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The Fetishization of Female Exempla: Mary, Thecla, Perpetua and Felicitas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2017

Sarah Parkhouse
Sarah Parkhouse*
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham DH1 3RS, United Kingdom. Email: s.j.parkhouse@durham.ac.uk
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Abstract

Mary, Thecla, Perpetua and Felicitas are often seen as female exempla both in the early Christian world and in their modern reception. They are considered model teachers, martyrs and apostles, and counter-cultural as they surpass the normative gender hierarchy. Yet, the texts that tell their stories are not so clear-cut. In characterising their protagonists, they repeatedly place them in sexualized or subordinate roles – they are condescended to, distrusted and exhibited. In the end, the women are favoured by the divine but hold little power over their male peers. Even as these texts appear to challenge the patriarchal society from which they stem, they reinscribe it.

Keywords

womenMaryTheclaPerpetuagender
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 567 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 The problematic category of ‘women’ has been convincingly defended as a useful heuristic tool, Gunnarsson, L., ‘A Defence of the Category “Women”’, Feminist Theory 12.1 (2011) 23–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The three texts under discussion have been chosen as late-second or early-third century Christian literature with a female protagonist. For dating, see the critical editions cited throughout.

3 I assume that Mary in the Gospel of Mary is Mary Magdalene due to the similarities with John 20. The main parallel is Mary Magdalene's words ‘I have seen the Lord’ (John 20.18) and Mary's words ‘I saw the Lord’ (BG 10.10–11). The Gospel of Mary in this article refers to the version in the Coptic Berlin Codex (BG). Coptic from Wilson, R. McL. and MacRae, G. W., ‘The Gospel According to Mary: BG, 1:7,1–19,5’, Nag Hammadi Codices v,2-5 and vi with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502,1 and 4 (ed. Parrott, D. M.; Nag Hammadi Studies 11; Leiden: Brill, 1979) 453–71Google Scholar. There are also two small Greek fragments, Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 3525 and Rylands Papyrus 463 (henceforth POxy and PRyl), which can be found in Tuckett, C. M., The Gospel of Mary (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) 108, 112–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Translations from the Coptic and Greek texts are my own. The text acquires its title from the colophon in the Coptic manuscript: (‘the [G]ospel according to M[a]ry’, 19.3–5). This title is also in PRyl but could be the object of the verb ‘to preach’.

4 Or, in the Greek version, ‘Sister, we know that you are greatly [loved by the Savi]our like no other woman’ (POxy 15–16).

5 In the Greek version, ‘Certainly knowing her, he loved her very well’ (PRyl 22.7–8).

6 Marjanen, A., The Woman Jesus Loved: Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 40; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 116Google Scholar; Mohri, E., Maria Magdalena: Frauenbilder in Evangelientexten des 1. bis 3. Jahrhunderts (Marburger theologische Studien 63; Marburg: Elwert, 2000) 275, 277Google Scholar; de Boer, E. A., The Gospel of Mary: Listening to the Beloved Disciple (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2004) 183–90Google Scholar.

7 See Williams, M. A., The Immovable Race: A Gnostic Designation and the Theme of Stability in Late Antiquity (NHS 29; Leiden: Brill, 1985)Google Scholar.

8 She bases this argument on the use of ⲧⲱⲟⲩⲛ for Jesus’ resurrection in Soph. Jes. Chr. (BG 77.9–10) and Ap. Jas. (2.20–1), Hartenstein, J., Die zweite Lehre: Erscheinungen des Auferstandenen als Rahmenerzählungen frühchristlicher Dialoge (Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 146; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2000) 146CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11 See Petersen, S., Zerstört die Werke der Weiblichkeit! Maria Magdalena, Salome, und andere Jüngerinnen Jesu in christlich-gnostischen Schriften (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 48; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 141Google Scholar. Schaberg, J., The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament (London/New York: Continuum, 2002) 172Google Scholar. Contra, Tuckett, Mary, 192 n. 210.

