Thecla

ON ST. THECLA, VIRGIN AND PROTOMARTYR,

AT SELEUCIA IN ISAURIA.

In the I or 2 century

CRITICAL-HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.

Thecla, Virgin and Martyr, at Seleucia in Isauria (S.)

BY J. S.

§ I. The various Acts of St. Thecla, but all defiled with fables: a brief summary of the Acts.

[ ] Concerning the Acts of St. Thecla, that most celebrated virgin, which are extant today in various codices manuscript and printed, The first Acts of St. Thecla were fabulous, the learned of later ages have passed differing judgments. The most eminent Baronius, in the Annotations on the Martyrology at the XXIII day of September, and in the Annals at the year XLVII, discourses at length in defense of the Acts of St. Thecla, and adduces the authority of many Fathers, to show that most of the things which are narrated in the Acts concerning St. Thecla were also pronounced concerning her by the holy Fathers. But Baronius has had very few who agree with him, and the critics who flourished in this century and the last commonly hold all the Acts of St. Thecla as fabulous — not so, however, as to think that nothing true lies hidden in those Acts, but so as to believe that the collectors of the Acts did not shrink from fabulous adjuncts. But that we may proceed more clearly, it is necessary to review them one by one. Of the first Acts of St. Thecla, forged under the name of St. Paul, St. Jerome, On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 7, on St. Luke, speaks thus: Therefore we reckon the περίοδοι of Paul and Thecla, and the whole fable of the baptized lion, among the apocryphal scriptures. For what likelihood is there that the inseparable companion of the Apostle should have been ignorant of this alone among his other affairs? But Tertullian too, a neighbor of those times, relates that a certain presbyter in Asia, a σπουδαστής of the apostle Paul, being convicted before John of being the author of the book, and confessing that he had done this out of love for Paul, was deposed from his office. Tertullian, book 2 On Baptism, chapter 17, discourses thus to our purpose: But if those who read the writings falsely ascribed to Paul defend the example of Thecla for the license of women to teach and to baptize, let them know that in Asia the presbyter who put together that scripture, heaping up matter of his own as though under the title of Paul, being convicted and having confessed that he did it out of love for Paul, withdrew from his office.

[2] From these things I gather that the first Acts of St. Thecla were utterly fabulous; and were falsely ascribed to St. Paul, and are not extant. but that they are no longer extant, or at least have not become known. For they were so written as if their author had been St. Paul, as the words quoted intimate: Heaping up matter of his own as though under the title of Paul. But all the Acts of St. Thecla which are now known are composed under another's name, and none of them falsely claim St. Paul as author. Besides, in the Acts marked with Paul's name there was narrated the silly fable about a certain baptized lion. But in the Acts now known no mention is made of a baptized lion. They are therefore not the same as the Acts condemned by Tertullian and Jerome. Wherefore the opinion of John Ernest Grabe is utterly improbable, who in the Spicilegium of the Fathers of the I century published certain Greek Acts of St. Thecla, and on page 90 strives to prove that these are the very Acts of which Tertullian and Jerome treat. The arguments which he adduces imply only that those Acts are older than the Acts composed by Basil of Seleucia about the middle of the V century. But between the I century or the beginning of the second, in which the earlier ones were forged, and the middle of the V century, in which Basil wrote, there is a large enough interval within which Acts of St. Thecla different from the first could have been composed, which Basil of Seleucia might take to himself to follow. Therefore, if the anonymous author of these Acts has some things taken from the first Acts, this only proves that he did not sufficiently shrink from fables: which is manifestly plain from his own Acts.

[3] The Greek Acts published by Grabe, The Greek Acts of St. Thecla, which Grabe published at Oxford in the year 1700, bear this title: Μαρτύριον τῆς ἁγίας καὶ ἐνδόξου πρωτομάρτυρος καὶ ἀποστόλου Θέκλας. The martyrdom of the holy and glorious protomartyr and apostle Thecla. The beginning is: Αναβαίνοντος Παύλου εἰς Ικόνιον. When Paul was going up to Iconium. The edition was made from a manuscript codex of the Bodleian library, whose lacuna the editor supplied from the Acts composed by Metaphrastes. The same Greek Acts are found in various codices of the royal library of Paris, and in several others. The aforesaid Grabe gave also, after the Greek Acts, an ancient Latin version, which we too have in four manuscript codices of our Museum, and have found in many others. Now from that Latin version Grabe gathers that the last part of the Greek Acts, in which are narrated St. Thecla's dwelling in a cave near Seleucia, and her deeds there down to her death, and at last her death itself, was stitched on to the earlier Acts by some later interpolator. He alleges various grounds for this opinion. The first is that that part is not found in the Latin codices; which is true also of all ours. The second is that the ancient Fathers make no mention of any facts related in that part; whereas they have touched upon many things from what precedes. The third, that Basil of Seleucia almost passes over that part, and asserts the manner in which the Saint is said to have departed from among men rather from the report of men than from the older Acts, which he is otherwise wont to follow. These reasons are indeed probable: yet I doubt whether they can sufficiently prove what Grabe intends. For the style of that later part seems the same as that of the earlier. Besides, Metaphrastes narrated exactly all the things contained in that latter part. But for our purpose it matters almost nothing whether those Acts, as they stand in Greek, are of the same author, or whether the latter part was added by an interpolator; since the Acts are defiled with many fables, and therefore cannot deserve credit.

[4] which Grabe, following Baronius, strives to defend, are on many grounds Grabe indeed, following Baronius, alleges the authority of the holy Fathers, to win credit for his Acts. But the authority of the Fathers proves only that some true things are mixed in with many fables: for we do not hold as fables the assertions of the holy Fathers concerning St. Thecla, which we shall presently recite. But neither the holy Fathers nor historians worthy of credit affirmed the things which I briefly collect from the Acts as fabulous, many others being passed over. At the very first beginning of the Acts some things little probable are asserted. Such is what is asserted concerning Demas and Hermogenes, who are said to have come with Paul to Iconium, and to have opposed him not only secretly but even openly: for those two disciples of St. Paul, although they afterward fell away, clung to St. Paul for a longer time, and later

also began to follow him, so far as appears. Such also are the things which are read concerning Onesiphorus and Titus, where Titus is said to have taught Onesiphorus what Paul's figure was like, and Onesiphorus to have met him on the royal road which leads to Lystra. Certainly all these things do not agree with what is read in Acts 13 concerning the first coming of Paul and Barnabas to Iconium. For they, driven out from Antioch of Pisidia, came to Iconium; and then, driven from Iconium, in Acts 14 they fled to Lystra and Derbe. Wherefore neither by the road which leads to Lystra, nor with Demas and Hermogenes, nor with Onesiphorus forewarned by Titus, does St. Paul seem to have come to Iconium, but all those things seem rather to have been invented by an unskilled writer, who in place of Barnabas, Paul's true companion, substituted other fictitious ones. Such again is that which is said about the preachings of St. Paul in the house of Onesiphorus, so that it deserves no credit. For in the Synagogue of the Jews at Iconium Paul preached with Barnabas, Acts 14: nor is he read to have preached in any other place in that city. Besides, Onesiphorus, of whom we treated at the VI of September, seems rather to have dwelt at Ephesus than at Iconium.

