Download PDF | Ghazzal Dabiri (editor), Flavia Ruani (editor) - Thecla and Medieval Sainthood_ The Acts of Paul and Thecla in Eastern and Western Hagiography-Cambridge University Press (2022).
360 Pages
THECLA AND MEDIEVAL SAINTHOOD
Saint Thecla was one of the most prominent figures of early Christianity who provided a model of virginity and a role model for women in the early Church. She was the object of cult and of pilgrimage and her tale in the Acts of Paul and Thecla made a tremendous impact on later hagiographies of both female and male saints. This volume explores this impact on medieval hagiographical texts composed in Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Greek, Irish, Latin, Persian, and Syriac. It investigates how they evoked and/or invoked Thecla and her tale in constructing the lives and story worlds of their chosen saints and offers detailed original readings of the lives of various heroines and heroes. The book adds further depth and nuance to our understanding of Thecla’s popularity and the spread of her legend and cult.
GHAZZAL DABIRI is an Iranist who specializes in narratives of kingship, kinship, and sainthood. She received her PhD from UCLA and has held positions at various institutions including Columbia University and currently the University of Maryland. A Fulbright Scholar, she also held a European Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at Ghent University.
FLAVIA RUANT is a researcher at the Institut de recherche et @histoire des textes, CNRS, Paris. She specializes in late antique and medieval Syriac Christianity, focusing on religious controversies, manuscript studies, hagiography, and the history of Manichaeism. She has translated into French the Hymns against Heresies by Ephrem the Syrian (2018).
Acknowledgments
This volume, much like the impetus for late antique pilgrims to Saint Thecla’s shrines, was born out of a series of group readings and discussions held at the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University in Belgium. The focus of these meetings was on late antique Christian hagiographies and pagan and Jewish romances. These meetings and, thus, this volume would not have come to fruition without funding from the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC’s interest in research that spans across time and space provided the resources for scholars working on different regional and textual traditions to come together and focus on popular tales and motifs found throughout the late antique and medieval periods across east and west. As such, I would like to express my appreciation for and gratitude to the ERC for their financial support for such endeavors and to Ghent University for the time and space to pursue these studies.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Flavia Ruani whose friendship, dedication, exuberant enthusiasm, and moral support made working on this volume a great pleasure. My thanks go to Koen De Temmerman, who brought a wonderful group together on his ERC project (no. 337344). My sincerest thanks go to Julie Van Pelt and Klazina Staat for their enthusiasm for the volume from its inception, for their lively and spirited discussions, and ultimately for agreeing to contribute to the volume. I would like to thank wholeheartedly the contributors of the volume for their enlightening chapters. I offer my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers at Cambridge University Press for taking the time to read the volume, offering their invaluable suggestions for improvement, and their overall support for the volume’s publication. My sincere thanks go to the commissioning editor, Michael Sharp, and the editorial assistant, Katie Idle, for their expert guidance.
Above all, I thank my parents for their unwavering support and endless patience. The completion of this volume was made possible by their love and generosity. The encouragement of great siblings and friends also did wonders. As did Thecla’s intercession at key moments.
Ghazzal Dabiri
Introduction, Ghazzal Dabiri
It is an old, yet powerful story. A beautiful young woman falls in love, and try as they might, her disapproving family and friends fail to dissuade her from that love or keep her from her beloved. Persistent and uncompromising, the young woman disrupts the social order of her world, be it that of high school or high society. And by tale’s end, either the lover and her beloved are integrated back into society or a new world order arises (uneasily sometimes) out of the ashes.
Perusing through a list of popular young adult novels, teen movies, and ancient romances, one may be struck by the sheer number of stories that follow this arc. The same story line was also popular in the late antique and medieval periods. A subset of the latter, however, follow a slightly different track. They detail the lives and trials of women who have fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with the transcendental, namely, the word of God, and some, even on pain of torture and death, claim Christ as their eternal bridegroom.
One of, if not the earliest extant tale to carve out this particular track is the Acts of Thecla, also commonly known as the Acts of Paul and Thecla (henceforth APT). Composed in the second century, the Acts of Thecla is a short, yet engrossing and complex tale within the larger apocryphal Acts of Paul. It is the story of a persistent, young, beautiful woman named Thecla who comes to love the word of God as spoken by the apostle Paul. She leaves her home, mother, and fiancé to learn more about the eternal rewards accorded to virgins. In her pursuit of Paul’s teachings, she survives violent rejection by her mother, denial of baptism and her personhood by her beloved teacher," sexual assault, trifling governors, and, miraculously, two sadistic trials before finally emerging triumphant, having self-baptized with God’s tacit approval to become an apostle in her own right.
Though the Acts of Thecla takes place in Iconium (modern-day Konya, Turkey),* Antioch (modern-day Antakya, Turkey), and, to a lesser extent, Seleucia (modern-day Sifilike, Turkey), the tale spread like wildfire throughout Christendom. It sparked the imaginations of bishops, church fathers, saints, emperors, hagiographers, and ordinary readers alike from as far west as medieval Ireland, as far east through the late antique Iranian world via the Church of the East to the borders of China, and as far south as North and East Africa. Wherever Christians trekked, so too did Thecla’s story. Greatly cherished, the heroine and her tale inspired numerous cults as well as shrines to be built in her name.’
Among the most important of the latter is the Hagia Thecla near Seleucia, which was a popular pilgrimage destination and a location where important personages such as Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390), the Archbishop of Constantinople and one of the most influential Christian theologians, visited and for which the Byzantine emperor Zeno the Isaurian (d. 491) added a prominent church on a hillside nearby.* The tale’s many admirers (and even some of its detractors)’ heralded its heroine as Paul’s disciple and as an apostle. They also celebrated her as a paradigmatic model of virginity, charismatic confessor, (proto-)martyr, leader, teacher, intercessor, and saint in a wide variety of literary and material productions.°
As Jeremy Barrier and Damien Labadie point out in their respective contributions to this volume (Chapters 1 and 2), the APT might have been read as hagiography among women in North Africa (Barrier), who were claiming Thecla and her story as their justification for teaching and baptizing as soon as the late second and early third centuries, and, later, in East Africa (Labadie) as her story was transmitted along with other Martyr Acts. Moreover, as the chapters in this volume altogether highlight, she served as a preeminent model for later hagiographers of female and sometimes male saints in each of the aforementioned capacities and to varying degrees both directly and indirectly. Whether in their relationships, in moments of great peril, or in word, behavior, or deed, many female saints, as they are represented in hagiographies, are inspired to be like Thecla.