12 This final reference is not in the Greek parallel.

13 E. Schüssler Fiorenza, ‘Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles’, Union Theological Seminary Journal (1975) 5–6.

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20 Tuckett, Mary, 189.

21 Tuckett, Mary, 193.

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23 Greek and translation (adapted) from Barrier, J. W., The Acts of Paul and Thecla: A Critical Introduction and Commentary (WUNT ii/270; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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25 On the manuscript differences including the use of scriptum instead of exemplum, see Ng, E. Y. L., ‘“Acts of Paul and Thecla”: Women's Stories and Precedent?’, JTS 55.1 (2004) 1–29, at 21–2Google Scholar.

26 Latin and translation (adapted) from Evans, E. (ed. and trans.), Tertullian's Homily on Baptism (London: SPCK, 1964) 37Google Scholar.

27 Hylen, S. E., ‘The “Domestication” of Saint Thecla: Characterization of Thecla in the Life and Miracles of Saint Thecla’, JSFR 30.2 (2014) 5–21, at 6Google Scholar. Contra, Boughton consistently links the Acts of Thecla with ‘heretical’ theology and practices including the Montanists (who she deems ‘heretical’ in the second century) and Marcionites, Boughton, L. C., ‘From Pious Legend to Feminist Fantasy: Distinguishing Hagiographical License from Apostolic Practice in the Acts of Paul/Acts of Thecla’, Journal of Religion 71.3 (1991) 362–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 For Origen and more, see Barrier, Acts of Paul and Thecla, 25. For Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus, see Davis, S. J., The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women's Piety in Late Antiquity (Oxford Early Christian Studies; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 4–5, 62–4Google Scholar.

29 Barrier points out that five of thirteen articles in A Feminist Companion to New Testament Apocrypha (2006) deal specifically with Thecla, Barrier, Acts of Paul and Thecla, 46–7.

30 MacDonald, D. R., The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983)Google Scholar; Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy. On women as authors, see Davies, S. L., The Revolt of the Widows: The Social World of the Apocryphal Acts (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

31 Matthews, ‘Thinking of Thecla’, 44.

32 Ratcliffe, R., ‘The Acts of Paul and Thecla: Violating the Inviolate Body – Thecla Uncut’, The Body in Biblical, Christian and Jewish Texts (ed. Taylor, J. E.; The Library of Second Temple Studies 85; London/New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014) 184–209, at 185Google Scholar.

33 Boughton, ‘Feminist Fantasy’.

34 The Acts of Thecla is usually seen as an ancient romance novel, see Barrier, Acts of Paul and Thecla, 1–9.

35 Barrier sees this as ‘a theological, spiritual raping of Thecla, via the sexual metaphor’, Barrier, Acts of Paul and Thecla, 91.

36 It is usually understood that Thecla did cut her hair, see Kraemer, Unreliable Witnesses, 136. Ratcliffe shows that Paul explicitly prohibits it, Ratcliff, ‘Thecla Uncut’, 191–4.

37 Bremmer writes that ‘[i]f Paul had been described as physically attractive, her fascination could have been easily understood’, Bremmer, J. N. ‘Magic, Martyrdom and Women's Liberation in the Acts of Paul and Thecla’, The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (ed. Bremmer, J. N.; Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha 2; Kampen: Pharos, 1996) 36–59, at 39Google Scholar. Contra, Boughton: ‘Thecla's physical attraction to Paul is blatant’, Boughton, ‘Feminist Fantasy’, 378.

38 Wehn, B., ‘“Blessed Are the Bodies of Those Who Are Virgins”: Reflections on the Image of Paul in the Acts of Thecla’, JSNT 79 (2000) 149–64, at 155Google Scholar. Contra, Edsall reads Paul's refusal to baptise Thecla in light of 1 Cor 1.17, Edsall, B. A., ‘(Not) Baptizing Thecla: Early Interpretive Efforts on 1 Cor 1:17’, VC 71 (2017) 235–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Barrier notes that this chapter ‘seems to imply that there is some degree of abandonment’, Barrier, Acts of Paul and Thecla, 123. Yet, on the charge of a negative portrayal of Paul in this text, he writes of Thecla: ‘Affirmation by God [rather than by Paul] has less to do with being “anti-Pauline,” and more to do with coherence with Thecla's emergence as a “called out” emissary of God, not by humans, but by God’, op. cit., 19 n. 93.