[5] Secondly, the first meeting of Paul, Demas and Hermogenes with Onesiphorus is improbably set forth, defiled with fables, since Demas and Hermogenes are brought in quarreling at once, and there is deep silence about Barnabas. Likewise St. Paul's first preaching, such as is there read, is improbable: for the whole of it tends to the persuading of virginity, continence and flight from the world, the foundations of the faith being passed over. Thirdly, utterly improbable and fictitious seems what is asserted of St. Thecla, that she heard Paul preaching in the opposite house from the window of her own, and for three days and more remained unmoved at the window without food and drink, answering nothing to those who chid her, and not so much as looking back. These are the inventions of an idle man. For who would believe such an author, that St. Paul preached in a house in such a way as to be heard in the next, or that he drew out his preaching for three continuous days? Who would believe that the mother of St. Thecla, who with the most exasperated mind saw her daughter clinging to the window, instead of the grief and tears in which the author makes her indulge, did not rather have recourse to force and blows, to tear her from the window even against her will? Fourthly, what is asserted of St. Paul at Iconium, that he was cast into prison, then led before the governor, beaten with rods, and so cast out of the city, seems contrary to the Scriptures. Let us hear, then, on what occasion Paul and Barnabas are said to have departed from Iconium, in Acts 14 ℣ 4: And the multitude of the city was divided, and some indeed were with the Jews, but some with the Apostles. And when there was an assault made by the gentiles and the Jews with their rulers, to use them contumeliously and to stone them, they, understanding it, fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia. These things certainly I cannot square with the assertions in the Acts.

[6] Fifthly, neither are the things likely which St. Thecla is said to have done meanwhile, as is shown in a brief which for brevity's sake I pass over. Still more incredible is what is asserted of her mother, who is said to have cried out concerning Thecla as she stood silent before the judge: Burn the wicked girl, burn her who has spurned her betrothed, in the midst of the theater, that fear may be struck into all the women who have been taught by that man. This, I say, is plainly incredible, especially since the judge is presently said to have condemned Thecla, a girl of the first rank, to the fire, and young men too and maidens to have brought wood and grass (rather hay) that Thecla might be burned. For if the mother, who before is read to have used neither her own hands nor those of her maidservants to tear her Daughter from the window, could break out for very wrath into so inhuman a cry, could the judge also at once hearken to an angry woman, could young men and maidens forthwith offer themselves as servants of the executioners, that they might see a tender and beautiful Virgin burnt with flames? Nay, the common people are said to have compelled Thecla to mount the pyre, and the populace to have kindled the fire. These things are rather ridiculously invented, as also are the things which follow concerning Paul. He is said to have hidden in a tomb, already fasting for several days, and to have taken off his tunic that a boy might buy loaves at Iconium. But this boy was necessary to the fable-maker, that someone might lead Thecla to Paul: for, the fire being extinguished, she is said to have gone forth from the city safe, and to have been brought to the Apostle by that boy. I pass over other things equally improbable which are said to have been done in that tomb. But presently Thecla wished to follow Paul, who dissuaded her in vain, and they are said to have set out together for Antioch of Syria, as the circumstances imply. But that journey is touched upon as though Iconium and Antioch were neighboring cities, whereas they are very far apart.

[7] summary of the same. At the entry into the city a most manifest fable is again woven. Alexander, a chief man of Antioch, on seeing Thecla loved her at once, and promised many things to Paul, if we believe the fable-maker. But the Apostle is said to have answered: I know not that woman. Which is the writer's lie, not the Apostle's. Then Alexander is feigned to have kissed Thecla in the street; and she to have torn his tunic and struck the crown from his head. These trifles the author has used, that he might set Thecla before the prefect of Antioch, by whom she is said to have been condemned to the beasts. But when she had been condemned, she is reported to have been received into the house of Tryphæna, a noble widow, not yet a Christian, for whose deceased daughter Falconilla she prayed; which, as improbable, Baronius judges to have been stuffed into the Acts. But the Acts are not such to me that it is necessary to call that one thing an addition, since nearly everything, as it is related with its circumstances, is equally improbable. The Saint's punishment too is not free of fables: for a lioness is brought in defending the Saint, and killing a bear and then fighting against a lion until both die. There is added a pool with seals, into which Thecla herself is asserted to have cast herself headlong, all the seals dying. Presently other beasts are said to have been let loose upon her, and there is added a ridiculous fable, expressed in these words: The women raised a sorrowful cry: and this one indeed cast nard, that one cassia, another amomum, another finally ointment into the midst, so that there was a great abundance of ointment, as there was of people. But all the beasts let loose, as if overwhelmed with sleep, did not touch Thecla. At last she is said to have been bound to two bulls, that she might be torn in pieces; but as vainly as she had been exposed to the beasts. Meanwhile Tryphæna, who had preserved Thecla, and who is also called a princess and a kinswoman of Cæsar, is said to have expired for grief, but to have revived on hearing of Thecla's deliverance, to whom she wished at once to make over all her goods.

[8] it is shown. But Thecla, burning with longing for Paul, when she had heard that he was at Myra in Lycia, is said to have set out thither, and that clad in a man's dress. When she had come to Paul, she is written to have told him all things, and among others to have said: I have received the laver, Paul; for he who wrought through thee the preaching of the Gospel has also wrought with me for baptizing (in Greek λούσασθαι, that I might be washed). The trifling writer has regard to the pool into which he affirmed the Saint to have leaped, so that he would have her baptized by herself. Then she is asserted to have set out for Iconium, and there to have heard that her betrothed was dead, but to have found her mother alive; yet not to have been able to convert her to the faith. And to her as she departed for Iconium Paul said, if we believe the Acts: Go and teach the Word of God. These words, if the writer were trustworthy, would present no difficulty, since they could easily be understood of instructing women privately. At last she is said to have set out from Iconium for Seleucia, a shining cloud going before, and to have withdrawn to a neighboring mountain, where she lived many years in a cave, had women disciples in the ascetic life, and healed the sick and the possessed brought from all sides. But to these things a silly fable is again added: for the physicians of Seleucia, being deserted on account of the fame of Thecla's cures, and falling into an impious plan, are said to have suborned unclean men to violate the Virgin even against her will. But she, when they had arrived and she understood the matter, prayed to God. Presently a rock opened itself, and the Saint, divinely warned, entered the rock, and thus was freed from the unclean hands of the impious, the rock closing again immediately after the Saint's entrance. The age of St. Thecla is thus expressed at the end of the Acts: Thecla therefore suffered … in her eighteenth year (in Greek, when she was eighteen years old), but afterward she passed seventy-two years in travel and in the ascetic life on the mountain, so that she was ninety years old when the Lord took her from the earth. But this age does not seem more certain than are all the rest.

[9] You have, studious reader, in a brief summary the Acts of St. Thecla, From those first fabulous ones these were probably as they were put together by the anonymous author, and published by Grabe. But the more I consider them, the more I wonder at the editor's judgment, both that he believed them to be those of the Asiatic presbyter who forged the Περίοδοι of Paul and Thecla, and that he sought to win credit for such Acts even so. For if the things which that presbyter related about Paul and Thecla were true, for what cause was he condemned and stripped of his dignity? But that the things which he wrote were false is clear not only from his condemnation, and not only from the silence of St. Luke, from which St. Jerome drew his argument, but also from the very words of St. Paul, I Cor. 9 ℣ 5: Have we not power to lead about a woman, a sister, as well as the rest of the Apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? But the Apostle implies that he did not use this power. And if he was unwilling to lead about a woman, a sister, who could have rendered useful services, how much less likely is it that he had in his company a beautiful and tender girl, from whom he could expect nothing but impending dangers? False therefore and invented were the things which that Asiatic presbyter had written. But our anonymous author seems to have drawn many things from him, and namely those things which he asserted about St. Thecla's journeys, and about her immense longing always to see and hear Paul.

