Who was Thecla?
The leading lady of the apocryphal work the Acts of Thecla may not be a well-known figure today, but nearly every early Christian knew her name. She was renowned as a Christian martyr and missionary and later venerated by the Church as a saint.
Alicia D. Myers investigates the figure of Thecla, as well as early Christian perceptions of motherhood, in her column “Motherhood and the Early Christian Community,” published in the September/October 2018 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. In the early Church, St. Thecla was seen as a heroine and role model, who eschewed the social norms of the Roman Empire and chose to follow the teachings of the Apostle Paul—despite persecution.
So, who was Thecla really, and what did she believe?
Although it is not clear if St. Thecla was a historical person, stories of this figure come to us from the Acts of Thecla—a section of the Acts of Paul—dated to the end of the second century C.E.
According to the Acts of Thecla, Thecla is a first-century noblewoman of Iconium (in modern Turkey). When she hears Paul preach in her hometown, she is so absorbed in his message that she neither eats nor drinks for three days. She promptly becomes a Christian and decides to remain unmarried and celibate, as Paul advised.
Unfortunately, this is seen as a subversive act by her fiancé and her family, and Thecla is violently persecuted by being burned in a bonfire. Miraculously, the flames do not touch her, and she is spared.
After this close brush with death, she leaves Iconium and follows the Apostle Paul to Antioch. There, Alexander, one of the city’s leaders, desires Thecla. When she rejects him, Alexander hauls her in front of the governor, who sentences her to be thrown to wild beasts in an arena. Again, she miraculously survives this persecution—and emerges from the arena unharmed.
After her second miraculous deliverance, Thecla is freed, and she goes in search of the Apostle Paul once more. When she encounters him in Myra, he commissions her to spread the Gospel of Christianity, teach the Bible, and even baptize converts. She goes to Seleucia (in modern day Iraq) and teaches there.
Thecla’s commitment to Paul’s teachings, particularly her disavowal of marriage, was seen as a serious threat to the Roman Empire. Alicia D. Myers explains why:
Rejecting the “blessedness” of motherhood for the kingdom come was threatening to an empire that prided itself on establishing peace for the whole world (the Pax Romana). The Romans certainly weren’t looking for another kingdom to replace their own, and, for their empire to survive and thrive, it needed children. …
In the Roman world, good girls became mothers. Of course, to be able to wed and become a “woman” (the Greek word gyne means both “woman” and “wife”), one needed to be free and of enough means. Becoming a mother, bearing living children (ideally, sons) for her husband and for the stability of his household was essential to being a good wife. In fact, many ancient philosophers and medical authors believed that motherhood was a woman’s sole purpose in creation.
Thecla’s actions were revolutionary to say the least. Her countercultural stance set her at odds with the Roman Empire. Yet her fierce determination and faithfulness were celebrated by many in the early Church, and eventually this perspective would infiltrate the Roman Empire itself.
Learn more about Thecla in Alicia D. Myers’s column “Motherhood and the Early Christian Community,” published in the September/October 2018 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
——————Subscribers: Read the full column “Motherhood and the Early Christian Community” by Alicia D. Myers in the September/October 2018 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
From: https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/apocryphal-acts-paul-thecla/
The earliest mention of the text belongs to Tertullian, a little after 190, who wrote in On Baptism 17.5, that a presbyter (an elder or minister of the Christian Church) from Asia composed the AAPT and as a result was deposed by apostle John after confessing the sin of its composition. Jerome was convinced he could date the text between AD 60-98, but this seems as a far too early estimate (Iosif and Triantafillou 2008, p. 61).
Why did the text as soon as it circulated offend the sensibilities of male Christian fathers? One reason must have been because it preached an impossible code concerning sexuality. However, I will argue in this paper that it was rejected mainly because it presented Thecla as an empowered, independent charismatic figure and even more so because it showed the remarkable impact Thecla had on her female contemporaries.
Women appear in the text as strongly admiring Thecla – for the choices she made as far as her sex life was concerned, her traveling, her preaching in male clothes around the Mediterranean as a wandering charismatic and her resistance against authority and being vocal about their admiration. Thecla is the undisputed inspirational protagonist of the story. She clearly overshadows the apostle Paul and she highly impresses other women who can no longer hold their enthusiasm for her.
At the same time there is the idealization of lifelong celibacy over marriage, of cross-dressing and of traveling as a wandering charismatic. Paul, settling in one place, getting married and behaving according to what society has already prescribed for one’s gender (silence and passivity as far as women are concerned) are clearly of lower value. The text explicitly upsets the boundaries each gender was to observe.
This in my view was the main reason why it infuriated to such an extent mainstream Christian fathers of its time. Although the text was officially rejected, the figure of Thecla was lauded in later literature and preaching. Not earlier than a century after her death and the composition of the APTT prominent theologians such as Methodius of Olympus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus praised Thecla first and foremost as an exemplary virgin and then an ascetic and a martyr.
Thecla was a beautiful maiden from an upper class family residing at Iconium. Her family was about to marry her with a socially equal young man called Thamyris. The plan was disrupted when the apostle Paul came to the city and started preaching the Christian ideal of virginity. Thecla was mesmerized and shunned her fiancée and the plans made by others for her future.
Her mother Theocleia was furious with the unexpected disobedience and turned to the authorities and accused her own daughter for being anome (against the laws) and anymphesingle), and Paul for being a xenos(foreigner) and a magos (magician). As a result, Paul was arrested and sent to prison, where Thecla visited him. As was customary, she bribed the prison guards (with a silver mirror) to allow her access.
