Thus the learned Catherine, of high birth, enchanted her by her great scientific knowledge, when, only eighteen years of age, she was called by the Emperor Maximus to discuss certain questions with fifty rhetoricians and grammarians.

She astonished and convinced them.

"They were amazed and knew not what to say, but they remained quiet.

And the Emperor blamed them for their weakness in allowing themselves to be so easily conquered by a young girl." The fifty professors then declared that they were converted.

"And as soon as the tyrant heard that, he had so terrible a fit of anger, that he commanded they should all be burned to death in the public square." In her eyes Catherine was the invincible learned woman, as proud and dazzling in intellect as in beauty, just as she would have liked to be, that she might convert men, and be fed in prison by a dove, before having her head cut off.