to her death by Maxentius at least half a century before Hypatia is said to have been born - it is far more sensible to suggest that Hypatia was inspired by the story of St. Catherine (rather than the other way around), if some people can't come to terms with the fact that coincidences do abound in life. 
Gehan  (talk) 07:15, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: And if you can find a reliable source that propounds such a theory, we can insert it into this article and the one on Hypatia of Alexandria. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 09:45, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

text: GehanCA has now inserted his own OR from a primary source, while leaving in place an academic reference which directly contradicts his new text! That the text of the Golden Legend was, like most medieval texts, not static from its first compilation c. 1260 should be clear from its inclusion of Thomas Aquinas who still had several years to live then. See here - in fact the Mystical marriage did not appear in the Golden Legend until 1438, though it was in other texts before. Johnbod (talk) 15:28, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: (Useful quote to work in Attwater. Johnbod (talk) 15:47, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

text: And why did it need "reinstating"?  As the CE records, it was dropped from the Paris Breviary in the 18th century, & they report devotion to her essentially extinct in 1911. I don't know what sort of Pre-Tridentine medievalist fringe views you are espousing, but it won't do. I may have been wrong about your views (as you are wrong about mine), but many of your comments read like a student adopting a pose.  Apologies if I'm wrong about that.  Johnbod (talk) 20:27, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  St. Catherine of Alexandria, Maxentius, Valeria Maximilla and Hypatia of Alexandria  

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The portrait as Catherine of Alexandria used in the lede of this article (purported to be by Luini) is apparently not the original. See discussion on old file for more info.
Avindratalk 05:27, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The Lotto might be a better choice? Johnbod (talk) 14:30, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  it may be time for a change. I like this one too, I updated the item :d:Q20175799 and reuploaded from IIIF. Avindratalk 23:09, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I'll do it. Johnbod (talk) 03:34, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bernardino Luini – Portrait of Catherine of Alexandria 

message: The caption attributes the work to Caravaggio, but his St. Catherine is https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo_Merisi_da_Caravaggio_catalogue_raisonn%C3%A9,_1991_Cinotti#/media/File:Caravaggio_-_Saint_Catherine_of_Alexandria_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg. I don't know how to fix images in Wikipedia articles so I thought I should speak up here. I think the Caravaggio is a better choice than the icon-style art currently displayed. GDub (talk) 16:32, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. Johnbod (talk) 17:37, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The picture at top of St. Catherine needs to be replaced