This chapter critically examines two long-held beliefs with regards to Thecla, the first Christian heroine to take on male dress: 1) that she is the forerunner of Byzantine transvestite saints and 2) that her tale is a reference point for their narratives (fourth to seventh centuries). Arguably, these claims are usually based on hasty assumptions or insufficient evidence built on one particular transvestite saint’s Life, the Life and Martyrdom of Eugenia. In this chapter, I discuss Thecla’s literary legacy both in the wider tradition of Greek hagiography and specific cross-dressers’ Lives. I demonstrate that the Life of Eugenia is an exception among cross-dressers’ tales in terms of its frequent referencing and evident modeling of the APT. This point is especially salient considering the APT’s many echoes in certain Greek hagiographies that are not concerned with cross-dressers. Finally, I propose some new perspectives on how the motif of cross-dressing traveled from the APT until it appeared in later hagiographical accounts. I argue that the Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena, Life and Miracles of Thecla, and Life of Eusebia called Xenê represent important intermediary steps both in the interpretation of Thecla as a cross-dresser and in the development of this literary theme.

In this chapter, I compare the characterization of Thecla in the Latin translation of the Acts of Paul and Thecla (henceforth APT) and of Eugenia in two Latin versions of the Passion of Eugenia (BHL 2667 and 2666). As scholars have already noted, the two Passions of Eugenia differ remarkably: the references to the APT in the oldest version (BHL 2667, second half of the fifth century) are removed in the later rewriting (BHL 2666, sixth or seventh century). Based on earlier scholarship, I contextualize this rewriting as a signal of the wider tendency to use Thecla as a model of virtue, while the APT is rejected for its problematic canonicity; I do so by delving deeper into the wider Latin literature of the late antique and medieval periods. I then demonstrate the ways in which both Passions of Eugenia engage with the figure of Thecla as a model to imitate even as Eugenia surpasses her in terms of rhetoric.

In recent years, the reception of Thecla and her tale, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, in Syriac Christianity has been the object of scholarly attention. Indeed, the presence of Thecla in various cultural mediums (literature, cult/liturgy, manuscripts, etc.) throughout the Syriac world seems to have been explored exhaustively and at different levels. However, the impact of the Acts of Paul and Thecla on the process of writing Syriac hagiography still needs to be addressed. This chapter, therefore, focuses on a form of reception which is less direct than those that already have been identified: in other words, it is not concerned with Thecla herself, but with other characters. The chapter illustrates that secondary characters from a selection of Syriac hagiographical texts are constructed based on those of the Acts of Paul and Thecla. The analyses demonstrate that the reception of Thecla goes beyond direct references to the heroine and concerns the construction of stories in deeper, more structural ways.

Although there is no concrete surviving evidence that the Acts of Paul or the Passio sanctae Theclae circulated in Ireland, there are a number of references to Thecla in medieval Irish martyrologies and devotional literature. These sparse references to the proto-martyr are too few to reconstruct the true extent of her cult in medieval Ireland or to assess her possible impact on Insular hagiography. However, one curious uniting feature shared by these fragmentary references to Thecla is that they are all in versified form. Thecla is also venerated in litany-like verse prayers in both Old and Middle Irish where she is included in groupings of significant apostolic figures. Late antique and early medieval continental Latin sources in which Thecla is referred to in a similar context may provide the likely roots of transmission. These possible Latin sources, however, are not all in verse form. Therefore, the choice of a poetic medium coupled with the use of the vernacular may provide precious evidence for the intended audience and reception milieu of such popular hagiographical texts.

Though not as famous as in Coptic traditions, Saint Thecla is still an important figure in Ethiopic hagiography. In most Ethiopic texts, she is known under the honorific title of “Thecla the Apostolic” (Ṭeqalā ḥawāryāwit). Ethiopians venerate her amongst the major saintly Christian figures as her Life is told and commemorated in the Synaxarium, the official Ethiopic book of saints. Moreover, a whole book, entitled the Book of Thecla (Masḥafa Ṭeqalā), is devoted to her. An abridged version of The Acts of Paul and Thecla, it tells the story of Thecla’s meeting with Paul, her conversion, her two trials, and the final healing of the governor who condemned her. This latter text is a noteworthy witness to the veneration and cult of Thecla in the Ethiopic realm. Thecla is also explicitly alluded to in other hagiographical texts, like the Epistle of Pelagia (BHO 890) and the Martyrdom of Abouqir, John, the Three Virgins, and Their Mother (Synaxarium, 6th of Yakkatit). Other Ethiopic Acts of saints also seem to refer implicitly to Thecla as a model for martyrs, especially female martyrs, such as the unedited martyrdom of her namesake, Thecla, and her four companions (BHO 1157 for the Syriac version).

