St. Catherine, and the wooden wheel

[cornishevangelist]

Knights Templars nine hundred year old wood carving found in All Saints Church. West Parley, Dorset.A carvings of one of their favorite saints St. Catherine, a wooden wheel carved in wood, and a sword striking the wheel, representing the Word of God, which freed Catherine when she was tied to the wheel to be martyred.Catherine of Alexandria was a Christian martyr initially sentenced to death on the wheel. When she was fastened to the wheel, she cried out to Jesus and her bonds were miraculously loosed and the wheel itself broke, its spikes flying off and killing some of the onlookers. She was then beheaded, angels took her remains to Mount Sinai. Around the year 800, monks from the Sinai Monastery found her remains. Hymn of St. Catherine. "O Jesus, your Lamb Katherine cries out to You with great love: ÔO my Bridegroom, I long for You in great pain, I am crucified with You, and in baptism I am buried with You. I suffer for Your sake in order to reign with You, I die for You in order to live in You. Accept me as an immaculate victim, since I am immolated for Your love'. The Monastery of Mt. Sinai was erected by Justinian I in 549 where tradition says is the site of the burning bush of Moses. Justinian built a castle around the monastery in 530, for the protection of the monks of the vicinity. The one mountain peak of Mt. Sinai is 5,014 feet above sea level, and is surrounded by massive granite walls. It is, as it were, a fortress. Many devout Christians from many countries, before and after the Crusades visit there. Knights of St. Catherine.The Knights of St. Catherine were protectors of the Monastery on Mount Sinai, said to be the oldest in the world.The Order was like the Hospitallers or Templars. There mission was to protect pilgrims in their journey across the lands controlled by the enemy. They guarded the Monastery and its caravan-lines in the Crusader period, and were vaguely associated with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, into which the Palestine branch of the Knights of St. Catherine was eventually absorbed. An active order of Greek Orthodox monks still lives at Mount Sinai, under the Archbishop of Sinai, who maintain the world's second largest collection of manuscripts, icons and reliquaries.