[10] Nay, it is likely that nearly everything was drawn from that first fable-maker; composed. and that only those things were passed over which had been expressly reprehended by Tertullian, Jerome, and perhaps others, such as the fable about the baptized lion, and the office of teaching and baptizing publicly ascribed to St. Thecla by the first fable-maker, as Tertullian witnesses. Besides, he changed the title and the supposed name of the author. For the first had falsely claimed St. Paul as the author of his fables; but the anonymous writes under his own name, although this is unknown. In the Decree of Pope Gelasius there is numbered among the apocrypha The book which is called the Acts of Thecla and of Paul the apostle. But whether that first little work of the Asian presbyter is to be understood, or the Acts of St. Thecla of which we now treat, is not clearly plain. No more is anything established about the time in which these Acts were put together by the anonymous author. The editor

believes them exceedingly ancient, and says that Basil of Seleucia drew his own materials from them. The latter point I judge true from a comparison of the two: but from it one cannot certainly infer that the Acts are older than the IV century or the beginning of the fifth.

[11] Basil of Seleucia wrote a History of St. Thecla, Basil, bishop of Seleucia in Isauria, flourished in the V century, and took part in various councils; but he could win from them small fame for constancy, since he seems always to have adhered to those who for the time prevailed, as may be seen more fully set forth in Tillemont, tome 15 of the Monuments, in various places. He undertook the composing of the Acts of St. Thecla, and named the work a History, whose beginning is: Ιστορία μὲν τὸ πονηθὲν ἡμῖν τοῦτο σύγγραμμα. This book, wrought out by us, is a History. Now this History, as he says in the Preface, was excerpted from another, and that a more ancient record, yet so composed after the pattern of that one that it altogether treads as it were in its footsteps. He then intimates that there were several authors of the same Life, and confesses that something was added by himself to the ancient accounts, but nothing beyond the scope and mind of the older writers. For following, he says, the sense and order of those things which at the time of the martyrdom were either said or done, and only in another kind of composition — and, to confess the thing as it is, of diction — turning to our own use the labor already undertaken before by others, we have dedicated it to the great Martyr of God. But assigning speeches or discourses to the same Martyr, so far as the matter seemed to admit, and allotting to each person a proper and fitting form of speech, we have, unless we are deceived, won for it its ancient dignity and ornament. Thus the author, concerning the ancient monuments which he had, and the manner in which he followed them.

[12] drawn from the preceding Acts, and scarcely better than they: Now from a comparison of the Acts of which I have already treated with Basil's composition, it clearly appears that those Acts, or at least others very like them, lighted Basil's way: for Basil followed the whole order of the history, or rather of the fable, cutting away or altering here and there very few things. And this I judge Basil did in order to make his composition more probable: for he could easily have noticed that some things were not sufficiently likely. But in the speeches he claimed for himself much greater license, as he himself confesses, changing many things in them and adding many everywhere. From what has been said, moreover, it is gathered that the said History of Basil is of no greater authority or credit than are the Acts already condemned, which he followed, especially since Basil inserted into his own History nearly all the things which we have called improbable in them, and even amplified some in one way or another, and certainly attributed lengthy and frequent speeches to the persons at his own discretion. Wherefore I judge that neither the Acts before mentioned nor Basil's first book should be published. From the latter I shall insert into this Commentary only those things which shall seem to conduce to our purpose. But of Basil's second book I shall treat below. The whole composition of Basil of Seleucia concerning St. Thecla was published in Greek and Latin, and illustrated with Annotations, by Pierre Pantin, dean of Brussels, who likewise published the Acts of St. Thecla written by Metaphrastes, of which a few things are now to be said.

[13] as also other Acts from them by Metaphrastes, Metaphrastes begins his Acts with these words: Ἄρτι τοῦ μεγάλου τῆς ἀληθείας εὐαγγελιστοῦ τε καὶ κήρυκος Παύλου &c. As soon as Paul, that great herald and preacher of the truth, etc. The words alone are different: but the sense is the same with which the anonymous author before mentioned began. Him Metaphrastes everywhere had before his eyes, and followed closely as to the facts asserted; but in the reasonings or speeches he assumed to himself, after his manner, somewhat more liberty, and used his own style. Wherefore the faults which I have shown in the said Acts are found also in Metaphrastes, excepting very few which he noticed and corrected. Therefore I judge that these Acts too are not to be given, even though I have them both in manuscript and in print.

[14] An encomiastic and quasi-historical Oration on St. Thecla was composed by Nicetas David the Paphlagonian, and an Oration by Nicetas David: published in Greek and Latin by Combefis in the Auctarium novissimum from page 445, and reprinted in the Lyons Library of the Fathers. But this orator drew everything from the Acts. For of St. Thecla's first conversion he speaks thus: The girl Thecla, the daughter indeed of Theoclia, but betrothed to Thamyris, having her house nearby, and applying her ear at the window, listened to Paul's teachings… So did she assent to the truth, and cleave to it by faith, that for three days she forgot all things, both food and drink. In like manner Nicetas pursues everything, related in summary from the Acts, correcting only a very few things lightly, or touching them more briefly, but amplifying some things even more. Wherefore I cannot agree with Combefis, who in the Annotations, page 509, judges that most things in these are true. I should think, he says, that those ancient Acts, which either Basil, or Metaphrastes, or Nicetas also undertook to narrate and to adorn with style, are the very Circuits of Paul and Thecla, deservedly reprobated by the ancients, in which nevertheless most things about Thecla that were true would be contained, which the other Fathers received from them and approved. To these things, I say, I cannot assent, because it seems clear that everything flowed from the Acts of the anonymous author; and these were composed from those Circuits. But I judge that most things are false, or at least corrupted by fictitious adjuncts. No more would I assert with Combefis that these things are piously to be venerated and believed, so long as no more certain accounts are at hand. For why should we call piously venerable what was disapproved by Tertullian and Jerome, and condemned by Pope Gelasius?

[15] Among the Works of Chrysostom in Montfaucon, tome 2, page 749, there is a Homily, mutilated at the end, on St. Thecla the disciple of Paul. the compositions of others concerning St. Thecla. The disciple of Paul. Whether it be Chrysostom's or another's, Savile doubted, and after him others have doubted, and therefore I myself in the Acts of Chrysostom reported it only as doubtful, although nothing is objected against it beyond some sort of variation of style, perhaps more imaginary than real. But neither then did it please me, nor does it please me now, to dispute at length about a matter of so little moment. Whosesoever the Homily may be, it contains only very few things about St. Thecla, and these are such as cannot be disapproved, as I shall show in its place. In Assemani, in the Bibliotheca Orientalis, tome 3, page 286, there is mentioned, among the Arabic Lives of the Saints which are extant in the Vatican Library and have anonymous authors, a Life of Thecla, virgin and martyr. Likewise there is praised in Assemani, page 323, an Oration on Bl. Thecla by Theodore of Mopsuestia. But these we lack, nor do we at all need them. Among more recent writers, Paolo Emilio Santorio composed a Life of St. Thecla in Latin, in a little work on the twelve Virgin martyrs; but it can be of no use to us after the older writers, whom he followed without that criticism which is most necessary in this Life. Baronius in the Annals, at the year 47, recounted many things about Thecla from the holy Fathers; but he commended the Acts themselves more than I could wish. For the Fathers do not assert those things which we have shown to be improbable in the Acts. More critically about St. Thecla wrote Tillemont, tome 2 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, and, following Tillemont, Baillet at the XIII of September, to say nothing of others.

[16] The book of Miracles written by Basil of Seleucia, Further, the aforesaid Basil of Seleucia, besides the first book, which he composed on the deeds of the Saint, composed also a second on her Miracles after death. And that book he begins with this preface: Since truth is wont above all to adorn the proclamations of praises, to whomsoever they be at last assigned, and since these rest chiefly upon these two foundations, namely life and deeds; and since very many things have been set forth by us, especially in the preceding volume, about the Martyr, so that nothing now remains save that truth be shown to be present as a companion to those very things which we have recounted, and to shine forth in them: for this cause with no small zeal and labor we have gathered together her miracles which are extant here and there, and have published them in a small Commentary — not indeed all of them, nay not even the smallest fraction of them all; but a very few in all, and only those which happened either within our own memory or a little before our age; and again of these very few, only those which we could gather from truthful men and women: so that no occasion may be left to readers not to give full credit to the things already related by us before, taking from the miracles, both those which are wrought at this time and those which were done in the former age, most certain proofs of her preceding contests and valiant deeds. In recounting which miracles we therefore make mention of persons, places, and names, lest concerning them also any ground of doubt should remain; but that whoever chances upon these things may have at hand and within reach whence to institute an inquiry into the truth of the things which have been said by us.

