"To these men [Peter and Paul] who spent their lives in the practice of holiness, there is to be added a great multitude of the elect, who, having through envy endured many indignities and tortures, furnished us with a most excellent example. Through envy, those women, the Danaids and Dircæ, being persecuted, after they had suffered terrible and unspeakable torments, finished the course of their faith with steadfastness, and though weak in body, received a noble reward.
Clement of Rome, First Epistle to the Corinthians (VI.2)
The apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla was written sometime about AD 160, although the story of Thecla originally seems to have been an independent composition that later was incorporated (and substantially reworked) into the larger Acts of Paul. Having traveled to Iconium in Asia Minor, Paul was received into the home of a local Christian where, from a window in an adjacent house, his beatitude on chastity is overheard by Thecla, an eighteen-year old virgin. Enraptured, she listens to his words for three days and nights, ensnared as in a spider's web.
Apprehensive that Thecla will harken to his call that "Blessed are the bodies of the virgins, for they shall be well-pleasing unto God," her fiancé incites a mob to take Paul before the proconsul, who has him imprisoned. But Thecla bribes the guards and, sitting at Paul's feet, kisses his chains, bound herself in affection. Paul again is brought before the governor. "But Thecla rolled herself [wallowed] upon the place where Paul taught when he sat in the prison" until she, too, is put on trial. Paul is sentenced to scourging and expulsion from the city, and Thecla to be burnt at the stake, her own mother crying out, "Burn the lawless one, burn her that is no bride in the midst of the theatre that all the women which have been taught by this man may be affrighted."
When Thecla is put naked on the pyre, the governor marvels at her beauty, but the fire is extinguished by a miraculous storm and Thecla escapes to reunite with Paul on the road, where they travel to Antioch. There, she is is noticed by Alexander, a nobleman who offers Paul gifts and money for her. When the apostle proclaims that he does not know the woman, the man attempts to take Thecla by force. Repulsing the assault, she tears his cloak and knocks the wreath from his head. Humiliated, Alexander brings her before the magistrate who, despite the protests of the women of the city, again condemns Thecla to death, this time ad bestias. Pleading to remain a virgin until her death, she is taken in by "a certain rich queen, Tryphaena by name," who had lost her own daughter. (Tryphaena was the widow of Cotys, King of Thrace, and a great-niece of the Emperor Claudius. Her brother briefly was married to Berenice, with whom a younger Titus had an affair. In Romans 16:12, Paul sends greetings to a Tryphena.)
Much like the image of Cybele, who was portrayed riding a lion, Thecla is seated upon a fierce lioness (which licks her feet) and paraded through the city. She is allowed to return to Tryphena, however, who, when Alexander himself comes for Thecla the next morning, escorts her to the arena. There, she is stripped and thrown to the beasts. Again, Thecla is preserved, this time by a lioness who defends her from the other animals (presumably, the one she had ridden the previous day). Praying, she baptizes herself in a large trench of water that miraculously has appeared (possibly the water-filled euripus that surrounded the arena is recalled), her nakedness covered by a cloud of fire--which also kills the vicious seals in the tank. (Earlier, Paul had advised Thecla to patiently defer her baptism.) Again, the women of the city protest and cast fragrant nard and balsam into the arena, which has a soporific effect on the animals.
"Alexander [who was sponsor of the show] said to the governor: I have some bulls exceeding fearful, let us bind the criminal [lady beast fighter] to them. And the governor frowning, allowed it, saying: Do that thou wilt. And they bound her by the feet between the bulls, and put hot irons under their bellies [genitals] that they might be the more enraged and kill her. They then leaped forward; but the flame that burned about her, burned through the ropes, and she was as one not bound" (Acts of Paul, XXXV; variously IX.12-13).
At this, Tryphena faints and the governor, thinking her dead, stops the spectacle, fearing that her relation to the emperor will bring destruction on the city. (Indeed, Alexander beseeches the governor to release the "lady beast fighter," the third time he has used the phrase to refer to her and the only instances in which the feminine form of the term occurs in Greek. The description is all the more curious in that Thecla never does fight any beasts nor, for that matter is she a martyr, not having died.) The women of Antioch rejoice and Thecla, refusing all entreaties to stay with the queen, converts her household and, longing for Paul, goes to rejoin him. He admonishes her to teach the word of God, and Thecla returns home to find that her fiancé has died and her mother, whom she tries to comfort, indifferent to her testimony. She then goes to Seleucia and preaches the gospel, dwelling in a cave for the next seventy-two years.
