# Emperor Maximin: the executioner

According to the Légende Dorée, Emperor Maximin I ordered St. Catherine's death. For refusing to marry her, the emperor subjected her to hunger, nudity, the wheel and, finally, decapitation, without the saint ever denying her faith. By taking the place of the martyr in the figure of the beheaded man at the foot of St. Catherine, he poses as a defeated pagan.

The authors question the true identity of the emperor. It could be Maxentius, who reigned between 306 and 312 and launched several campaigns to persecute Christians in Rome. But the name Maxentius in the sources could be the result of a mistranslation of Maximin, who was the emperor who persecuted Christians in the East.