But who exactly was Thecla? According to the anonymous presbyter from Asia, who gathered and organized the stories of Paul and Thecla, she is a beautiful young woman from a prominent family who rises to prominence as a model of virginity and forbearance; she is someone who baptizes herself and is given a mandate to teach by Paul himself. More specifically, she is the daughter of Theocleia and, by the end of the first act, the ex-fiancée of Thamyris. Significantly, she was a “leading woman of the Iconians” (§ 4.1) before becoming the “handmaiden of God”(§ 4.12).” Scholars have noted that besides Paul, two other figures in the tale, namely, Falconilla and Queen Tryphaena, did exist.’
However, there is little to support the historicity of Thecla herself or the events described in her tale, miracles aside.’ It has been suggested that Thecla’s legendary tale may be based on oral and written accounts of women or one woman, who may or may not have been named Thecla, who suffered through trials after encountering Paul and subscribing to his teachings. In any case, it is salient that throughout the pre-modern world, Thecla was widely considered a powerful and prominent symbol and model and that she was frequently evoked and invoked as such in a wide variety of cultural productions. It is quite likely, then, that she and her story were accepted as historical by those who heard or read her tale; made the long, arduous, and, especially for women, dangerous journey across the eastern and western Mediterranean world to visit her shrines; or evoked her as a model in their writings of later saints’ Lives. It certainly is the sense one gets reading later works that refer to her. Nevertheless, just as her historicity remains an open question, so too does the perception of her historicity throughout the pre-modern world.
The overarching aim of this volume, then, is to explore the extents to which late antique and medieval hagiographers evoked and/or invoked Thecla and her tale in constructing the lives and storyworlds of their chosen saints. Indeed, in the various hagiographical tales under study in this volume, Thecla is a model for saints who by turns are depicted as acts to follow for embodying various aspects of holiness — confessor, martyr, virgin, spiritual lover, leader, and teacher — of which, in circular fashion, Thecla is most emblematic.'° Thus, with this aim, we hope to add further depth and nuance to our understanding of Thecla’s popularity, the spread of her legend and cult, which studying female storytelling, shrines dedicated to her, and the shifting perspectives of the Church have afforded us heretofore. Here, then, it would behoove us to delve further into the APT before transitioning to an overview of the larger debates surrounding Thecla and her tale and the specifics of this volume.
The Acts of Thecla: A Tale of Reversals, Replacements, and Disruptions
According to the Acts of Thecla, Thecla’s apostolic career begins soon after Paul enters Iconium. He is invited by Onesiphorus and his family — Thecla’s neighbors — to teach in their home. Thecla, sitting by a window, hears Paul’s teaching and is immediately enthralled. She remains riveted to her chair for three days and nights listening to him. Theocleia, distraught, sends for Thamyris to see if he can persuade Thecla to speak, eat, or just simply move since she has failed to do so. When his pleas also fall on deaf ears, Thamyris seethes, and his very public display of anger instigates a mob to arrest Paul. Later that night, Thecla steals away from her home so she can continue to listen to Paul’s teaching. She bribes her own porter and the prison guards with her gold bracelets and some valuables she has taken from her house. She spends the night listening to Paul teach, kissing his shackles. In the morning, seeing that Thecla is not home, her mother and household mourn for her as for the dead. Later, they find her at the prison with Paul and alert the governor who orders Paul to be flogged and driven from the city. Theocleia, enflamed with fury, also demands that her daughter be burned at the stake."’ Tied to the stake, Thecla searches for her teacher but sees the Lord who takes on Paul’s image. When the fire is lit, a great blaze breaks out, and God sends rain and hail to protect Thecla while it destroys many nearby.
Amazed by the turn of events, the governor releases Thecla who then sets out to find Paul. After a touching reunion with Paul and Onesiphorus and his family in a cave near Antioch, Thecla offers to cut her hair, but Paul tells her that she is beautiful and that she may not endure a second trial. She then asks him to baptize her so that she may be fortified, but he defers. In Antioch, Alexander, a nobleman, sees Thecla and is captivated by her beauty. He turns to Paul and asks him to whom does she belong. Paul claims not to know her. Alexander then grabs Thecla, who, in defense of herself, declares herself to be a leading woman of the Iconians and so is not to be touched. She then rips Alexander’s clothes and knocks his crown off his head. Enraged, Alexander arranges and pays for her trial with the proconsul. While awaiting trial, Thecla is taken under the protection of Queen Tryphaena, a relative of the emperor and whose daughter, Falconilla, had recently passed away. In mourning, Tryphaena asks Thecla to pray for her daughter’s soul. After Thecla does, Tryphaena dreams of her daughter who is now in heaven. Later, at the trial, Alexander releases a series of wild animals among which a lioness emerges to protect Thecla from the other beasts. Then, a pool of savage seals is brought out, and Thecla sees it as her opportunity to be baptized. She jumps into the pool in the name of Jesus. Fiery lightning strikes. The seals are struck dead as a cloud covers Thecla’s nude body. After miraculously surviving another onslaught, this time by bulls whose genitals are enflamed and which causes Queen Tryphaena to faint, the proconsul calls a halt to the trial in his fear that the queen may have passed away. Though she has not, the proconsul, nonetheless awed, asks who Thecla is. This time, she declares that she is the handmaiden of God. She is released and, after fashioning a male cloak for herself, she sets out for Myra to find Paul with her new followers, which includes witnesses at her trial and Queen Tryphaena and her household, in tow. She informs Paul of her baptism, and when she also informs him of her intent to return to Iconium, he tells her to go and teach. In Iconium, she finds her mother and offers herself and wealth to her, both of which her mother, in her turn, silently refuses. Then, she sets out for Seleucia where she remains teaching until her dying day.
