Thecla was the most popular female saint in the early Christian church. Her story provided a touchstone for communities of women for centuries. And for the early church, Thecla was honored even more than Mary. So how come we know so little of her today?

Thecla is a first century Christian saint featured in a very popular account of her adventures with the apostle Paul. Her adventures were the first of a tradition of female cross-dressing saints lauded in the early Church, though her dressing as a man did not play as large a role in her legend as it would in the stories of later female saints. Thecla’s life was recounted in the 2nd century non-orthodox work known alternatively as the Acts of Paul, Acts of Thecla, or the Acts of Paul and Thecla. My considerably shorter and paraphrased version of that work follows.

Thecla Meets Paul

Thecla was engaged to be married to a man named Thamyris when she overheard Paul preaching to a crowd outside her window. “Blessed are the bodies of virgins,” Paul was saying among other platitudes. For three days the young woman would neither eat nor drink nor leave her perch upon the window, so entranced she was by the words of Paul. Both Thamyris and her mother tried to convince her to break out of her apparent enchantment to no avail. Angry over this alienation of affection, Thamyris went to the authorities and set in motion events that led to Paul’s imprisonment.

Thecla bribed a prison guard to let her see Paul. Her faith was strengthened by their first actual meeting and she kissed his fetters. The governor brought Paul and Thecla before him and inquired why this girl refused to marry. But Thecla said nothing, only staring at Paul. Enraged, her mother screamed, “Burn the lawless one.” The governor agreed, for he was worried that other women would refuse to marry as Thecla had.

After wood and kindling was gathered, Thecla was brought in naked to be burned. But when they set fire to the kindling, a storm arose and a great hailstorm put out the fire. So fierce was the storm that several bystanders were killed.

Now free, Thecla once again sought out Paul. She told him, “I will cut my hair short and follow you.” But Paul, who was beginning to love this young woman, replied, “The season is unfavorable and you are comely. May no other temptation come upon you.”

Thecla, the Women and the Lionesses

Paul and Thecla traveled to Antioch where a Syrian named Alexander became smitten with her. When Alexander tried to win over Paul, perhaps to purchase Thecla, Paul declared “I do not know the woman of whom you speak, nor is she mine.”

When Alexander tried to embrace Thecla in the street, she fought back, tearing his cloak and knocking the crown off his head. A wealthy woman named Tryphaena, whose daughter Falconilla had died, took Thecla in and tried to protect her, finding “comfort in her.”

Humiliated, Alexander saw to it that Thecla was brought before the governor of Antioch who condemned her to be thrown in with the lions. The women of the court became very upset, declaring the governor’s judgment godless and evil. In the meantime, Tryphaena had a dream in which her dead daughter spoke to her.

“Mother,” the spirit of Falconilla said, “you shall have in my place the stranger, Thecla, who has no one else to care for her. Take her as your own, so that she might pray for me and see me safely to the realm of the just.”

Tryphaena returned to the coliseum. The authorities bound Thecla to a ferocious lioness. But Thecla sat on the lioness, and the lioness licked her feet. But Tryphaena wept, knowing that the governor would surely have more horrors in store.

The following day, the women of Antioch cried out in protest. “May the city perish for this lawlessness,” they shouted. “Slay us all proconsul!” Tryphaena went down to comfort her adoptive daughter, but the guards tore Thecla from her grasp.

This time Thecla was put in the arena with lions and a bear. A new lioness ran to Thecla’s feet to defend her. The lioness killed the bear and fought off the male lions though was killed in the process. The women in the crowd mourned the loss of the brave creature.

The governor sent out other beasts. But Thecla, spying a large reservoir of water threw herself into it, baptizing herself. And the women threw petals of flowers into the ring, so there was such an abundance of fragrance that all the wild beast laid down as if asleep.

Not to be thwarted, the governor ordered wild bulls to be set loose. At this Tryphaena fainted. Seeing this, the governor became afraid, for the lady was a kinswoman of the emperor and he feared she might be dead. The governor ordered Thecla’s freedom, asking the young woman who she was.

“I am a handmaid of the living God,” Thecla declared. The governor brought garments for her to wear, but she said “God will clothe me with salvation on the day of judgement.” Only then did she don the clothes.

