Open Collections

Fitzgerald, Ryan

Database of Religious History (DRH)

The cult of Thecla was a widespread and popular devotion to Saint Thecla, reportedly a follower of Paul the Apostle. The foundational text of this report is the Acts of (Paul and) Thecla, a second century Greek story about the young virgin Thecla who renounces her betrothed in order to live a life of sexual abstinence. As the story goes, Thecla survived multiple attempts by the local authorities of public execution, making her a model of eventual martyrdom ideologies. Though some Christians thought the tale a forgery (notably Tertullian), in the third to seventh centuries devotion of Thecla spread across the Mediterranean, rivaling devotion to Mary the mother of Jesus. From Syria to Africa, Greece, and Spain, reverence to Thecla consisted of shrines, catacombs, churches and pilgrimages dedicated to her. While reverence to Thecla as a saint continues today, late antiquity was the high point of such adherence. The types of people who participated in the cult of Thecla varied dramatically. Evagrius Scholasticus of the sixth century, for instance, records in his Ecclesiastical History that the fifth century emperor Zeno had a vision of Thecla, who encouraged him to march on Byzantium to reclaim his throne, which he did. Afterwards, Zeno had a church built to Thecla in Seleucia, home of a center of Theclan cultic activity. One of the functions of shrines, however, was to provide shelter to pilgrims, who both gave offerings and received sustenance. This cultic economy necessitates involvement from both those wealthy and powerful enough to act as benefactors to the cult (such as in the construction of the shrines themselves) and those of the (majority) poor who sought out the shrines to pay homage to the saint, hoping to receive blessings in return. As described by the fourth century pilgrim Egeria, the cult complex in Seleucia had “innumerable monastic cells of men and of women,” with a head deaconess overseeing the virgins housed there. Personal piety was also a major factor of the cult, which can be difficult to track for the majority of people. Items such as flasks or combs with engravings of Thecla are abundant, along with paintings and reliefs of scenes from the Acts of (Paul and) Thecla, as most notably evident in the Catacomb of Thecla (Rome) and the chapel at El Bagawat (Egypt). Famous Christians such as Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus extolled Thecla as a moral exemplar, the latter even temporarily relocating to the shrine in Seleucia. This reverence reflected the concern for the body in some Christian circles, emphasizing the imperative of sexual purity, if not outright abstinence. It is implausible to imagine these kinds of moral ideologies belonged to the elite (for which have the most evidence) alone. Given Tertullian’s early negative disposition against the Acts of Thecla for the baptismal authority it seemed to grant women, it is no surprise that women in particular found power in the character of Thecla who defied the men of her life (even Paul!) to live an exemplary (chaste) Christian life.

Other

eng

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0422064

Non UBC

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/