What emerges from even a summary of the events is that the tale is one of progression — a housebound, silent young woman from a leading family of Iconium becomes a vocal handmaiden of God who travels and teaches. Nevertheless, it is also clear that, intratextually, Thecla’s story is one of continual “reversals and replacements.”** It maintains a delicate equilibrium between opposing tensions. For instance, as much as it is about emotional and physical brutality, it is also about companionship and love: for the loss of her mother, her teacher, and family wealth, Thecla gains a benefactor, protector, and adoptive mother in the powerful Queen Tryphaena whom she turns into her disciple. In a symbolically charged moment, Thecla bribes her porter and Paul’s prison guard with a silver mirror and her gold bracelets respectively, giving up the trappings of her status and familial wealth, to be able to sit at Paul’s feet to listen to his teachings. By tale’s end, however, Thecla is in the position to offer money and herself as a daughter to her mother, who may have lost her status with Thecla’s dismissal of her engagement. And while Thecla was silent and unresponsive to her mother’s pleas in the beginning, her mother at the end is silent and unresponsive to her daughter. Thecla also receives divine solace, which appears in the shape of Paul’s face, when she searches for her teacher among the crowd at her first trial and cannot find him. Though tortured and denied baptism by her beloved teacher, she takes baptism for herself with God’s tacit approval, and as a result Paul gives her permission to teach on her own. Meanwhile, though Paul and Thecla preach and adhere to sexual continence, the tale also promotes the Christian family in its depiction of Onesiphorus and the aid he and his family give to Paul at the risk of losing their own wealth and status.'* Moreover, Thecla is both desiring (following Paul to learn more about the word of God) and its reverse, desired (the object of love — Thamyris — and lust — Alexander), '* as the tale illustrates the potential damages of being both the subject and object of desire.'* And, finally, if Alexander, at the beginning of the second act, asks Paul if he knows to whom Thecla belongs, and she responds with her social status, by the end of her trial, the awed proconsul directly asks Thecla who she is, and she declares that she belongs to (is a servant of ) God.
The most significant reversal, however, is to be found at the level of the greater text; in a story dedicated to Paul’s apostolic mission, for the duration of two acts, Thecla is the primary focus. Put in other terms, Thecla is the protagonist of her own tale, her own apostolic calling and mission, in a work that is otherwise centered around Paul. Just as remarkable is the fact that Paul is largely absent from Thecla’s tale, albeit his presence is greatly felt throughout in Thecla’s desire to be with and follow him and in her choice to follow his teaching even to (near) death. It should come as little surprise, then, that the tale, which, as noted above, is sometimes referred to as the Acts of Thecla by ancient, medieval, and modern authors and scholars alike, was detached from the larger Acts of Paul and circulated separately and widely. The situation was replicated in the last few decades of the twentieth century when the Acts of Thecla garnered much scholarly interest among feminist scholars who sought to reclaim the role women played in the development of early Christianity. From thence forward, the Acts of Thecla was catapulted into the limelight, nearly rivaling Thecla’s popularity in the late antique and medieval periods.
Indeed, both the APT and the attention it received throughout the late antique and medieval periods have been the subjects of a vast trove of studies, with each scholar breaking new ground while building on the seminal works of their peers and predecessors. Thecla and her tale have been analyzed from multiple perspectives."° On the historical front, Stephen Davis, in an impressive study, has looked at the establishment and spread of Thecla’s cult across Eurasia and North Africa.” Sever J. Voicu has traced the popularity of Thecla and her tale into the most eastern parts of the Iranian world.** Valentina Calzolari similarly has dedicated multiple studies to the establishment of Christianity in relation to the cult of Thecla in Armenia.'? On the social front, scholars have read Thecla’s tale to shed light on the lives of women. For instance, in their groundbreaking works, Stevan L. Davies, Dennis R. MacDonald, and Virginia Burrus have explored different aspects of women’s autonomy in early Christianity — including virginity as a form of freedom from conservative social constraints — with the premise that women were not only the intended audiences but also the tellers of the APT and other Apocryphal Acts.*° In this regard, these scholars have taken part, to varying degrees, in the debates surrounding the complex, overlapping roles oral and written transmission may have played in the compiling and composition of the Apocryphal Acts more broadly.*' On the other hand, Kate Cooper, in her seminal study, notes that the representation of the overlapping spheres of the private and public lives of men and women (a stable home makes for a stable society) were upended in the APT and other apocryphal tales.** Accordingly, the APT was one of the many Christian texts to introduce a different moral language, one that through encouraging virginity challenged married Roman women’s identity, both Christian and pagan, in various ways, including the promotion of the ideal chaste wife for men.*’ In contrast, noting the growing power and influence of the figure of Thecla in the Church, Susan E. Hylen argues that the APT offers a nuanced, highly complex representation of women in early Christianity whereby women achieved leadership by upholding the standards of modesty. ' Meanwhile, Maud Burnett McInerney, taking her cue from earlier studies on virginity, argues that in medieval Europe, the virgin body staged and channeled aggressive masculine desire and reigned it in for the sake of “normal’ heterosexual communities” while, for women, virgin bodies became “sites upon which female communities were founded in life and in texts” with the APT as a popular vehicle.”
The Acts of Paul too has benefited from a wide array of studies in connection with other Apocryphal Acts. Though comparative studies between the Apocryphal Acts and the ancient novels (on which see below) had begun by the early twentieth century,*® much of the initial studies on the Apocryphal Acts themselves centered on manuscript studies — putting the pieces of the texts together — and philological questions that eventually gave way to broader interests such as linguistic and literary dependence — which Apocryphal Act depended on the others and by how much and, thus, which of the Apocryphal Acts came first. With the rise of intertextual studies, the conversation shifted from questions regarding primacy and dependence toward the dynamic relationship between the apocryphal and canonical Acts, possible oral versions in circulation, and the synoptic gospels.*” Simultaneous to intertextual studies, and largely driven by the efforts of Francois Bovon and Jan N. Bremmer, has been the study of the Apocryphal Acts as social documents that offer a window onto various aspects of late antique life and the ideological interests of their authors.**
However, the discourse that has given the most shape to studies on the Acts of Thecla is the possible relationship that exists between it and the ancient Greek novels.*? For indeed, the relationship between the Acts of Thecla and the ancient Greek novels is ultimately one of reversal at the intertextual level. As is well known, the heroines in the ancient Greek novels, like Thecla, are torn from their beloveds and families and face multiple obstacles to preserve their chastity, including sexual assault and forced marriages, as they travel about hoping to return home and be reunited with their loved ones. However, Thecla’s beloved is the word of God as spoken by Paul. In other words, even if, as many have argued, she desires to be with Paul and is torn from him, that desire is framed around learning (first act) and receiving baptism (second act). As such, though she is reunited with Paul (and twice no less) and her mother, she finally takes her leave of them as she does of her own fiancé. And, if we understand the cloak that she fashions for herself as that of the philosopher’s as McInerney does, she also departs metaphorically cloaked in God’s word, which she, in turn, imparts to others.*°