[17] partly to be given, partly to be reduced to a summary: These things Basil says of his purpose, both to build up credit for the deeds before related by him, and to commend the miracles to be reported. But certainly particular deeds and their circumstances cannot be shown to be true from miracles, since the Saints gather the treasures of their merits in diverse ways; whereas the miracles would from what he says have much authority, if Basil had done accurately what he affirms himself to have done. But he does not seem to have been equally accurate in all things; rather he narrates some things as miracles which perhaps were done in a natural way; some too which seem less certain; and he indulged somewhat more in affected eloquence than seems expedient in so grave a matter. Nevertheless I shall give in Latin some selections from that book of Miracles which appear better attested and more certain than the rest; but for brevity's sake I shall cut away not a few superfluous things which have nothing to do with the Saint or her benefits; nay, some things also, uttered in a style more profane than sacred, I shall touch on only in summary.

[18] Vossius denies the History of St. Thecla to Basil; Photius in the Bibliotheca, codex 168, treats of Basil of Seleucia, and calls him Blessed, even though he does not seem ever to have been enrolled in the Calendars of the Greeks or of the Latins. And when he had reviewed his Orations, he adds these things concerning his writings: And this same Basil is he who sets forth in verse the illustrious deeds, and the contests, and the victories of Thecla the first martyr. From these words various writers gather that a metrical Life of St. Thecla also was composed by Basil: but it still lies hidden, nor is the loss great. Gerard John Vossius, On the Greek Historians, book 2, chapter 24, judges that the Acts of St. Thecla of which we have already treated, as they are written in prose and in the manuscripts attributed to Basil of Seleucia, are not by this author. And he alleges a twofold reason. The first is that no one between Basil of Seleucia and John Damascene seems to have spoken about the soul of Falconilla, freed from the lower regions by the prayers of St. Thecla: the other, that they seem unworthy of the age and erudition of Basil of Seleucia, nor

congruous with his style. Neither reason presses hard. For most writers of the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries could be silent about the deliverance of Falconilla's soul, because they held that for a fable, and the Acts themselves for the greater part fabulous. But that the erudition and critical judgment of Basil of Seleucia was so great that he could not adorn with his own style and adopt fables written long before, I do not yet see. The style of the Acts does indeed differ from the style of Basil's Orations: but that is the less to be wondered at, since he did not deliver the Acts before an assembly, as he did the Orations, and in them he had older Acts before his eyes and set them before himself for following. To the other objections, however, may be added the silence of Photius, which presses more, because he attributes to Basil a metrical Life of St. Thecla.

[19] Tillemont, tome 15, in Basil of Seleucia, not only answers the objections already related; but Tillemont rightly proves that it must be ascribed to him. but brings forward also some arguments, and thinks that by them all doubt is to be removed. First he observes that both books have the same author, since near the end of the first he speaks of the Saint's miracles, and says: Concerning which also, God willing and the Virgin favoring, we shall treat in another Work and book. In the preface of the second book he makes mention also of the first, in the words given above. Then Tillemont suspects that this Work is said in the title to be written in the historical style, that it may be distinguished from the verses. Thirdly he shows that the composition is at least that of a bishop or presbyter of Seleucia and of the fifth century, in which Basil presided over the see of Seleucia. For the author, book 2, chapter 27, makes mention of an Oration delivered by himself on the yearly festival of St. Thecla: and this belonged to a bishop, or at least to a presbyter. And the time in which he wrote he intimates in various places: for he makes mention, book 2, chapters 13, 17 and 30, of Dexianus, bishop of Seleucia, as one formerly known to him and then dead. Now Dexianus held the see of Seleucia before Basil, and in the year 431 took part in the Council of Ephesus. He mentions in chapter 25 Isocasius, a heathen philosopher not yet converted, whose conversion Tillemont assigns to the year 467, tome 6 of the Emperors, in Leo I, article 15. Again in chapter 4 he makes mention of the widow of Bitianus or Vitianus, a general who under Theodosius II did well against the Persians, as Socrates briefly intimates, book 7, chapter 18. From these things therefore Tillemont rightly gathers that those Acts were written in the time in which Basil flourished, that is, about the middle of the fifth century, and certainly after the year 431 and before 467. To these I add another observation, namely that the author speaks of several persons of Seleucia who were even then living; yet never speaks of Basil, unless he himself be Basil: for he speaks of himself frequently enough, and relates various things. But it is not likely that the bishop alone should be passed over without praise by an author who liberally celebrates with praises the chief men and women, and even reckons their upright life among the miracles of St. Thecla. Wherefore I have no doubt that Basil himself is the writer of these Acts: nor ought the faults which have crept into these Acts to move us much, since other writings of the same Prelate also are not free of faults.

§ II. The things which the holy Fathers asserted concerning St. Thecla are to be admitted as true. From these the Saint's deeds become known in some measure.

[ ] Ittigius will have the whole History of St. Thecla fictitious, Thomas Ittig, in his Work on the Libraries and Catenæ of the Fathers, page 700, not only refutes the Acts published by Grabe, of which I treated at number 3; but speaks also in such a way as though he believed everything fictitious which the holy Fathers recorded about St. Thecla. For on page 702 he says: But to me, to speak the judgment of my mind, the whole history of Thecla seems a mere fable. Again on page 703 he reasons thus: Grabe appeals further to the writers of the IV and V century. Nor do I deny that some writers of the fourth and fifth century have thrown in a mention of Thecla. But to their testimonies I oppose not only the judgment of Tertullian and Jerome about the fictitious Acts of Thecla, but also the silence of the remaining Fathers about Thecla. Eusebius, that most celebrated writer of Ecclesiastical History, who recounts so many martyrs in his Ecclesiastical History, records nothing of the deeds of Thecla the protomartyr and apostle, concerning which there is deep silence also in the writers of the first, second and third century. Finally on page 705 he manifests his mind even more clearly. Perhaps someone will object, he says, that the history of Thecla cannot be held for a mere fable, since certain ascetics for religion's sake frequently entered a certain holy place at Seleucia in Isauria, once inhabited by Thecla, as is narrated in the Lives of the Fathers published by Rosweyde, and besides the emperor Zeno dedicated basilicas to Thecla, as Evagrius witnesses, book 3, chapter 8. But neither the superstitious credulity of certain ascetics, nor temples dedicated to Thecla, firmly demonstrate that there is anything true in the deeds of Thecla, since temples have been dedicated also to Catherine, to George, and to other fictitious Saints, and superstitious men often falsely persuade themselves that this or that place was once inhabited by this or that Saint. Wherefore I confess that I cannot assent to a certain most illustrious man, who in his Notes on Jerome's Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers would not have the martyrdom and perils of Thecla held by anyone as invented. Thus far Ittig.