In prison, Thecla sat at Paul’s feet all night listening to his teaching and kissing his bonds in adoration. A public trial was soon held. The judge decided to expel Paul and to have Thecla burnt at the stake. Against all odds, Thecla was saved and she left the city. She met with Paul and she suggested that the apostle let her cut her hair short and join him in his travels around the Mediterranean. Paul unenthusiastically agreed. She also suggested that Paul baptize her. Paul refused, for it was too early.
Thecla and Paul then begun their travels together and reached Antioch where an upper class individual called Alexander found Thecla attractive and tried to rape her. Paul did absolutely nothing to help her out of the dire situation and even pretended not to be acquainted with her and left the city. Thecla stood her ground. But as a result she had to stand yet another trial for assaulting a nobleman. This time she was sentenced to be thrown to the beasts.
The female citizens of Antioch furiously protested and wholeheartedly and openly supported her. They could not keep silent. She had a tremendous impact on them and they could not endure passively the injustice. A wealthy, upper class woman called Thryphaena, who happened to have just lost her daughter (mortality rates in antiquity before the advent of antibiotics were extremely high), said publicly she would protect Thecla.
In a dramatic episode, as she was about to meet her death Thecla, who could not afford to wait any longer for an unwilling male (i.e. Paul) to baptize her, baptized herself in the arena in front of the crowd. (Baptism signified remission of sins and guaranteed entrance to heaven, so Thecla could take no chances.)
By another divine intervention Thecla was saved and set free. She then adopted male attire and started looking for Paul and indeed found him in Myra. Paul suggested she teach the word of God as a wandering charismatic. Thecla happily complied. After many years Thecla returned to Iconium where she tried to be reconciled with her mother. She ended up in Seleuceia and she met her death there.
According to another version of the story that survives Thecla lived for seventy two years as an ascetic and offered superb medical services to her frequent visitors. The Christian Church promoted ascetics and monks as the new highly successful and highly powerful physicians of the day in an attempt to keep people away from Asclepeia where incubation was practiced. When Thecla was ninety there was yet another attempt of rape against her, this time by a gang of pagans solicited by the physicians of the city who, because of Thecla, had lost their clients. God intervened and prevented the rape.
The Acts of Paul and Thecla in context
It is crucial to try to read the text in context. Let’s first focus on Thecla’s sex life – or rather lack of it. Thecla’s decision to shun marriage was very serious for the cultural norms of her times. In reality not only did she despise the wishes and expectations of her family, but also, and perhaps even more importantly, she ignored the Roman tradition and Roman laws.
Roman law punished those who were childless and single, and only later the first Christian emperor, Constantine (r. AD 306-337), abolished them. Society expected a maiden to realize and fulfill her destiny by becoming a wife and a mother. Especially the upper classes cared to have descendants to inherit their property. Selecting lifelong celibacy was virtually unthinkable for a conservative pagan. It was a radical choice Christianity offered its members.
Today in western cultures, lifelong celibacy is generally thought of as a conservative choice, but in late Roman times, when the norm was marriage and procreation, lifelong celibacy offered independence from the dominion of a spouse and freedom in the management of one’s body and sexuality.
Christianity attacked the traditional social values and offered the possibility of constructing a new “family”. A common pagan complaint against early Christians was that they weakened the grasp that pagan parents rightly and traditionally had over their offspring.
Thecla’s sexual choices were not unique. Melania the Younger’s case is similar to Thecla’s. According to the Life of Melania, composed in AD 440, a year after her death, by the priest and monk Gerontius, Melania was a senator’s daughter forced by her family to marry and to procreate. Melania apparently had other priorities, and she managed to convince her new husband Pipianus to follow together an ascetic lifestyle, in poverty, charity, fasting, prayer and asexuality. In order to persuade him she promised he would have total control over her considerable assets. Pipianus agreed with one condition, that they first have two children together. Celibate couples became a trend in late antiquity, especially in upper class Christian circles during the fourth and fifth centuries (Alwis 2011).
A Poem by Mary Ann Matthys
Thecla
Beauty Dear
Naked, unafraid
See the face of the Good in the crowd.
There is power in her, they said.
Standing on a pyre
Divine presence rained down
In compassion from a dark sky—
God’s intercession.
Do not let the fire consume…
Stand by this heart.
She belongs to you.
…the prayer of the one who lit her path.
“I will cut my hair short
And follow you wherever you go”
…her words to the teacher of the Good.
Stand up to power
Rip off his cloak and crown
Public shame and sacrilege
In a moment of self agency…
Wild beasts ensue.
See, the lioness licks your feet
As you cry out ‘my refuge, guard my holiness’
…somehow the lioness knew
you were wild like her
Chained by men
who sought to control
with fire and shackles…
They couldn’t shackle your soul.
Stripped again
Naked, unafraid
Lions and bears surround
My naked presence…
Lioness, heart of the mother, lay at my feet
Tear the bear apart
Engage the lion
I mourn you in gratitude for my life.
Water flowing in the name of the Good
I baptize myself on the last day
Diving in.
Lightning flashes
A cloud of fire
The very presence of the Holy
Surrounds me now.
Petals, nard, cinnamon, cardamom…
Sleep wild ones, sleep.
Bind me.
I am unbound.
‘Who are you?’
I trust the child of God, the Good.
I am a slave to no man.
In my self agency
I serve the living God…
My refuge in a storm
My freedom in oppression
My shelter in despair
My trust is in the Holy One.
Clothe me in my nakedness
Amidst the wild beasts
My garment is the Holy
Now and forever.
Amen