Though it is difficult to pin down exact dates for the ancient Greek novels, modern scholarship places them between the second and fourth century, which would make the earliest of them coeval with the Acts of Thecla. It is generally acknowledged, furthermore, that the Acts of Thecla, and much of Christian literary production from the first to the fourth centuries, were written, copied, or edited by authors who illustrate the same literary training (rhetoric, argumentation, imitation, and use of allusion) and belonged to the same cultural milieu as those of the ancient Greek novels. In other words, their authors not only read the same works and received similar training, they also likely competed for the same audiences.’" When viewed altogether, however, the reversals, the tension in opposition, exhibited in the Acts of Thecla and the growing number of hagiographical tales of female saints that follow a similar arc, on the one hand, and the ancient Greek novels, on the other, illustrate two different responses to the immense socio-religious upheavals underway that were sparked by the growth of Christianity. This is the conclusion to which both Judith Perkins and Kate Cooper have come in their own close readings of these texts; the relationship between them is an inverse one. In other words, while paying attention respectively to pain/suffering and constructions of gender, Perkins and Cooper have illustrated that the motifs of travel, adventure, love at first sight, displacement, chastity and fidelity, and threats to both work differently in the APT and Apocryphal Acts, on the one hand, and the romance novels, on the other. The latter affirm older social norms and the former work to disrupt them to create new, specifically Christian ones.**
Taking a look at social disruption in the Acts of Thecla, two different trajectories are pursued by our two protagonists, which reverberate throughout later hagiographies of female saints quite broadly. For, much like Thecla, “the sanctity of the large majority of women commemorated in Byzantine hagiography is associated with a man who makes female holiness possible either as a torturer or as a spiritual father”’’ (though Thecla’s own mother plays no small role in the AP7). In fact, many tales either follow or reverse the APT's specific dynamics between apostle/ teacher and disciple. Turning our attention to the APT, at the start, the apostle Paul enters the city of Iconium continuously (seemingly without pause for breath) teaching the word of the Lord. Soon after, he is invited into the home of Onesiphorus, who has been waiting for him at the town’s entrance, to continue that teaching. There, Paul carries on, offering beatitudes on God’s word as it concerns self-control and resurrection: “Blessed are those,’ he states, ‘who have kept the flesh chaste, for they will be a temple of God .... Blessed are they who are set apart from this world, for they will be well pleasing to God” (§ 3.5). Unbeknownst to either Paul or his host, Thecla, the girl next door, hears these words. They resound so powerfully within her that she immediately gives up all aspects of her life. By doing so, she disrupts what we can only assume to be a peaceful moment in her home life and city. But that was hardly her intent; it was Paul’s. For, even if he were unaware of Thecla at this particular juncture, many Iconians, including women, were visiting Onesiphorus’ home to listen to Paul’s teaching.
Indeed, Paul travels throughout the Greco-Roman world with the intent to proselytize. And he continues to do so in city after city, never deterred by the threats of or actual physical harm he receives at the hands of citizens and their leaders, until his martyrdom ends his mission. Thecla, meanwhile, is so enthralled by what Paul is teaching, specifically abstinence, that in the beginning she moves toward her new life intending only to hear more. Thus, Thecla’s life is upended and changed by circumstances of her own making, certainly, but not by initial intention. In Iconium, it is Thecla’s mother and fiancé who demand that the troublemakers, Paul and Thecla, be put to public trial for rejecting marriage and, thus, childbirth — essentially, their way of life; one that was actively promoted by the imperial family and Roman moral laws.’* In other words, it is her family’s despair and the disruption in their private and public lives that catapult Thecla into the public arena. In the beginning, then, Thecla is too young and inexperienced, perhaps, to be aware of the full ramifications of her actions until they have come to pass, especially since she embodies the virtues — namely, chastity and self-control’’ — that while highly valued by her pagan society, also make her an appropriate disciple to Paul.*®
Thecla, however, does more than disrupt the social order and project a different metanarrative than coeval romances with her conversion.’” She disrupts Paul’s plans — or more aptly lack thereof — for her with her steadfastness. Once she has survived her first trial, she seeks out Paul (who was driven from Iconium after he was flogged). She asks to accompany him. And he refuses with what many have noted is a hollow sounding excuse: she is beautiful, and she might find that she will act cowardly should she be forced to endure another trial.** When she insists that she will not, especially if she receives the seal of baptism, he tells her to be patient for she will receive the water (§ 3.25).’? We neither know if Paul’s words meant that he had foreseen her baptism or that he was shrugging her off. Scholarly opinion largely falls on the latter. Regardless, as has been noted previously and as Jeremy Barrier explores in new ways in his contribution to this volume (Chapter 1), Paul’s later acceptance of her self-baptism and permission to let her teach the word of God, in another intertextual reversal, runs contrary to what is attributed to him in the New Testament, where he declares women to not even be fit for speaking out loud in church, (1 Cor 14:35) much less teaching or giving baptism. This is, of course, the very issue Tertullian (b. c. 155) famously pointed out since he knew of women doing both, using Thecla as their model.
The Tale of Reversal Continues: Imitatio Theclae or Stories of Imitation and Emulation
Reversals and the social disruptions that confessional and _ spiritual conversions bring about for the individual and their family and community also permeate a large number of late antique and medieval hagiographies of female saints. So do perceptions of female saints as virgins and martyrs with a cause, intercessors, confessors, teachers, and leaders. And, as this volume aims to highlight in detail, many draw from Thecla’s tale to do so. It is, thus, surprising that apart from the notable work by Scott F, Johnson, which looks at the later Life and Miracles of Thecla as an “erudite paraphrase” of the APT,*° and by Davis, which examines many of the intimate connections between the APT and the Life and Passion of Eugenia,** there remain few works that systematically study the reception of the Acts of Thecla or study the work as an important intertext for a wide variety of hagiographical narratives. This, even as many studies overwhelmingly acknowledge Thecla’s ubiquitous popularity in a wide variety of contexts.
In this volume, thus, Valentina Calzolari (Chapter 4) demonstrates that the protagonists of several foundational texts for Armenian Christianity embody four different paradigms of holiness associated with Thecla, namely, virgin, preacher, patron saint, and apostle. One such heroine is Rhipsime (Arm. Hiip‘simé) who, according to the History attributed to Agathangelos, becomes the instrument by which all of Armenia converts to Christianity as a martyred virgin. And it is precisely, as Calzolari demonstrates, Thecla’s struggles with Alexander that Rhipsime’s tale follows, namely, through the saint’s personal and physically violent struggle with the pagan king of Armenia who was trying, unsuccessfully, to bed her. Another heroine, Sanduxt, and her teacher, Thaddaeus, trace Thecla’s and Paul’s respective apostolic paths. However, it is Sanduxt’s conversion of a powerful royal patron, Zarmanduxt, that Calzolari argues parallels closely the APT: Except, the former’s career as preacher is ended rather quickly; in this case, by the saint’s father (rather than mother as in the APT in a prime example of intertextual reversal) who orders her and her teacher’s execution.