[21] but that criticism is unworthy of a prudent man, But if this criticism is perhaps worthy of a genuine disciple of Luther, who after the example of his patriarch neglects the authority of the holy Fathers, it is certainly unworthy of a moderate and prudent man. For Grabe, after Baronius, cited the two Gregories, of Nazianzus and of Nyssa, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Isidore of Pelusium, Maximus of Turin, Zeno of Verona, Basil of Seleucia, to whom he might have added Jerome, Augustine, and Methodius, older than the rest, and several others. But so to despise Fathers so many and so great, most excellent in erudition and venerable for antiquity, as to say that they celebrated with praises a woman plainly fictitious, is the part neither of a moderate nor of a prudent man, especially since no urgent reasons are brought forward. For if we know most certainly that St. Paul existed, even though the same Acts about him and St. Thecla were forged, these Acts certainly cannot furnish a fit argument for denying that St. Thecla also existed, and that she flourished in virginity and in martyrdom, as the holy Fathers testify. What learned historian is ignorant that fabulous Acts have been fabricated about all the Apostles? Nor yet can we say that they neither existed nor preached the Gospel, because this is established from elsewhere by undoubted testimonies. So neither ought we to deny Thecla to be a virgin and a martyr, because concerning these things we have the weightiest testimonies of the holy Fathers. If anyone should be willing to consider profane histories, he will likewise find that many things have been invented about various persons whom nevertheless we do not believe to be fictitious persons. Wherefore Ittig ought to have brought forward better arguments, to make that new criticism of his probable or tolerable.

[22] and resting on no arguments. For what he tries to elicit from the words of Tertullian and Jerome is nothing at all, but rather contrary to himself. Tertullian denies that it can be gathered from writings falsely ascribed to Paul that it is lawful for women to baptize, because those writings are fabulous. How much more strongly would he have proved it, if he could have said that Thecla was a fictitious person! But he says this no more of St. Thecla than of St. Paul himself. On the contrary he shows that Thecla was known in his time, and that her example was wrongly alleged by some, to arrogate to women the license of baptizing. Tertullian therefore condemns only the Acts, and what was read in those Acts about baptism conferred by Thecla: but he by no means denies that Thecla the virgin flourished in the times of the Apostles. This Jerome no more denies, though he likewise condemns those Acts. Nay rather Jerome, in the Epistle to Eustochium On the Keeping of Virginity, clearly shows how much he esteemed St. Thecla, when he names her alone among the virgins along with Mary the Mother of the Lord and Miriam the sister of Moses, whom he says will meet Eustochium after this life. Then Thecla, he says, shall fly rejoicing into thy embraces. Perhaps Ittig would have called Jerome's credulity superstitious too, since he promises to a virgin the embraces of a departed Virgin. But I had rather be soberly wise with Jerome than arrogantly despise the holy Fathers with Ittig. Eusebius does not seem to have been ignorant of St. Thecla: for in chapter 3 of the Martyrs of Palestine, treating of the Thecla who suffered at Gaza with Agabius, he speaks of her thus, καὶ ἡ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς Θέκλα, and the Thecla of our time. By which manner of speaking he implies that the other and older, that is, the most celebrated one, was not unknown to him. What is added about the silence of the writers of the first, second and third century, is as false as it is frivolous. For how many other disciples of the Apostles, of whom mention is made in the Acts of the Apostles or in Paul's Epistles, are buried in deep silence by other writers of the first three centuries whose Works have come down to us! Nay, some even of the Apostles themselves you will not find mentioned among the approved writers of those times. Futile therefore is that argument against St. Thecla, even if it be feigned true. But it is also false: for Tertullian, who mentions Thecla, as we have seen, flourished in the second and third century: and St. Methodius, who celebrates St. Thecla at length, flourished and wrote in the III century. But let us, dismissing Ittig's ineptitudes, examine with what praises the holy Fathers celebrated Thecla.

[23] St. Epiphanius, Heresy 79, number 5, among the eminent Saints, Thecla numbered among the chief virgins, namely Elias and John the Baptist, illustrious for perpetual virginity, besides Mary the Mother of the Lord, far to be preferred to all others, names St. Thecla alone of virgins and women, teaching that neither she nor any of the Saints is to be adored, in these words: But neither Thecla nor any other of the Saints is adored. In like manner St. Ambrose, chapter 3, To a Fallen Virgin, while he rebukes her, reckons St. Thecla among the chief Virgins, thus addressing the fallen one: What wilt thou do before Mary, Thecla, and Agnes, and the immaculate choir of purity? And presently in chapter 4 he thus refutes the excuse of the frailty of the flesh: The blessed Thecla with her innumerable companions will answer thee: We too were clothed with the same flesh, and yet neither could the frailty of the flesh maim the full purpose of our chastity, nor could the savagery of tyrants cast it down through various torments. St. Gregory of Nyssa, in the Life of St. Macrina his sister, first teaches that she was also called by a secret name Thecla, and alleges the reason on page 178, thus setting forth his mother's vision: But when the time of bearing was at hand, being sunk in sleep, she seemed to herself to carry in her hand that which she still held within her womb, and to behold one more august than human aspect and form, who called the little daughter by the name of Thecla — of that Thecla, I say, most celebrated among the martyrs: and when he had left this attested, repeating it three times, he departed. But she*

was at once released from sleep, and easily delivered of her child, so that she was both awakened from sleep and beheld fulfilled what she had seen in her rest. This therefore was her secret name. But it seems to me that he who had appeared in her rest pronounced that word, not so much to indicate by what name she should be called, as to show by the likeness of the name the same zeal and manner of life.

[24] or even set first by various Fathers St. Jerome in the Chronicle, at the year 377, relates these things about Melania the elder: Melania, most noble of Roman women, and daughter of Marcellus once consul, having left behind her only son, then city prætor, sailed to Jerusalem, where she was so great a marvel of virtues, and especially of humility, that she received the name of Thecla. From these things it is clear how great was the fame of St. Thecla in the IV century, and in how great honor her name was held. And indeed Methodius the martyr, older than these, in the Banquet of the Virgins, preferred Thecla to the rest, when on pages 160 and 161 he brings in Arete or Virtue speaking to the Virgins and crowning them, with these words subjoined concerning Thecla: But Thecla with a greater and more flowery crown, inasmuch as she has commended herself above you by a signal and eminent zeal. Wherefore St. Isidore of Pelusium, book 1, Epistle 87, where he had set forth certain other women as an example to women monastics, speaks thus of St. Thecla: Add the head of womanly victories and trophies, that is, that Thecla celebrated by the praises of all, who stands forth as a pillar of immortal modesty, and who out of the midst of the tempest of turbulent affections, like a kindled torch, came to a harbor immune from all waves. St. Gregory Nazianzen, in the third Oration, which is the first against Julian, sharply assails the apostate emperor for despising the martyrs, and praises St. Thecla among the chief in these words: Hast thou not feared the victims slain for Christ; nor dreaded the great champions, that John, Peter, Paul, James, Stephen, Luke, Andrew, Thecla, those who both after them and before them exposed themselves to dangers for the truth? who with fire, and sword, and beasts, and tyrants, and present evils, and threatened, contended with eager mind, as though in other men's bodies, nay as though without bodies? Why? Lest they should betray godliness even in word. To whom illustrious honors and festivals have been appointed, by whom demons are driven off and diseases cured: whose apparitions and predictions there are: whose very bodies alone can do the same as their holy souls, whether they be touched or honored: whose very drops of blood alone, and slight tokens of their passion, can do the same as their bodies. Thus far Nazianzen, speaking so generally of many Saints that all seems to fit St. Thecla by name.

[25] and by ancient writers. In the Life of St. Syncletica, whose author is uncertain but ancient, once attributed to St. Athanasius, among us tome 1 of January, page 243, when St. Syncletica is compared with St. Thecla, the latter is thus celebrated: In Syncletica one may see a genuine disciple of the blessed Thecla, who walked in the same footsteps. One was the suitor of both, namely Christ; one the sponsor and bridesman, namely Paul; the same the common bridal-bed, namely the church… Whence the love of both toward Christ was uniform; because, endowed with the same gifts, they applied themselves to the same pursuits. The martyrdoms of Thecla are known to all, through fires, through wild beasts, and through what torments she was not tormented. Nor do I think the praiseworthy sweats and labors of Syncletica less known. For since one and the same beloved Bridegroom was the Bridegroom of both, namely Christ the Lord, it must needs be that the adversary of both was the same, namely the devil. But in Thecla I judge the torments to have been more moderate, since the malignity of the adversary seems to have raged against her only in the body and in outward things, etc. Thus far the author, showing how much he esteemed St. Thecla, in that he chose to compare St. Syncletica chiefly with her.

