Penitential Bed 3 St Catherine’s Bed

3D Model

The saint of the third bed is the only one from outside Ireland: St Catherine of Alexandria, in Egypt. Catherine was a thinker and a scholar. She was martyred for Christ about 310. Her tomb is venerated on Mount Sinai in an ancient monastery that bears her name. With the returning Crusaders, devotion to St Catherine spread to the West, and was promoted in Ireland especially by the Canons Regular of St Augustine, who were custodians of the Lough Derg pilgrimage for almost 500 years until about 1600. The popularity in Ireland across the centuries of the names Catherine, Caitriona, Kathleen and so on, is a legacy of traditional devotion to this St Catherine.