Flavia Ruani, in her contribution (Chapter 5), looks at the ways in which four Syriac hagiographies not only model their protagonists on Thecla but also their secondary characters on those of the APT. In the Martyrdom of Febronia, for instance, the women who take on motherly roles similar to Queen Tryphaena (but in different respects) invoke Thecla as a model of endurance for Febronia as she faces a gruesome trial that is similarly staged as the one Queen Tryphaena witnesses. Interestingly, the Life of John of Tella is one of two texts that reverse the roles of parallel secondary characters. Indeed, the hagiographer of the Life of John of Tella notes the influence Thecla’s tale had on John as a young man before becoming bishop. But, as Ruani points out, the role of Thecla’s mother and fiancé is revised as supportive mother and friend. Arietta Papaconstantinou (Chapter 6), meanwhile, illustrates not a reversal in relationships but a reconfiguration of the multifaceted relationship between Paul and Thecla as a threesome between Paese and his sister Thecla and his business partner Paul in the Coptic Martyrdom of Paese and Thecla. The holy threesome, she argues, becomes an eschatological love triangle that adopts the language of brotherly love among monks.
Jeremy Barrier (Chapter 1) addresses directly the very fact that women were reading the APT, as a hagiographical text in North Africa, and were taking Thecla as a model for teaching and administering (or not) baptism. As Barrier argues, at the heart of Tertullian’s disgruntlement with these developments is the possible threat to the disruption of the authority of the North African churches that these practices entailed. Damien Labadie (Chapter 2), meanwhile, recounts the various ways in which medieval Ethiopic hagiographies invoke Thecla as a perfect confessor and martyr, even though she was never martyred and despite the fact that Ethiopian Christians were never ruled by a polytheist and, hence, were never persecuted.** Then, Labadie illustrates the extents to which the Ethiopic text Epistle of Pelagia draws from Thecla’s trials, especially in its depiction of torture and its ambiguous end. More than the specific acts of torture themselves, it is Thecla’s behavior (her steadfastness) at her trials on which various hagiographers center their attention, as in the cases of the aforementioned Ethiopic Epistle of Pelagia and the Syriac Martyrdom of Bassus and Susanna. \n the latter, as Ruani highlights, the hagiographer pauses from his narration to inform us that while persecuted, Susanna takes up the images of Thecla and Febronia, bringing to bear a larger hagiographical tradition. Caitriona O Dochartaigh, in her contribution (Chapter 3), traces Thecla’s literary itinerary throughout the Latin-speaking west, including litanies for the dead, to account for her appearance as a model martyr and apostle in medieval Irish poems and menologia.
Here, we turn our attention to those tales that not only imitate Thecla but also emulate (surpass in their imitation of) her. In Chapter 8, Virginia Burrus traces the development of virginal voice in late antiquity. She highlights the fact that in his Symposium, Methodius of Olympus (250-311) upends two central questions posed by Plato’s Symposium and the ancient Greek novel, Leucippe and Clitophon, namely, who gets to speak and to dictate the nature of the conversation on desire. He accomplishes this by giving Thecla pride of place in a debate on virginity. Burrus then notes how debating virgins surpass their model Thecla in their quite vocal defense and advocacy of chastity in the Life of Helia and the Life of Constantina, respectively.
As noted above, it is well established that the APT is prominently evoked in the Life and Passion of Eugenia — the heroine is inspired to lead a life of continence after reading Thecla’s tale, and she even takes on Paul’s apostolic track in the second half of the narrative as she teaches and converts women inside their homes. As I highlight in my contribution (Chapter 10), the Life and Passion of Eugenia and a medieval Persian mystical tale of an anonymous virtuous woman composed in verse, which contains strong parallels to both the APT and Eugenia’s story, pick up the thread of leadership and powerful patronage just at the moment when Thecla gains both, but her tale ends. Much like Thecla, the personal decisions of Eugenia and the virtuous woman have profound consequences for their respective families and cities. Except in these later cases, both Eugenia and the virtuous woman surpass Thecla as they both become the active instruments by which their entire communities convert. In Chapter 9, Klazina Staat demonstrates that in two Latin recensions of the Life and Passion of Eugenia, the heroine also surpasses Thecla but in her superb rhetorical skills. One peculiar aspect that she explores in relation to the changing reception of the APT among church fathers is that the later recension has removed all specific references to the APT. As Staat argues, audiences would have recognized Thecla and the APT as models nonetheless since she remained a popular figure throughout the Latin-speaking west and Paul’s beatitudes, as delivered in the APT (see above), remain largely intact.
Julie Van Pelt (Chapter 7) analyzes various allusions to the APT, including the marshalling of clustered motifs, across Greek and Italo-Greek hagiographies in a bid to understand how Thecla is evoked as a model broadly and to question whether she is evoked specifically as a model for cross-dressing saints. Van Pelt, in her contribution, thus, reverses course and asks readers to reexamine carefully the notion, prevalent in modern scholarship, that Thecla is the paradigmatic model for female transvestite saints. She argues, instead, that more nuanced readings illustrate that while the tales of transvestite saints do recall Thecla in multiple concrete ways, they do so less in terms of cross-dressing and more so in other aspects of Thecla’s life. In other words, though transvestite saints may imitate Thecla in other respects, they certainly surpass her in terms of disguise of identity and gender. She then proposes the Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena, the Life and Miracles of Thecla, and the Life of Eusebia called Xené as important intermediary steps both in the later interpretation of Thecla as a cross-dresser and in the development of this theme across a wide variety of later hagiographies in the Greekspeaking world.
The questions that may arise at this juncture for some readers are the following: How can we be certain that the Thecla invoked in the aforementioned texts is our Thecla, especially considering that many later saints bear her name? Relatedly, are the tales centering on Thecla’s namesakes, as in the Coptic Martyrdom of Paese and Thecla, enough to justify the claim that the AP7’s Thecla is the model? And, by what criteria may we judge motifs as having been drawn specifically from our Thecla’s tale, given the popularity of motifs such as fidelity to chastity and cross-dressing and their ubiquitous diffusion throughout oral and written texts?