[26] Now let us come from the general praise of the holy Martyr to particular facts. The Saint, refusing a noble betrothed, Not only do the Fathers with great consent celebrate the virginity of St. Thecla; but many also affirm that she was promised to a noble betrothed, and that, having left or refused him, she chose virginity together with the Christian faith, upon St. Paul's preaching. St. Epiphanius, Heresy 78, number 16, opens his mind about these things in this manner: But Thecla too, when she had fallen in with Paul, dissolved the covenanted nuptials, though she had already been betrothed to a certain chief man of the whole city, and one far wealthy, most noble and most splendid. But that holy woman despised earthly things for this cause, that she might be able to possess the heavenly. St. Ambrose agrees, book 2 On Virgins, chapter 3, concerning her instruction by St. Paul, concerning the betrothed refused, and concerning virginity. I shall bring forward the words below, where the martyrdom shall be treated of. St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 14 on the Canticles, thus celebrates the Virgin as the Disciple of St. Paul: Such myrrh did Paul once pour forth from his mouth, mingled with the pure lily of modesty, into the ears of the holy Virgin. And she was Thecla, who, having nobly received within herself the drops flowing down from the lily into her soul, put to death the outward man, every carnal thought and desire being extinguished. In whom, after she had received that good doctrine, both youth was extinguished, and outward comeliness extinguished, and extinguished all the organs of the body's senses, the Word alone living in her, through whom the whole world was dead to her, and the Virgin herself was dead to the world.

[27] St. John Chrysostom (or if perhaps it be some other, and despising threats, the author of the doubtful and mutilated Homily), tome 2 of the Works, page 749, having first magnified the labors of virginity, subjoins these things about St. Thecla: For indeed nature yielded to the Girl, and that which among others rules and rages toward union, in Thecla practiced virginity. But her parents, since they knew not the compact entered upon by their Daughter with virginity, nor that Christ the Lord had given his right hand from heaven for the sake of joining a covenant of nuptials with her, with many and wordy threats urged her to marriage. But already the ears of the Girl rang with Paul's song: "She that is unmarried thinketh on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit." And after many things said in praise of virginity, these again: Her mother pressed her, urging her to nuptials: but she addressed her heavenly Bridegroom in these words: "To thee have I lifted up my eyes, who dwellest in heaven." The suitor drew near, tickling her with nuptial converse: but she silently joined herself with Christ, saying: "My soul hath cleaved after thee." Her kinsfolk flocked together, catching at her with flatteries: but Paul stood before her mind protesting: "I have espoused thee to one Husband, to present thee a chaste virgin to Christ." The judges terrified her with punishments: but she, trampling upon all with a great soul, cried out: "Princes are not a terror to good works, but to the evil."

[28] But since statues of virginity had to be erected to the Martyr even in the highways, and instructed by St. Paul, such a temptation arose for the Girl. Being freed by the trial, she pursued the prize of Paul, and, following report as her guide, dared to commit herself to the roads which led to Paul. But the devil watched the Girl, and when he had observed her upon her journey, he sent in against her, as an enemy, the suitor, a robber of virginity as it were in the desert. And when she was already accomplishing her journey, the suitor, a stallion at the noble Virgin's back and a keen tracker, was already crying out that she was taken. Hard straits pressed on every side: strong was he who brought the war; weak she on whom the war was brought. Where was there for her any refuge from that refuge? But then the Virgin, turning to heaven, cried out with lamentations to him who is present to all who anywhere call upon him: "O Lord my God, in thee have I hoped." … Here the mutilated Homily breaks off. But this fact I have found nowhere, not even in the fabulous Acts. It is not, however, improbable that St. Thecla, when she perceived that her virginity would not be safe at Iconium, formed the plan of fleeing to Paul, that by his care she might find hiding places elsewhere; but that she was dragged back from flight, and on that occasion condemned to torments. Chrysostom, Homily 25 on the Acts of the Apostles, speaks briefly thus of St. Thecla: Hear of the blessed Thecla. She, that she might see Paul, gave her gold. It is not necessary that we should say that Thecla gave the gold to the keeper of the prison, as the fabulous Acts have it. For she could also have moved some manservant or maidservant with gold, that she might have a safe exit from the house, or even a companion on the road to Paul. Whatever it be, I neither wish nor am able to make certain things which appear less certain by reason of the ambiguity of what is said. In the Homily on the twelve Apostles, among the Spurious works of Chrysostom, tome 8, page 12, Thecla is likewise celebrated as instructed by St. Paul.

[29] she keeps her virginity. In St. Augustine, book 30 Against Faustus the Manichæan, chapter 4, the said Faustus says of St. Paul: When he inflamed Thecla, already pledged to the bridal chamber, with love of perpetual virginity by his discourse. But St. Augustine does not deny the fact in answering these things, but only dissolves the argument which Faustus wrongly drew from it against marriage. Augustine himself, in the book On Holy Virginity, chapter 44, teaching what a Virgin ought to consider, lest she proudly prefer herself to married women, says that a virgin does not know whether she is ripe for martyrdom, since a married woman is perhaps fit to undergo it, and illustrating the doctrine by an example, he says: Whence, I say, does she know whether perchance she herself be not yet a Thecla, and that other be already a Crispina? Now Crispina is an illustrious African martyr, frequently praised by Augustine, of whom we shall treat at the V of December. St. Augustine therefore implies that St. Thecla is illustrious among virgin martyrs, just as among married women St. Crispina is illustrious. Nazianzen, Oration 19, page 279, says that by St. Justina the martyr, while her chastity was exposed to danger, God was invoked, who both freed Susanna from the peril of death and preserved Thecla, the one from the savage elders, the other from her suitor who was her tyrant, and from a father still more tyrannical. St. Methodius in the Banquet brings in St. Thecla in the midst of the virgins meeting the heavenly Bridegroom, and speaking thus of her own affairs: Fleeing the felicity of the world sighed after by mortals, and the delights, pleasures, loves of life, I desire to be sheltered in thy saving arms, and ever to see thy beauty, O Blessed one… Leaving the mortal beds of nuptials, and a house full of gold, for thy sake, O King, I come in spotless garments, that I too may be admitted within the blessed bridal chambers together with thee… Having escaped the innumerable wiles of the dragon, O Blessed one, and its flattering corrupters; and besides also the flame of fire and the murderous assaults of monstrous beasts, awaiting thee from heaven… I have forgotten my fatherland through desire of thy form, O God the Word; forgotten the choirs of virgins my equals, and the boasting of my mother's lineage. For thou art all things to me, O Christ, thou thyself. The same author both

attributes philosophical learning to St. Thecla, page 94, and says that in evangelical and divine doctrine she excelled all, as having been trained and taught by Paul, the greatest master of that kind.