40 Wehn argues that Paul's conduct implies that he ‘accepts and approves of Alexander's assault on Thecla, who is a foreigner in Antioch and has neither home nor protection within the structures of society’, Wehn, ‘Reflections on the Image of Paul in the Acts of Thecla’, 160. Contra, Barrier: ‘This has been grossly misinterpreted. Often this has been interpreted as the abandonment of Thecla by Paul. On the contrary, this is continuing to follow the motif of the ancient novel, when upon facing external pressures the lovers will often create some story in order to protect themselves … although the telling of the story has been greatly abbreviated in comparison to the typical ancient novel’, Barrier, Acts of Paul and Thecla, 140.

41 Barrier, Acts of Paul and Thecla, 180.

42 MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle, 19.

43 Wehn, ‘Reflections on the Image of Paul in the Acts of Thecla’, 161.

44 ‘The present text deliberately avoids using didaskein with regard to Thecla’, Kraemer, Unreliable Witnesses, 143.

45 Boughton, ‘Feminist Fantasy’, 376. Contra, Matthews judges Boughton as ‘unambiguously antifeminist’, Matthews, ‘Thinking of Thecla’, 46. At times, Boughton does go too far in her outright dismissal of every aspect of Thecla, for example: ‘Thecla's conversion is grounded not in a conviction that Jesus fulfills prophetic writings or in an appreciation of the idea of redemption that early Pauline epistles indicate was important to first-generation Christians. Instead, Thecla's religiosity is based on attraction’, Boughton, ‘Feminist Fantasy’, 378. Whether men are included among Thecla's students is discussed in Kraemer, Unreliable Witnesses, 143.

46 Ratcliffe, ‘Thecla Uncut’, 189 (emphasis original).

47 Ratcliffe, ‘Thecla Uncut’, 189.

48 Bremmer, ‘Magic, Martyrdom and Women's Liberation’, 54.

49 Ratcliffe, ‘Thecla Uncut’, 185.

50 Ratcliffe, ‘Thecla Uncut’, 191. Contra, Kraemer: ‘The virgin Thecla, virtuous and obedient, has no need for such garments, and is not ashamed of her naked body, any more than Eve (and Adam) was ashamed of her nudity before she became disobedient’, Kraemer, Unreliable Witnesses, 139.

51 Ratcliffe, ‘Thecla Uncut’, 194.

52 The question of whether the Acts of Thecla could have influenced the Passion has been raised, e.g. Moss, C. R., Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library; New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2012) 141–3Google Scholar.

53 There is ongoing discussion regarding the authorship and original language of the Passion, whether it was written in Greek or Latin, and whether the central part was actually written by Perpetua. See Hunink, V., ‘Did Perpetua Write her Prison Account?’, Folio Philologica 33.1.2 (2010) 147–55Google Scholar.