In response, it should be noted first that there is good reason, generally speaking, to presume that hagiographers had direct access to the APT; namely, the fact that much of “the lost apocryphal acts have been recovered from hagiographic sources.”*? And indeed, Ruani and Labadie (Chapters 5 and 2, respectively), point out that the APT specifically circulated in manuscript collections of Lives of female saints including the ones they have chosen for study, while Calzolari notes that the tale circulated in manuscripts of homilies. On the one hand, then, the circulation of the Apocryphal Acts in manuscript compendia further confirms the argument that the APT and the other Apocryphal Acts were accessible inasmuch as they formed part of the important web of texts that simultaneously belonged and contributed to the making of Greco-Roman culture and eastern and western Christianity together with the Old and New Testaments, canonical Acts, Greek and Jewish novels, philosophical and theological treatises, and later hagiographies.** On the other hand, this may suggest that the Apocryphal Acts were indeed read as hagiography and served further to connect the one group of texts to the other. As noted above, the former is the track Barrier follows as he argues that Tertullian did have direct access to the Acts of Paul and Thecla; in other words, Tertullian was not basing his opinions solely on the fact that women were claiming Thecla as their model for teaching and baptizing. Tertullian and the women were intimately familiar with the tale.
Second, the contributors were not presented with any prerequisite criteria for their selections. This was done so as not to heavily favor one or a few hagiographical texts or generic types, motifs, or techniques (which will be addressed below). Indeed, to have done otherwise would have risked a smaller pool of texts certainly, but it also would have come at the expense of studying the rich variety of techniques that were used throughout the late antique and medieval periods generally and that are employed in the texts under study here and that give them layered depth. Nevertheless, even without such prerequisite criteria, the contributors have grappled with these challenging questions in similar ways as they detail the stronger and weaker ties and parallels to the APT.
In setting out to demonstrate that Thecla and the APT are used as models in the hagiographical texts under study here, the contributors trace the importance and itinerary of the APT within the cultural spheres of their linguistic traditions. By doing so, they establish the reputation, ubiquity, and popularity of Thecla and/or the APT specifically and primarily within the literary sphere (Papaconstantinou [Chapter 6] and Staat [Chapter 9] also delve into material culture). Each contributor, next, carefully sifts through the tales to highlight the various techniques with which hagiographers use to situate Thecla and her tale as models for their chosen saint. These techniques include but are not limited to invoking Thecla directly by name though not for its own sake but in order to specifically highlight certain characteristics a protagonist needs at moments similarly structured to the APT, marshalling hallmark motifs of the APT that cluster at similar moments (such as bribing guards with personal valuables and kissing the shackles of an imprisoned teacher within the broader motif of devotion to teacher), retracing specific elements of the APT's plot, staging similar scenes, alluding to the APT through phrasing and imagery, depicting similar relationships and dynamics among various characters, and imitating and emulating Thecla’s characteristics and multifaceted career, including but not limited to when and how protagonists disrupt their family life and the social order through spiritual or confessional conversion. These techniques make up an important part of the hagiographer’s practice. Lastly, it should almost go without stating that inasmuch as hagiographers were interested in Thecla as a model to imitate or to surpass, they were not interested in copying every facet of Thecla’s character or moment in the Acts of Thecla. Even a brief glance at the texts under discussion here immediately obviate that notion. Yet the obvious point is raised here since it is clear that the APT was an older, authoritative, and much beloved tale.*” Appropriating older, authoritative works was one of several important ways to address contemporary or individual concerns; a technique, perhaps the most important for our discussion, that is widely acknowledged as an immensely popular one throughout the pre-modern period. As the individual chapters in this volume illustrate, the APT is evoked in the hagiographies under study to detail contemporary interests and concerns regarding holiness, conversion, preservation of chastity, female voice, education, teaching, leadership, and communal identity formation (the latter is addressed below). This, in addition to the fact that the chapters demonstrate hagiographers’ use of multiple techniques in a variety of combinations and at many points in their respective narratives.
Though none of the chapters address oral transmission specifically, it is worth mentioning here because it was a prominent means by which the APT circulated. Much of what is outlined above holds even if we are to assume that the references to the APT come from oral versions of the tale in circulation.*° Indeed, as each contributor demonstrates, the number and specificity of the references to the APT, all of which are drawn out by paying attention to the various techniques the hagiographers employ, make it immaterial whether these references were drawn from the tale as it was heard and memorized or as it was held directly in hand.*” Along similar lines, it should be noted that other motifs and texts in oral and written circulation, including those that make direct and indirect references to Thecla and her tale, are undoubtedly also represented in many of the hagiographical tales analyzed in this volume. In fact, hagiographies are highly complex and layered, and to treat them as otherwise does them a great disservice. Our contributors, sensitive to such issues, present these motifs and texts when they crop up and address them directly. Thus, they add another dimension to our understanding of the popularity of the APT. Here, then, we turn to the aims of our volume.
The Aims of the Volume
This volume offers, for the first time, a collection of essays that explores the reception of the figure of Thecla and the APT as models in medieval (broadly defined from the fourth—twelfth century) hagiographical texts composed in Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Greek, Irish, Latin, Persian, and Syriac.*® The authors, who were selected either for their erudite studies on Thecla and her legend in other respects and/or for their expertise in relation to their studies of lives and tales of (female) saints, illustrate the extents to which the APT is deployed as an important intertext; they highlight when hagiographers implicitly and/or explicitly refer to Thecla and her tale using a variety of techniques. They, thus, offer original, detailed readings of the lives of various heroines and heroes from different traditions and types of texts that draw from Thecla’s tale. In doing so, the volume positions itself on a rather broad map. In fact, inasmuch as no criteria were offered to contributors in terms of techniques, no effort was made to streamline the studies toward one particular theme, motif, language, or region. This was done to avoid unintentionally reaffirming early modern scholarship’s misleading view that linguistic and regional boundaries are strictly impermeable or offering skewed views of Thecla and the APT as models. Furthermore, it also follows the growing number of studies that have resuscitated interest in apocryphal and canonical Acts and hagiographical works as social documents that help paint more detailed pictures of the worlds from which they emerged,” the views and interests of their writers, and the literary history of a given tradition (engagement with other texts and traditions and the practice of that engagement). In essence, then, rather than reading these texts simply for the facts or their historicity, the chapters in this volume highlight the ideological, cultural, and religious concerns of their writers and, by extension, their audiences by outlining the richly varied techniques they used to deploy the APT as a model.