[30] From the texts of the Fathers thus brought forward we have it that St. Thecla was converted by St. Paul, The sayings of the Fathers weighed, and that she was both a virgin, and before her conversion betrothed to a noble youth, but after her conversion shrank from nuptials out of love of virginity, and on that occasion endured many contests from her betrothed and many from her parents, in which she bore herself bravely and conquered. In the fabulous Acts the mother alone is brought in with the betrothed, urging Thecla to nuptials, as if her father had already died before. But in the doubtful Homily of Chrysostom the parents in general are said to have urged her to marry, and Nazianzen makes express mention of the father, and says that he was more tyrannical than the betrothed himself. These at least did not draw those things from the fabulous Acts, and their opinion is certainly to be preferred as more probable. Besides, in the said doubtful Homily there is added a flight to Paul, in which the betrothed is said to have overtaken the Virgin. And a flight of this kind, added to her refusal of nuptials, could the more exasperate the Virgin's parents and her betrothed, so that they thenceforth would not treat her as a daughter or as a betrothed; but hand her over to the judges for punishment as guilty and rebellious. Nevertheless, since the account is mutilated, and it is not related what was done at that time between the Virgin and her betrothed, I would not declare for certain that this flight was the cause of the punishments to which the Saint was condemned. But whatever was the occasion of such great punishments, it is established by the testimonies of the Fathers that she was condemned to the fire, and also exposed to the beasts, and in both punishments remained unharmed.

[31] The words of St. Methodius, saying that she was freed from the flame of fire The Saint was cast into the fire, and exposed and from the murderous assaults of monstrous beasts, I have given above. Hence the same author, pages 130 and 131, says of these and of the preceding contests together, that she gloriously bore off alone the honor of a manifold martyrdom by the bright victories of mighty contests often repeated, in which both the magnanimity of undertaking and the ardor of accomplishing were equal: and to the greatness of her counsels and mind there always answered in equal measure the firmness and strength of her body. Nazianzen in the Poem to the Virgins, tome 2, page 300, has thus:

Seest thou not Thecla snatched from the fire and from the beasts?

Again in Poem III, entitled Precepts to virgins, page 59, he sings these things:

Who snatched Thecla from slaughter and the peril of the flame? Who bound the strong claws and the rage of the beasts? Virginity. O thing wonderful in every age! Virginity could lull to sleep the tawny lions: Nor with unclean tooth did they dare to press the noble limbs of the Virgin, or tear them with rigid bite.

[32] St. Ambrose, book 2 On Virgins, begins the third chapter in this manner: to the beasts; but from both Therefore let holy Mary shape the discipline of life, let Thecla teach how to be sacrificed, who, fleeing the nuptial bond and condemned by the fury of her betrothed, changed even the nature of beasts by the reverence of virginity. For being made ready for the beasts, when she also turned aside from the sight of men, and offered her very vitals to the savage lion, she brought it about that those who had turned immodest eyes upon her should turn them back modest. One might see the beast licking her feet and lying on the ground, testifying with mute sound that it could not violate the sacred body of the Virgin. Therefore the beast adored its own prey, and, forgetting its own nature, had put on the nature which men had lost. You might see, by a certain transfusion of nature, men clothed with ferocity commanding savagery to a beast; and a beast, kissing the feet of the Virgin, teaching what men ought to do. So much wonder has virginity, that even lions marvel at it. Food did not sway them when unfed, nor did impulse carry them away when roused, nor did anger exasperate them when goaded, nor did custom deceive them when accustomed, nor did nature possess them when made wild. They taught religion, while they adore the Martyr: they taught chastity also, while they kiss nothing of the Virgin but her soles, their eyes sunk to the earth, as if abashed lest any male, even a beast, should see the Virgin naked.

[33] she remained unharmed, Again Ambrose, in the Epistle to the church of Vercelli, number 34, discusses the same things more briefly in this manner: But by what gift was the venerable Thecla so even to lions, that unfed beasts, laid at the feet of their own Prey, kept a sacred fast? nor violated the Virgin with wanton eye nor with harsh claw? Since by the very sight of virginity holiness is violated. An ancient author in the Homily On the Man Born Blind, which is found among the Spurious writings of Chrysostom, tome 8, page 63, likewise makes mention of the Saint exposed to the beasts, in these words: What harm did it do to Thecla the first martyr to contend naked in the theater? She did not sin when stripped, she is not affected with ignominy, but the Saint is crowned. Neither St. Ambrose nor the author just praised makes mention of the punishment of fire, because they had not undertaken to narrate the Saint's deeds, but recorded only something about her which chiefly conduced to the matter set before them. So, the exposure to the beasts being omitted, mention is made only of the fire in the Oration published under the name of Cyprian of Antioch, after the Works of St. Cyprian of the Venetian edition, column xxx: Stand by us, says the author, as thou didst by the Apostles in chains, by Thecla in the fires, etc. St. Maximus, in the V century bishop of Turin, agrees, in the Homily on St. Agnes, where he says that Agnes, like Thecla, escaped the globes of flame.

[34] The things given under the name of St. Zeno are not to be much regarded. Baronius and Grabe add also a text from the Sermon On Fear, published under the name of St. Zeno of Verona, and reprinted in the Lyons Library of the Fathers, tome 3, page 403: Against Thecla a most bitter accuser draws the sword of his tongue: the public laws rave with their own ministers: ferocity is whetted with goads into ferocity, and yet it is found gentler than men: lest anything should seem lacking to a scene of such dire humanity, sea-monsters too are let in: the Girl is stripped of all her garments, and clothed with the fire. Among so many instruments of death, while the spectator fears, she treads secure upon all kinds of terrors: unhurt, as though the world were subdued, she goes forth from that funereal circuit of the deadly arena, now not pitiable but wonderful, bearing off the triumph of a conquered age — she whom all had believed would perish by so many punishments. But the writings of St. Zeno of Verona, who flourished in the IV century, were not acknowledged by Jerome or Gennadius in their Catalogues, and bibliographers have commonly denied those Sermons to St. Zeno, so that the things which that unknown writer, and perhaps some centuries later, drew from the fabulous Acts about sea-monsters are not to be much regarded. I pass over what Baronius alleges from the Epistle to Oceanus On the Life of Clerics, once falsely attributed to St. Jerome, since it has nothing worthy of Jerome. I omit also other things alleged by the same from Acts of the Saints less faithfully written, or from little works of no great authority, because the Fathers alleged suffice.

[35] A metrical eulogy of the Saint. I add nevertheless what St. Athelm or Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne in England, of whom among us at the XXV of May, sang in his Poem In praise of Virgins, because he seems to have drawn his materials from the Fathers, not from the fabulous Acts:

A virgin dedicated to God flourished in ancient time, Whom her ancient parents called by the name of Thecla, Who was converted by the hallowed teaching of Paul, And follows Christ, leaving the covenanted marriage. The love of virginity, burning in the Girl's heart, Spurned the sweet fellowships of worldly life, In which heavenly grace founded her mind, Which the ages could never inwardly soften, So that she was harder than iron against bloody torments. Her father and her mother, both, by the covenanted betrothal, Were busy to give her to a husband for the stock of the line:* But her mind, burning and parched with virginal flames, Though drenched by the world's flood, knows not to grow lukewarm; Though her parents dropped a rain-shower of words, As the heavens dripped with stormy drops. Therefore a hearth and a blazing fire is kindled: Vulcan seethed far and wide with black brands, That the blessed Virgin might bear the torments of the pyre, Which should consume her holy flesh with no true crime. With such a contrivance the guilty strive to torture the woman's spine, that limb by limb they might, if it could be, empty the raw bones of their marrow. But God defended the Girl from his eternal citadel, So that, obtaining her prayer, she escaped the flames of fire. The Virgin is thrust to the jaws of lions, to be torn: and they give her womanly limbs to dire bites: But the beast dares not seize the sacred body, God defending the limbs of the devoted Girl; While of its own will it nowhere spared the tender flesh. Thus the Sower bestows on the elect, when they contend in the wrestling-school of the world, the golden rewards of the heavenly kingdom. These things adorned the last times of her life, Bathing her holy flesh with purple blood, While the Martyr climbs the thresholds of perpetual heaven.

Thus far St. Aldhelm, implying at the end that the Saint completed her martyrdom by a violent death, perhaps because he saw her commonly called Martyr by the Fathers.