Perhaps more than most ancient traditions, Thecla’s has been characterized by controversy, and yet little attention has been paid to the positive value of indeterminacy in the Thecla tradition. After offering an overview of approaches to the Acts of Paul and Thecla and related texts over the last half-century, we ask how the open qualities of Thecla as a protagonist may have enhanced her tradition’s ability to serve as the basis for successive re-imaginings. We conclude by suggesting that as ‘an ambiguous heroine in an unstable story’ Thecla exemplifies the value of indeterminacy and instability in hagiography.

How is it that female figures—though whether they are properly female is debatable—come to voice in Christian texts of late antiquity? How, in particular, do their voices enter into debates about desire, traditionally the province of masculine speech? And what do these virginal voices sound like? Are they distinct and recognizable to our reading ears? There is a story to be told, and it starts with Thecla. We might say that every Christian virgin who arrogates voice in some sense follows Thecla, speaking her desire in speech that both is and is not her own. Thecla, in other words, both inaugurates and serves as a figure for virginal voice in its startling, in-breaking forcefulness. But Thecla, however definitively novel, follows others as well. This chapter first backtracks to consider Thecla’s precursors, Diotima (Plato, Symposium) and Leucippe (Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon). It then follows the reworking of those figures in the Acts of Thecla and Methodius’ Symposium respectively. Finally, it explores the legacy of Thecla in two little-known late ancient Latin dialogues that feature notably voluble virgins—the Lives of Saints Helia and Constantina, respectively.

The figure of Thecla knew very early success in Egypt as a model for female ascetics and pilgrims. In learned Alexandrian circles, Thecla was also a literary rallying point for rich women who cultivated an intellectual persona. The association of the character with the blurring of gender categories was also made in the same circles and eventually spread to the equivalent circles in Valley cities. One of the most interesting literary texts in that respect is built around characters called Thecla and Paul, but not explicitly the ones from the APT, and adding a third, Egyptian character called Paese, whom it sets up as the central figure. This seventh- or eighth-century text, entitled the Martyrdom of Paese and Thecla, plays on several motifs of the APT, subverting them and reversing roles and characters, but it also borrows motifs of male companionship from the late sixth- and early seventh-century ascetic literature produced in the area between Palestine, Cyprus, and Alexandria.

In this chapter, I explore the connections between Tertullian’s de Baptismo, the Acts of Paul, and the supposedly Cainite Gnostic text, the Gospel of Judas. Are Tertullian’s comments concerning both Thecla and Cainites accurate? First, in de Baptismo, Tertullian attacks a Cainite woman for using the example of Thecla as a model to justify women teaching in churches. Further, he criticizes the Cainite woman for denying the practice of baptism within some of the churches of North Africa. Second, the Gospel of Judas—a ‘so called’ Cainite text—seems to affirm the rite of baptism. Do Tertullian’s comments concerning Cainites betray an unfamiliarity with it? Third, in the Acts of Paul, the rite of baptism is affirmed generally, while specifically Thecla is commissioned to teach and even baptizes herself. Why Tertullian would cite the case of Thecla is not clear. How does one synthesize this seemingly contradictory evidence? This chapter focuses upon sorting out these inconsistencies. Ultimately, this chapter demonstrates how some of the churches of North Africa were reading the Acts of Paul as a form of hagiography that was inspiring women in their faith while also impacting their understanding of Christian rituals and practices (i.e., baptism and missions).

The “Tale of the Virtuous Woman” (TVW) by the Sufi hagiographer and poet, Farīd al-Dīn ʿAttār, is quite unique, as Sufi tales go, in its depiction of a woman from a well-to-do family: young, beautiful, and virtuous, she becomes a recognized spiritual and civic leader independently and in a foreign land. It, thus, invites further inquiry. It has been noted that the TVW, which appears in ʿAttār’s long narrative poem (masnavī), the Ilāhīnāmah (Book of the Divine), shares popular motifs with ancient romances. Detailed examinations reveal that it is closer in affinity to tales of female Christian saints and heroines, such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Life of Eugenia, Life and Miracles of Thecla, and Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, in the way they adopt popular motifs for religio-spiritual aims. Strikingly, the former three and the TVW similarly depict independently attained female leadership. This article, thus, analyzes the versions of the TVW circulating in Iran and the possible routes the aforementioned Christian narratives circulated within and without the Iranian world. Then, it offers an analysis of the TVW and Life of Eugenia which, although separated in time, space, culture, and language, similarly explore female leadership and spiritual, familial, and civic conversion.