The volume also follows those studies that over the past few decades have taken a broad, open understanding of hagiography, namely, as portraits of holy exemplary living, as edifying tales.°° Thus, under the large umbrella of hagiography are now included different kinds of texts such as poems, menologia, short tales, dialogues, spiritual romances, passions, and histories that feature portraits of saints, all of which are considered and represented in this volume. This broadening of generic considerations arose out of a gradual shift in perspective that has taken place over the last few decades, namely, that the strict delineations between generic boundaries are more reflective of early modern scholarship’s views and less so of pre-modern standards. We certainly must pay attention to when ancient and medieval writers signal participation in one genre or another, for instance, by title headings (Lives and histories among others). Nevertheless, such considerations should not eclipse the fact that premodern writers were not always as fastidious in adhering to generic considerations as early modern scholars would have liked. Indeed, to have followed this latter path would have meant sacrificing medieval Irish poetry and a medieval Persian mystical tale composed in verse, which not only invoke and evoke Thecla respectively but also adopt (even if partially) the generic stance of hagiographies. Even Tertullian’s de Baptismo (On Baptism) would have been excluded even though as it stands, it is the earliest text extant that testifies to the fact that the APT was being read as hagiography almost soon after it was compiled. In fact, if we take this astep further to consider sub-genres, even passions are not necessarily solely concerned with Thecla as a model of forbearance and fortitude on pain of death. As a few of the chapters illustrate, histories can elide easily into passion (Rhipsime), and passions, in turn, can be the dénouement of a spiritual romance (Martyrdom of Paese and Thecla), which can be expounded upon in dialogues (Life of Helia) all while using the multifaceted figure of Thecla and her equally complex tale as models. We may count, then, such blending and blurring of genres and sub-genres as yet another ubiquitous technique in the pre-modern world that the texts under study here employ.
Like the APT, the hagiographies under discussion here were also retold, written down, and translated into Greek, Latin, Armenian, Georgian, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Slavonic, and Arabic to name but a few of the most prominent languages; thus, adding another complex layer to the study of these texts. As varied as the linguistic and literary traditions to which these texts belong, the underlying meaning — edifying tales on how to live a moral life, even if it means going against the familial and social grain so to speak’’ — remains fairly firm. However, the social worlds of each text (not to mention linguistic tradition) differs from one generation to the next and from one era to the other. And even within a given generation or linguistic community, no two copies of a text are exactly alike. In some cases, even, the most popular plot outlines and thematic motifs** were reconstituted to create new (fictional) Lives of (female) saints. In other cases, the texts underwent major and sometimes only minor tinkering in each new manuscript copy. In other cases still, copies of these tales and other similar stories were placed together, sometimes along with the APT, into manuscript compendia, as noted above. Some of these compendia were compiled even according to a particular theme, such as martyrdoms as in the Ethiopic case, and, thus, highlight the different ways the iterations of a tale engaged with the APT and other hagiographical texts.
The choice, then, to study the ways in which Thecla is evoked in later hagiographical texts or, more precisely, reception, lies precisely in its usefulness as a means of discerning how audiences — which include writers — make meaning out of older and contemporaneous texts while determining possible audience expectations.’ Reception allows us to bridge the gaps in the intervening centuries between multiple texts (and even copies of texts) that were oftentimes separated across vast, even inhospitable terrains, yet belong to a greater tradition’* and draw from the same pool of narratives and motifs. Reception, then, helps us understand the author’s practice across two axes, the vertical — the creative deployment of older texts or their reiterations in later ones — but also the horizontal — how contemporary texts offer their own unique perspectives on similar social concerns.
In terms of this volume, reception is particularly useful since it helps us better appreciate the authors of the texts under discussion here as avid, devoted readers of the APT”” inasmuch as our authors were admirers of the historical saints whose lives they recounted. As such, they blended the boundaries between the life of Thecla and that of their chosen saints, historical or fictional, to varying degrees depending on their particular aims. This is similar to today’s fan fiction — the rewriting of a beloved story or film with one’s own interests in mind.°° In other words, hagiographers mined a multifaceted, well-known, and complex text for different resources to weigh-in on specific interests and concerns. Some, as noted above, were interested in Thecla as an apostle, others as a chaste virgin, charismatic confessor, leader, martyr, intercessor, or teacher or some combination thereof, but rarely all at once, to construct the Lives of their saints as model acts to follow for their own audiences.
Here, then, we are confronted with two overlapping trajectories: hagiographers were first readers, and hagiographies, as noted above, are edifying, exemplary works. Though discussions related to matters regarding authorial interest, ideal and real audience, and audience expectation lie beyond the scope of this volume, these issues do linger in the background of the chapters in this volume.’” For indeed, as edifying, exemplary tales, hagiographies necessarily target a broad, non-specialist audience; those who are interested in certain topics but may not be reading necessarily dense theological treatises. Ideally, this audience is well-read — those in the upper echelons of society — or well-informed — those, whatever their literacy and social background, who would hear these tales recited and were, thus, familiar with them.°* They would need to be in order to recognize references to other texts and (hopefully) understand the underlying message(s). As such, they would have been the same audiences and reciters of the APT itself.°? Moreover, they would have been reading or reciting them in a variety of public and private contexts, including but not limited to while on pilgrimage or in a monastery or convent as the Martyrdom of Febronia indicates. And, as a number of our contributors speak of intertextuality, and a number of the techniques by which scholars within and without this volume understand intertextuality have been highlighted, a few words on its theory are especially pertinent before delving into the point at which the aforementioned two trajectories overlap or, more aptly, intersect.°°
As such, we should recall first that intertextuality seeks to understand the techniques by which authors make meaning out of a vast network of oral and written texts; texts that crisscross one another in many ways.°" The result is that the new text, then, becomes a part of this dense network, informing in its turn the larger cultural milieu. Second, intertextuality too attempts to address the author as audience as well. Thus, authorial interest is the node at which reception theory and intertextuality intersect for hagiography. For indeed, as much as texts come from and are then a part of a dense network, hagiographers were as much a part of the same audience as the reader/listener they, in turn, targeted. The hagiographers’ interests, in other words, are informed by that of the greater community, and when they promote, subvert, or highlight a particular outlook or ideological bent they do so by making use of a shared discourse — all that is or can be expressed at a particular moment and place.°* They, thus, anticipate audience expectation that largely coincides with their own. In other words, hagiographers use popular techniques to refer to other texts; this accords with audience expectation, which parallels a hagiographer’s own experience as a reader; they, thus, further contribute to audience expectation as writers (intertextuality) to make new meaning out of — address specific concerns of interest to them — by using older, authoritative and/or contemporary texts (reception); as such, they meet audience expectation in yet another fashion.