54 The Latin text and translation (adapted) is taken from Heffernan, T. J., The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) 100–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 On the connotations of Domina, see Shaw, B. D., ‘The Passion of Perpetua’, Past & Present 139 (1993) 3–45, at 6–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 This act of prostrating at a subordinate's feet is challenged in Saturus’ vision: ‘Are you not our father and priest? How can you throw yourself at our feet?’ (13.3). For the correlation between father/dragon/Egyptian/devil, see Solevåg, A. R., Birthing Salvation: Gender and Class in Early Christian Childbearing Discourse (Biblical Interpretation Series 121; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013), 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lefkowitz, M. R., ‘The Motivations for St. Perpetua's Martyrdom’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44.3 (1976) 417–21, at 419CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 ‘Perpetua's narratives of her encounters with her father are, for their part, structured around a series of more or less obvious oppositions and reversals. Many readers have detected a remarkable gendered inversion as this woman narrates how a man has ended up at her feet, a father defeated by his indomitable daughter, whom he calls his “lady” or “mistress” (domina) while she assumes the superior position of pitying him (3.6, 9.2). Some readers have wondered, moreover, whether Perpetua's father is marked as feminine when he tried to scratch her eyes out (3.3); whether the same action casts Perpetua in the role of potentially castrated male; or whether, when her father refuses to give back her baby and her desire to breast-feed miraculously fades, he is symbolically taking on the maternal role from which she is increasingly distancing herself’, Williams, C., ‘Perpetua's Gender: A Latinist Reads the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, in Perpetua's Passions: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis (ed. Bremmer, J. N. and Formisano, M.; Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) 54–77, at 60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 It is not entirely clear that Tertullian had access to the same version of the story known to us today.

59 Shaw, ‘The Passion of Perpetua’, 33.

60 Williams draws attention to the way in which the Latin language highlights Perpetua's gender ‘with techniques ranging from the subtle to the blatant, from the straightforwardly linguistic to the richly symbolic’, Williams, ‘Perpetua's Gender’, 56.

61 See the convincing reasons in Williams, ‘Perpetua's Gender’.

62 The invention of Felicitas also deals with the issue of social class and the breaking down of social structures through the Christian message of slave and owner united in Christ. See also Perkins: ‘I suspect both descriptions are rhetorical rather than realistic, but Felicitas's is the more questionable of the two’, Perkins, J., ‘The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body in the Passion of Perpetua’, Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses (ed. Penner, T. and Stichele, C. Vander; Biblical Interpretation Series 84; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007) 313–32, at 330Google Scholar. Perkins sees the representation of the women ‘in order to valorize the maternal body’ (330), in contrast to my own reading.

63 Solevåg argues: ‘That she should survive such a precarious birth thwarts the cultural expectations that an eight months’ delivery would go wrong, and thus renders the result of her friends’ prayers all the more miraculous’, Solevåg, Birthing Salvation, 207.

64 Contra, Perkins: ‘Perpetua does not abandon her baby; rather, he is taken from her’, Perkins, ‘The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body in the Passion of Perpetua’, 326.

65 Vierow, H., ‘Feminine and Masculine Voices in the “Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas”’, Latomus 58.3 (1999) 600–19, at 609–10Google Scholar. See also Frankfurter, D., ‘Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze’, JECS 17.2 (2009) 215–45, at 217, 221–4Google Scholar; J. N. Bremmer, ‘Felicitas: The Martyrdom of a Young African Woman’, Perpetua's Passions: Multidisciplinary Approaches, 49.

66 ‘The significance of the choice is made clear only if we understand the normal message imparted to crowds and to the condemned by the use of the usual wild beast, the bull, in this type of punishment: it signalled utter sexual dishonour, usually the display of the woman as a known adulteress … but since a cow was employed, the inference was that they were not “real women” enough to be guilty of adultery’, Shaw, ‘The Passion of Perpetua’, 7–8.

67 Kitzler, P., From ‘Passio Perpetuae’ to ‘Acta Perpetuae’: Recontextualizing a Martyr Story in the Literature of the Early Church (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015) 59Google Scholar.

68 The editor ‘reassures his audience, presumably a predominately male one, that these two heroic women have not abandoned their proper place in the social hierarchy … but have simply transferred their matronly loyalties to a new Lord and master, Christ’, Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, 325–6.

69 H. Sigismund-Nielsen, ‘Vibia Perpetua: An Indecent Woman’, Perpetua's Passions: Multidisciplinary Approaches, 114. The Greek avoids the second title, Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, 326.

70 Vierow, ‘Feminine and Masculine Voices’, 604.

71 Vierow writes, ‘Though the gender of the redactor is never specified, it seems to be masculine because the redactor and Saturus perceive Perpetua very differently from the way she conceptualizes herself’, Vierow, ‘Feminine and Masculine Voices’, 613.