Thecla, Saint, Martyr

THECLA, Saint, Martyr. - Venerated since antiquity, she had her principal center of worship at Seleucia, where there was an important sanctuary, the goal of frequent pilgrimages, mentioned by St. Gregory of Nazianzus (PG 35, 1105) and rebuilt by the emperor Zeno (Evagrius, Hist. eccl., III, 8).

All the Greek and Latin martyrologies have her name under different dates. Churches dedicated to her existed at Constantinople, Rome, and Milan; her image is found in the mosaics of the Euphrasian basilica of Parenzo. The historical figure of T., however, is wrapped in legend, which makes her be born at Iconium. The place of her burial is unknown; it was not in fact in the famous sanctuary of Seleucia, as is clearly deduced from the biography of the Saint written in the 5th century by the bishop of that city, Basil. The various recensions of the Passio (BHG, 1710-19; BHL, 8020-25) all derive from the apocryphal Actus Pauli et Teclae (Enc. Catt., IX, 725), rejected ever since the so-called Decretum Gelasianum, and whose author, a presbyter of Asia, was unmasked as a forger and deposed from office (Tertullian, De baptismo, 17).

ICONOGRAPHY

The iconography of T. is inspired by the legends. The most remarkable representation of T. (5th century) is on the vault of one of the funerary chapels of El-Bagacouat in the Great Egyptian Oasis. The apostle Paul and the Virgin, seated facing each other on large folding stools, appear to be in conversation. T. holds between her two hands, resting on her knees, a book or a writing tablet, while Paul hands her a stylus. On the circular band above the scenes their names are indicated in Greek. Also in a marble of the 4th century coming from the portico of the church of Etschmiadzin in the Caucasus, facing the seated Paul and in the act of speaking, T. stands, listening, with her right hand on her breast. The two figures are framed in two arches, divided by an Ionic column (cf. J. Strzygkowski, Das Etschmiadzin Evangeliar, in Byzantinische Denkmäler, I, Vienna 1891, p. 6 ff.). The names of the two saints are found again on a fragment of a sarcophagus (4th century) discovered in the basilica of St. Valentine on the Flaminia, now in the Capitoline Museum of Rome. T. is the name of the ship that carries the Apostle together with another personage, while a third fisherman is seated on the shore. Symbolically, therefore, it expresses the image of the soul (of the deceased namesake?), regenerated by Baptism and carried to heaven through the intercession of Paul (cf. Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pl. 10, 3; M. Simon, L'apôtre Paul dans le symbolisme funér. chrét. Sur un fragment de sarcoph. avec barque et scène de pêche, in Mél. d'archéol. et d'hist., 50 [1933], pp. 156-82).

Derived from the apocrypha, on the other hand, is the episode of the arrest of Paul in the presence of T. on a sarcophagus of Marseille (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, p. 166, pl. 16, 3), while the martyrdom of the Saint is alluded to by the relief of an Egyptian jewel preserved in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum of Berlin, which shows T. among the lions and, nearby, Daniel among the same beasts. An entirely unique representation of T. was executed on a Coptic stele of the Cairo Museum: the virgin is in the attitude of an orant, clothed only in a loincloth (H. Leclercq, v. Thècle, in DACL, XV, coll. 2225-36). On two ivories, on the other hand, the scene of Paul's preaching in the presence of T. recurs again. The first, in the British Museum, shows the Apostle reading while seated, while the virgin leans out from the walls; the second, in the Louvre, essentially repeats the former, but in a broader and more complex composition, discussed and variously interpreted by scholars (cf. R. Schlumberger, in Monuments Plot, 1 (1894), p. 165; id., in Mél. d'Arch. Byz., 1895, p. 193). On some ampullae (4th-5th centuries) in red clay, now in the Museum of Alexandria in Egypt, together with the martyrdom of St. Menas, T. is associated among the wild beasts (C. M. Kaufmann, La découverte des sanct. de Ménus dans le désert de Maréotis, Alexandria 1908, p. 71, fig. 67; id., Zur Ikonogr. der Menus-Ampullen, Cairo 1910, pp. 139-41 and passim, fig. 85).

In Rome a small cemetery on the Via Ostiense bears the name of T.; but it is a question of another saint buried a short distance from the tomb of Paul and to whom the building above ground, now vanished, was dedicated. It is mentioned by the Itineraries and was explored by M. Armellini in 1870; it comprises the historical crypt "in qua corpus eius quiescit" and a short development of regularly excavated galleries. The inscriptions are very scarce, and there are few paintings in two arcosolia: one with the figures of Moses, Daniel, Jonah, an orant among saints, a Good Shepherd, the Savior with the book of the Gospels and Abraham showing the Lamb in the symbol of the divine sacrifice; the other, recently discovered and whose fragments are now in the Sacred Museum of the Vatican Library, with a discussed figuration, in which episodes of the legend of T. of Iconium seem to be represented. From the same cemetery comes the Lateran sculpture with the representation of the deceased Marcus, seated on a chair with an olive branch in his hand.

Pasquale Testini