Taking this a step further, using and, its converse, recognizing references to familiar tales, over time and across numerous texts, builds an identity that simultaneously transcends and situates the reader within a specific linguistic, regional, and cultural context. In terms related to our purposes, this resembles the universalism and localism of Christianity. As such, considering reception and intertextuality from these multiple and complex angles helps illustrate, for instance, why it may have been important for medieval Ethiopian and Irish writers to promote Thecla as a martyr even though she miraculously survived her trials, and neither community was suffering from such fatal persecutions. As has been frequently noted, passions were integral to the formation of early Christian communal identity.°? The promotion, then, of one of the most well-known and beloved figures of early Christianity as a martyr in one’s own terms and language was likely intended to intensify the sense of belonging to the greater Christian community across time and space while reinforcing the bonds of the local community. While doing so, hagiographers directly but, more often, indirectly subsume all the Lives that privilege Thecla as the preeminent female (near) martyr. The Ethiopian and Irish cases thus are edifying and meet audience expectation (how to act as a Christian under pressure — Thecla as proto female-martyr) while ensuring the longevity of such expectations as they create, at least in the Ethiopic case, new models from which later hagiographers may draw.
Even as each chapter stands independently on its own — for its particular concerns for a certain time, place, writer, and community — when viewed altogether, they shed light on how various communities understood and in turn made meaning out of the APT and, more broadly speaking, their own societies. They highlight what it meant for a saint to be presented as a model to be followed who, in turn, followed an older, authoritative one; it is participation in saintly living on multiple levels, across time, within a well-established tradition. Ultimately, by approaching these texts diachronically and synchronically, the volume, as a whole, sets out to paint a more detailed and nuanced portrait of the APT as a foundational text of not just Christianity but also of Christian literary output across east and west.°*
Given all these factors, especially the blurring of different kinds of boundaries, the volume is not divided by regional, epochal, generic, or linguistic considerations. There is a case to be made that the contributions by Barrier (Chapter 1), Staat (Chapter 9), Labadie (Chapter 2), and O Dochartaigh (Chapter 3) should be grouped together for their emphasis on the oftentimes profound impact that the APT had on transforming society and its perceptions; for Barrier and Staat examine the perceptions of church fathers and, as outlined above, Labadie and O Dochartaigh deal with complicated questions of representation. However, since the volume’s emphasis is on tracing the complex ways in which Thecla and her legend live on in other texts, a different course is called for. Indeed, for just as imitatio Christi is the practice of following Christ and is a large feature of Lives and Martyrdoms of male saints, the hagiographies under study here demonstrate an equivalent imitatio Theclae.°’ Therefore, the chapters are grouped based on the extents to which the protagonists of the texts imitate or imitate and surpass Thecla as their model. Part I, “An Act to Follow” (Chapters 1-6), is devoted to contributions by Jeremy Barrier, Damien Labadie, Caitriona O Dochartaigh, Valentina Calzolari, Flavia Ruani, and Arietta Papaconstantinou since they illustrate the extents to which Thecla and, in the case of Ruani’s and Papaconstantinou’s chapters, her companions were models to be imitated. It is fitting that the volume begins with Barrier’s discussion of the famous passages in Tertullian’s de Baptismo, which, as noted throughout, shines light on the fact that women were reading the APT and using it as a model for their own lives as well as for the roles they adopted in their community relatively soon after the composition of the text. But also because it responds to a pressing issue that permeates the volume as a whole — access to the APT — by addressing directly the question of whether Tertullian had the APT in hand as he repudiated both the presbyter who compiled the APT and the women who were teaching and baptizing based on it. While Labadie’s chapter discusses Thecla’s importance in the development of Ethiopic hagiographical literature, it follows Barrier’s contribution since it illustrates how the APT was similarly read as hagiography, except, in this case, Thecla is evoked not as a teacher or baptizer but as a martyr and confessor. Despite the vast distances (physical and cultural) separating medieval Ethiopia and Ireland, O Dochartaigh’s contribution follows Labadie’s chapter since it also explores how Thecla was celebrated as a model apostle and martyr, with implications for communal and cross-regional ties, and since Thecla appears in versified calendrical notices in both traditions to do so.
Which brings us around to Calzolari’s and Ruani’s respective chapters. Though Ruani’s chapter focuses on secondary characters who follow their APT counterparts either positively or negatively, Calzolari’s and Ruani’s chapters illustrate, like Labadie’s and O Dochartaigh’s contributions, how Thecla was perceived and celebrated as a martyr (more often), virgin, apostle, ascetic, and preacher in Armenian and Syriac hagiographic literature. Papaconstantinou’s chapter, as a study in reconfigured relationships, follows Ruani’s contribution and rounds out this group of chapters. It also serves as a transitional essay of sorts since, in reimagining the relationship between Paul and Thecla as an eschatological love triangle between Paese and Paul and Thecla, the Martyrdom of Paese and Thecla surpasses the APT as a completed passion and one in which this Thecla and Paul, at least, are finally reunited in heaven.
The remaining four chapters, which are grouped under the heading, “An Act to Surpass” (Part II), investigate heroines who emulate Thecla in various ways. Part I] begins with Van Pelt’s chapter for its thoughtprovoking analysis of the ways in which later hagiographers understood Thecla as a cross-dresser or, more aptly, not. In the texts she studies, the holy heroines imitate their model Thecla in various respects but surpass her in terms of cross-dressing. Thus, her chapter also serves as a transition.
Burrus’ contribution follows next since it illustrates that Thecla played a prominent role in the development of female voice and the debate on desire and chastity from antiquity throughout the Latin-speaking west, but it also demonstrates that later writers were interested in pushing female agency, their vociferousness, beyond Thecla. This leads us to Staat’s contribution, which maps the highs and lows of the AP7’s reception among the church fathers and throughout the Latin-speaking west. Similar to Burrus’ contribution, the chapters by Staat and my own, which follows hence, focus on the interest of the writer of the Life and Passion of Eugenia to surpass the boundaries of female rhetorical abilities and leadership imposed by the AP7’s abrupt end of Thecla’s tale — just as its heroine gains both. In an Afterward that rounds up secondary scholarship’s attempt to locate Thecla and her tale and the meaning(s) they held for different communities, Kate Cooper pens her thoughts about Thecla’s popularity across time and space.
It is our sincere hope that readers — whether their interest is in the literary and social history of early Christianity across east and west, Christian and Islamic narratives of sainthood, comparative studies generally, or the literary afterlives of Thecla and the APT — will find something fruitful within each contribution but especially in the volume as a whole. We also hope that it serves as a stepping-stone for further forays into the social, historical, and theological aspects of the hagiographies under discussion here and, especially, as a conversation starter for addressing Thecla and the APT as prominent models for other hagiographical narratives and their protagonists and in other linguistic traditions.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق