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.

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.

Thecla is one of the most prominent figures of early Christianity, and her tale, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, one of the most popular. She has been widely celebrated as the apostle Paul’s disciple and heralded as an apostle in her own right, as a preeminent saint, model of chastity, charismatic confessor, teacher, leader, intercessor, and proto-martyr. Thecla and her tale have been studied from multiple angles (ancient romance, church history, cult, gender, women’s story-telling). However, the tremendous impact Thecla and her tale had on shaping the Lives of saints and their storyworlds remains little studied. This volume offers, for the first time, a collection of papers that explores the reception of Thecla and her tale in medieval (broadly defined) hagiographical texts composed in a variety of languages across Eurasia and North and East Africa. The introduction, thus, sets the stage for analyses by offering a synopsis of the tale, its more famous aspects for medieval readers and modern scholars, and its impact on a broad range of hagiographical tales. It also highlights the most prominent techniques that hagiographers deployed to model their protagonists on Thecla and the methodologies (intertextuality, reception) used across the volume that call them forth.