Among several pseudoepigraphical works attributed to Paul, including I and II Timothy and Titus (the Pastoral Epistles) and III Corinthians, the Acts of Paul and Thecla was known to be a forgery at the time. Tertullian makes the contention in his treatise on baptism, no doubt to refute any justification that it offered for women to preach and baptize.
"But if certain Acts of Paul, which are falsely so named, claim the example of Thecla for allowing women to teach and to baptize, let men know that in Asia the presbyter who compiled that document, thinking to add of his own to Paul's reputation, was found out, and though he professed he had done it for love of Paul, was deposed from his position. How could we believe that Paul should give a female power to teach and to baptize, when he did not allow a woman even to earn by her own right? Let them keep silence, he says, and ask their husbands at home" (On Baptism, XVII.5; cf. I Corinthians, 14:35, "And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church").
Jerome, too, referring to Tertullian, considered the Acts to be apocryphal, "for how is it possible that the inseparable companion of the apostle in his other affairs, alone should have been ignorant of this thing. Moreover Tertullian who lived near those times, mentions a certain presbyter in Asia, an adherent of the apostle Paul, who was convicted by John of having been the author of the book, and who, confessing that he did this for love of Paul, resigned his office of presbyter" (De Viris Illustribus, VII).
That having been said, the story was regarded by many in the early church as legitimate, even if emphasis shifted from her claim to preach to her virginity and martyrdom. In the fourth century AD, Cyprian, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Augustine, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and Severus Sulpitius all mention Thecla.
Christian Dirce (1897), which is in the National Museum (Warsaw), is by Henryk Siemiradzki (1843-1902). The title derives from the myth of Dirce, who was torn apart by a bull. In the guise of a satyr, Zeus had seduced Antiope, a princess of Boeotia, who, threatened by her disgraced father, fled to Sicyon, where she was besieged by Lycus, her father's brother and now ruler of Thebes. He killed the king, whom Antiope had married, and took her as captive. (According to Hyginus, Antiope had been the wife of Lycus and was seduced by the king.) Twin sons, Amphion and Zethus, to whom she had given birth, were exposed (but taken in by shepherds) and Antiope herself given over to Dirce, the wife of Lycus. When Antiope learned that her grown sons were alive, she fled, asking that they avenge her mistreatment. Lycus was killed and Dirce tied to a bull. The sons assumed rule of Thebes, built its seven-gated walls and were honored as founders of the city. (It was the sons and daughters of Amphion's wife Niobe who were killed when their mother so imprudently boasted that she had more children than Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis.)
Siemiradzki also painted Nero's Torches (1876), which is in the National Museum (Krakow).
Ambrose (De Virginibus, II.3.19-20).
"Let, then, holy Mary instruct you in the discipline of life, and Thecla teach you how to be offered, for she, avoiding nuptial intercourse, and condemned through her husband’s rage, changed even the disposition of wild beasts by their reverence for virginity. For being made ready for the wild beasts, when avoiding the gaze of men, she offered her vital parts to a fierce lion, caused those who had turned away their immodest looks to turn them back modestly. The beast was to be seen lying on the ground, licking her feet, showing without a sound that it could not injure the sacred body of the virgin. So the beast reverenced his prey, and forgetful of his own nature, put on that nature which men had lost. One could see, as it were, by some transfusion of nature, men clothed with savageness, goading the beast to cruelty, and the beast kissing the feet of the virgin, teaching them what was due from men. Virginity has in itself so much that is admirable, that even lions admire it. Food did not induce them though kept without their meal; no impulse hurried them on when excited; anger did not exasperate them when stirred up, nor did their habits lead them blindly as they were wont, nor their own natural disposition possess them with fierceness. They set an example of piety when reverencing the martyr; and gave a lesson in favor of chastity when they did nothing but kiss the virgin’s feet, with their eyes turned to the ground, as though through modesty, fearing that any male, even a beast, should see the virgin naked."
References: The Apocryphal New Testament (1924) translated by M. R. James; Animals in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: The Wild Kingdom of Early Christian Literature (2008) by Janet E. Spittler (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament, 247); Tertullian's Homily on Baptism (1964) translated by Ernest Evans; A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Series II (1890-1896) edited by by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace; "Thecla and the Church Fathers" (1994) by Léonie Hayne, Vigiliae Christianae, 48(3), 209-218.
See also St. Eulalia.