Thecla Dresses as a Man

Once again free, Thecla went to live in Tryphaena’s home where she preached to her maidservants. Desiring to see Paul again, Thecla now sewed her mantle into a cloak “after the fashion of men” and went to the city of Myra where she’d learned he was preaching.

When Paul saw how Thecla was dressed he wondered if “another temptation” hadn’t possessed her. Seeing Paul’s discomfort, Thecla boldly declared, “I have taken on the water of life, Paul. For the Spirit that worked with you has also worked with me.”

With Paul’s blessing, Thecla returned to Iconium where she learned that Thamyris had died. She witnessed to her mother but her mother’s reaction was not recorded. Thereafter Thecla moved to the city of Seleucia where she enlightened many before she “slept with a noble sleep.”

A later Greek text suggests Thecla lived in Seleucia as a hermit, miraculously healing people many people with the spirit of God. A local physician, jealous of her powers, hired a band of thugs to rape her. Thecla fled from the would-be rapists. A rock miraculously opened up before her and when she had entered it, closed back around her. In this alternative story, Thecla never died—a fate only awarded a select few in the Bible.

Female Solidarity in the Legend of Thecla

What is remarkable even today in Thecla’s story is the touching solidarity of women (even female lions), triumphing over the forces of male authority in peaceful ways. (Never underestimate the power of rose petals!) The male powers-that-be in the early church had cause to be worried by the story of Thecla and her supporters. Other stories of Christian women dressing as men would follow, but none would have a message as radical as hers.

Stephen Davis’ book, The Cult of St. Thecla, details how her legend provided a context for religious communities of women in Ancient Turkey and Egypt, though the cult spread as far West as Gaul (France).

The Context of Devotionals to Thecla

Thecla was the object of intense devotional attention by women in what is in modern times Turkey. The Acts of Paul was written by a presbyter in the late second century in central Turkey. It is thought that her legend had been passed on orally for a hundred years. The author of the work was subsequently ousted from the early church for promoting what was considered heretical material by the officials of the mainstream church. Some of what was at issue was that Thecla was portrayed baptizing herself and then preaching to and baptizing others, authority the orthodox church denied to women.

While the legend of Thecla originated in the region of Galatia, to the immediate west lay Phyrgia where a Christian sect known as the New Prophecy was very popular for centuries. The New Prophecy was based on the teachings of a man named Montanus and several prominent female prophetesses, most especially Priscilla and Maximilla. The New Prophecy, or Montanism as its enemies labeled it, sprang up in the second century.

The followers of the New Prophecy embraced the active leadership of women in the church. Some scholars believe Thecla’s legend was part of that tradition. It was, in any case, consistent in its regard for female leadership though Thecla’s legend didn’t as fully focus on prophetic gifts. While Paul traveled through Phyrgia, so did Philip’s daughters, four female prophets who came to be much regarded as figures justifying female leadership by the followers of the New Prophecy.

Tertulian, a Christian theologian of the period, seemed to be reacting to the New Prophecy when he denied the authenticity of The Acts of Paul, thus trying to undermine those who cited Thecla as a basis for women’s right to baptize. Her rejection of a fiancé also parallels the actions of the female prophets, Priscilla and Maximilla, leaving their own husbands to pursue their sense of spiritual calling.

Despite Tertulian’s attacks, Thecla was evoked as “the holiest of women” by Egyptian Christian writers. She was cited as the inspiration for many female ascetics living the monastic life there in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. Clearly her influence on Christian thinking waxed strongly before it waned in subsequent years. Stephen Davis’ book, The Cult of St. Thecla, supplies groundbreaking research on how a reverence towards Thecla’s example infused the monastic life of Egyptian Christian women.

At its peak, women living a monastic life as well as other female Christians, showed devotional attention to Thecla from as far West as ancient France, as far East as Palestine and as far South as Egypt. Davis suggests the nature and shape of the devotionals varied on the life circumstances of the women.

“The virgin living in an urban household,” Davis concluded at the end of his book, “the wondering desert ascetic, the wealthy international pilgrim, the married woman living near a shrine each would have shared a common desire to imitate Thecla the saint. By imitating the female apostle and protomartyr, devoted women laid claim to her charisma, a spiritual power made accessible to them in the shrines and sacred artefacts of the Thecla cult.” (Davis, p. 194)

A Pilgrimage to Thecla’s Shrine

We’re lucky to have a surviving travelogue of a wealthy woman from Constantinople named Egeria who undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 384 CE. On the way back she made sure to stop at the shrine of Saint Thecla in Turkey. He account gives a glimpse of how important Thecla was in the early church.

