lage (Martin, u.s.). The head of St. Catharine was alleged to be preserved in her church in the Piazza of St. Peter's at Rome. She was regarded generally as the patron saint of schools, probably from the tradition of her learned controversy with the philosophers at Alexandria. A semi-monastic order, the Knights of Mount Sinai or of Jerusalem, instituted in Europe A.D. 1063 in honour of St. Catharine, under the rule of St. Basil, bound themselves by vows to chastity, though not to celibacy (castità conjugale), to entertain pilgrims, and in rotation, each for two years, to guard the holy relics. Their dress was a white tunic, and embroidered on it a broken wheel, armed with spikes, in memory of the jagged wheel on which, according to the legend, the saint was racked, and which was miraculously shattered by divine interposition. The order became extinct after the fall of Constantinople; but in the 17th cent. the Basilian monks at Paris gave the badge of the order to any candidates who would take the vow of chastity and of obedience to the rule of St. Basil (Moroni, Dizion. Eccles. Reference to Giustiniani, Hist. Chronol. d. Ordini Equestri, p. 121; Bonami, Catalogo d. Ord. Equest. p. 21).
See Tillem. Mém. eccl.; Baronius (Caesar), Annales Ecclesiastici (Barri Ducis, 1864, 4to, tom. iii.); Bollandus Joannes, Les Actes des saints, etc. (Lyons, Besançon, 1865, 8vo, Nov. 25); Life of St. Catharine, with its Latin original from the Cotton MSS., ed. with Intro., etc., by E. Einenkel (Lond. 1884); Life and Martyrdom of St. Cath. of Alex. (Roxburghe Club, No. 90, Lond. 1884).
Caulacau. [ Basilides.]
Celsus (1). Of the personal history of this, the first great polemical adversary of Christianity, we know nothing with certainty; and even Origen, from whom the whole of our knowledge of Celsus is derived, had received the work of Celsus, entitled ἀληθὴς λόγος, or the True Discourse, without any hint of the history or date of its author.
But questions far more interesting than personal ones are raised by his attack on Christianity, of which enough has been preserved by Origen in his contra Celsum to convey to us a very tolerable idea of its nature. We must be on our guard at once against disparaging it too much, and against thinking too highly of its ability. Origen, indeed, who to all appearance is a very fair antagonist, speaks of it with contempt. But Celsus was not a mere polemical assailant; he was a philosopher on his own account, and held in certain respects by no means unenlightened opinions. He had strong faith in reason. "What evil is it," he asks, "to be learned and to have cultivated the intellect with the best pursuits, to be and to appear wise? What obstacle are these things to the knowledge of God? Do not they rather lead and assist to the attainment of truth?" Nor had that similarity between the human and the animal frame, which the natural science of our own day insists upon, escaped his notice. Hence he deduces that ants "converse, have reason, notions of general truths, speech," etc. (iv. 84), and even that they have knowledge of God. It would be hard, again, to cavil at his ideas of the Divine Nature; he speaks of men "burning with the love of it" (i. 8); he is intolerant of the association of it with anything that is mortal or perishable. He was not free from superstition; he believed in magic, and declared that serpents and eagles were more skilled in it than men (iv. 86). Baur says that "in acuteness, in dialectical aptitude, in many-sided cultivation, at once philosophic and general, Celsus stands behind no opponent of Christianity." Admitting that this panegyric is not groundless, we must add, that in vital insight Celsus was deficient. As an opponent of Christianity, the chief characteristic of Celsus is a strong, narrow, intolerant common sense. To him Christianity is an "exitiabilis superstitio"; he gives credence to every story against it on which he can lay his hands; he dwells with coarse jocularity on the Jewish tradition of Panthera and the Virgin Mary (i. 28, sqq.); he unearths a certain Diagramma, a figure symbolizing the world, and consisting of a circle called Leviathan enclosing ten other circles, apparently used in the rites of some sect more or less approximating to the Christians (vi. 22). He has no idea of regarding Christianity from the inside, and of inquiring into the reason of its influence; he uses jest for argument, and interprets everything in a bad sense. Treating of the flight of Jesus into Egypt, and afterwards (as he alleges) before the betrayal, he asks, "Had God need to fly from His enemies? Does fear belong to God?"
From such instances it is evident that Celsus wholly misapprehended the force of the doctrine that he was attacking. There are cases, indeed, in which he shews himself more acute. He challenges the evidence of Christianity, and asks, "Who saw the dove lighting on the head of Jesus after His baptism?" As to the Resurrection, he makes the remark which has been copied by Renan and others, that it was Mary Magdalene, "a fanatical woman," who was the first witness of the resurrection, according to all the accounts (ii. 55); and remarks on the disbelief invariably given to such accounts as those of the resurrection of Zamolxis, Pythagoras, Orpheus, Protesilaus, Hercules, and Theseus. But the most remarkable portions of his attack are those directed against the general character of Christianity. He dwells on the numerous sects of Christians, all of whom said, "Crede, si salvus fieri velis," and asks how one is to judge between so many? Origen does not deny the fact, but maintains that it is a proof of the importance of that on which they debated, and further that they all set forth Jesus alone as the means of salvation (vi. 11). Celsus accuses the Christians of lawlessness, and of keeping wholly to themselves, and not caring for those outside. He complains vehemently of them as discouraging learning, wisdom, and thought; as rejecting the authority of reason; as being the patrons of sinners, whereas to the heathen mysteries only "the holy and virtuous" were invited. He makes a great point of the opposition between the morality of the Old and New Testaments, in respect of the earthly success which is the crowning happiness of the former, and so strongly reprobated by the latter. Finally, he maintains that no revelation of the Supreme Being can be made; but that, if it could be