“Round the holy church (located at the shrine) there is a tremendous number of cells for men and women … (as part of) the monastery which had been established there. In God’s name I arrived at the martyrium, and we had a prayer there, and read the who Acts of holy Thekla; and I gave heartfelt thanks to God for his mercy in letting me fulfill all my desires so completely, despite all my unworthiness. For two days I stayed there, visiting … the men as well as the women.” (Johnson, xxiv, translation by Wilkinson)

Pilgrimages to the shrine in Turkey were a common goal by the women who could afford to make the journey, coming from both Greece and Egypt.

Thecla and Mary as Rival Models for Women

Another Thecla scholar, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, makes a most interesting observation in The Life and Miracles of Thekla. He provides historical evidence that in the early centuries of the Christian church, Thecla was given far more stature as a model Christian woman than was Jesus’ own mother Mary. As an example of this, Johnson notes that in a Christian symposium written by Methodius, circa 300, that Thecla was declared chief of the virgins, not Mary.

The Virgin Mary’s recognition as a central figure of devotion gradually increased in the next few centuries, largely supplanting Thecla by the sixth century. Thecla devotion seems to have lasted the longest in Egypt, at least through the eighth century. Many an Egyptian daughter was named after her.

It is hopefully not cynical for me to suggest that the ascendance of Mary as the male approved model for Christian women emerged in part because her own legend was considerably more docile and less assertive than that of Thecla’s. Male Christian leaders who disapproved of a female leadership role in the church had incentive to promote Mary and de-legitimize Thecla.

Was Thecla a Real Person?

For the longest time, scholars answered with a resounding “No”. The Acts of Thecla was considered a romantic fiction created by an ill-advised presbyter in Christian Turkey. Its endorsement of female leadership, in the minds of male leaders in the mainstream church, made the work “heretical” to boot. The very fanciful nature of the tale certainly suggests a fiction, though fanciful tales occur in the Bible as well.

More recent scholars like Stephen Davis suggest it is more likely that the much maligned presbyter was merely putting to paper oral legends surrounding the saint that had been passed on verbally for decades. Otherwise, why would some totally original work about a totally fictitious person catch on and get recopied and distributed as widely as this work was?

The fact that there was likely a long-standing oral tradition about St. Thecla still doesn’t prove that she existed. I’d like to think there was some original figure who inspired the oral legend which became increasingly exaggerated and fantastic over time. Central Turkey isn’t that large a place. Could a legend like this really spring up in the time frame of a hundred years with absolutely no historical basis and become so widely accepted by so many? On the other hand, did any such historical woman know and travel with Paul? There is simply no historical evidence one way or the other.

Why Does Thecla Matter?

In a surprisingly large number of Christian denominations, the role that women should or can play in leadership of the church is still debated. The history surrounding the legend of St. Thecla proves this was no settled matter in the early church. It also underscores that women’s leadership was accepted in many regions. And whether you’re Christian or not, I think the legend of Thecla makes for some pretty interesting reading even today.

I also think that Thecla as the first of a series of female saints who dressed as men might have some resonance among the transgender community. A fanciful tale featuring such solidarity among women also seems worthy of celebration in any case.

For me, personally, I’m interested in pulling together a new, interconnected narrative of women in the Christian tradition who defied the confines of their culture and demonstrated leadership and special gifts. Whether the stories appear to have a clear historical basis, as in the case of Philip’s daughters, or are clearly a work of fiction, as in the case of Job’s daughters, is less important to me.

More of these stories of spiritual and spirited women will appear here in the coming months. In my view Thecla fits in a broader tradition of Women Prophets and other powerful spiritual heroines!

References

Anson, John (1974). The female transvestite in early monasticism: The origin and development of a motif, Viator, 5, pp. 1-3, 6, 9-11

Barnstone, Willis, ed. (1984). The Other Bible. San Francisco: Harper & Row, pp. 445-53.

Davis, Stephen J. (2001). The Cult of St. Thecla. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.

Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald (2006). The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study. Cambridge, MA: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Trevett, Christine (1996). Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15-16.

Mark Carlson-Ghost