[36] This one thing therefore remains to be examined concerning the Saint's deeds, Thecla certainly to be called a martyr: whether after the fire and the beasts had been overcome she at last ended her life by some other punishment: for concerning the title of martyrdom due to the Saint there can be no question, if we follow the more common and more probable opinion, by which all those are held martyrs who underwent torments bringing on death in the natural order, even if by divine favor they remained unharmed in them. Thus St. John the apostle is held a martyr, who was cast into a cauldron of boiling oil, although by God's grace he came out of it unharmed. On this ground therefore St. Thecla is a martyr, because she was both delivered to the fire and cast to the beasts, as Benedict XIV, happily reigning, also teaches in the frequently praised Work on the Canonization of Saints, book 3, chapter 12, where he adduces the very example of St. Thecla at number 5. Wherefore she is deservedly called a martyr, even if it were certain that she was not afterward taken off by some other punishment. But she is not only called a martyr by the Fathers; she is by some also called protomartyr, or the first martyr among women. St. Isidore of Pelusium, book 1, Epistle 160, praises Tarasius the Isaurian, because he loved both the manners and the temple of Thecla the first martyr. Evagrius likewise, book 3, chapter 8, names her protomartyr: and this title is commonly given to St. Thecla by the more recent Greeks. But if we consider the time of the Saint's conversion to the faith, and add the cause of her martyrdom, which is drawn not from the edicts of emperors but from nuptials refused out of love of virginity, it will become most likely that the Saint undertook the contests of martyrdom some years before the reign of Nero, and before all women martyrs. But it is not established whether she ended her life before other women crowned with martyrdom; since she seems to have survived her earlier contests for a long time.

[37] Baronius will have it that she also died amid punishments: Baronius, tome 10 of the Annals, page 944, in the Addenda to the year 47, strives to prove that St. Thecla also ended her life by martyrdom, discoursing thus: But as to what is asserted in the Acts of Thecla, toward their end, that she, being divinely freed from the perils of a threefold kind of death prepared for her, withdrew into solitude, and persevering there died at ninety years of age; this indeed of all those things does not commend itself to us, since concerning these matters, among the more ancient and

most select Fathers whom we have recited, there is not a word: all of whom seem to have made mention of her as a martyr and as consummated by martyrdom: but chiefly Gregory Nazianzen, since he numbers her among the more distinguished martyrs slain for Christ, as thou hast seen: and St. Ambrose, a most zealous cultivator of St. Thecla, in whose memory the chief church of Milan was erected, has among other things these words about her: "But certainly it was not old age but virtue that approved Thecla." So he, when he treats of the veiling of sacred virgins, in whom he proposes that manners rather than age are to be regarded. And St. Augustine, when he treats of virginity, which ought to have humility joined to it, lest through pride a virgin should exalt herself above married women, whom it may perhaps befall to be crowned with a martyrdom which she herself lacks, says: "Whence, I say, does she know whether perchance she herself be not yet a Thecla, and that other be already a Crispina?" plainly signifying Thecla consummated by martyrdom, when he sets against her a married woman consummated by martyrdom, so that the comparison made may answer equally as to martyrdom. These and other things may be adduced to the same purpose. But I think that, those more ancient Acts of St. Thecla's martyrdom having perished, and the same, as thou hast heard, having been depraved by heretics, the things which by the tradition of all were proclaimed above the rest concerning her, so unexpectedly freed from those three most savage perils of death prepared for her, were, as being the more sung by the mouth of all, transmitted to posterity. But he who afterward wrote them, since he had not so thoroughly ascertained by what kind of death she consummated her martyrdom as he had received that she was freed, found occasion for opining and writing thus, lest he should bring a most beautiful Virgin, left at liberty, into suspicion after the custom of men. Thus far Baronius, who by these observations takes away much from what he had argued to win credit for the Acts. For if the collector of the Acts did not even know by what kind of death the Saint died, and even so dared to make her a nonagenarian and to invent an unusual kind of death, on what ground shall we judge that the many plainly incredible circumstances which he narrated were known to him, or by what criticism shall we try to vindicate credit for them?

[38] but his arguments do not prove this; But let us examine the reasons alleged for a violent death. Nazianzen numbers the Saint among the victims slain for Christ. But Nazianzen in the same place reckons among them also St. Luke, about whose martyrdom there is likewise doubt. Elias of Crete in his Commentary on the passage alleged, column 322, says that neither John nor Luke was slain, and in column 323 narrates Thecla's death as it is related in the fabulous Acts. But he called them all victims in common, he says, even though some were by no means beheaded; since they, so far as in them lay, were prepared for Christ's cause to meet not one death only, but many, according to that saying: All the day long we are put to death for thy sake. Whether this was Nazianzen's mind may in some measure be doubted. John certainly is not rightly excepted by Elias, since Nazianzen names John first, before Peter and Paul, and therefore seems rather to have designated the Baptist than the Evangelist. Nevertheless, Nazianzen's mind is not sufficiently established, since he said that Thecla was freed from the fire and from the beasts, and recorded no other punishments of the Saint. But Ambrose's words, it was not old age but virtue that approved Thecla, make nothing for the controversy proposed. For Ambrose teaches that virtue in every age can suffice for living rightly. Therefore, since Thecla was young when she underwent her chief contests for virginity, he did not mean to deny that she reached old age, but taught that in her youth her virtue was great. Augustine's comparison between Thecla and Crispina no more proves Thecla's martyrdom consummated: for he makes the comparison in this, that each was ripe for martyrdom, as Thecla showed herself to be when she was delivered to the fire and exposed to the beasts. For a virgin who is alive cannot believe a married woman to be consummated by martyrdom, and therefore a virgin can only think that a married woman is well disposed in mind toward martyrdom, as Thecla also was, although she did not consummate her martyrdom by death. Therefore Baronius's reasons are indeed probable; yet they do not prove that Thecla departed from life by a violent death.

[39] and from other considerations the contrary is more probable. Now since the Fathers assert that St. Thecla was freed from the fire and from the beasts, and none of them writes that she was killed by any other punishment, it seems to me more probable that she afterward died a natural death. But I should by no means for that reason believe the things which are read about her end in the older Acts, namely that the Virgin was received into a rock which opened of itself and presently closed again, while the enemies of her virginity were preparing to offer violence to her at ninety years of age. Basil of Seleucia, unwilling to express the whole fable, relates her end according to the mind of the earlier writer in this manner: She by no means departed this life (as the more widespread and truer report has it), but sinking down alive, she entered into the earth, which, God so willing, parted in her favor and opened itself to her in that place where the divine and sacred Table of the Liturgy is set up, girt about on every side with a circle of columns shining with silver. That the Saint died in this manner, I say, I believe even less than that she died by the torments of martyrdom: for the Fathers would not all have passed over in silence a death so wonderful, since they have celebrated the Saint so often. Baillet observes from Mabillon that St. Thecla was not inserted into the canon of the Mass, and thence takes an argument for believing that she did not die amid punishments. But this reason would press more, if several virgin martyrs had been inserted into the canon of the Mass, and if he could have shown even one in the canon from among the Greeks or Orientals. Wherefore the silence of St. Methodius and of the other Fathers about the Saint's violent death presses more, especially since Basil of Seleucia too believed that she did not die amid punishments. There is added the place of her death, from which it is gathered that the Saint was killed neither by the sword nor by any other punishment. For since she is believed to have suffered at Iconium, but to have died at Seleucia, where she is said to have suffered nothing, or near Seleucia; this consideration alone makes the opinion of a bloodless death far more probable than the opposite view. For the rest, since the Saint probably lived long after her conversion and her earlier contests, yet it is uncertain whether she reached the age of ninety years, as the fabulous Acts have it, we cannot fix the epoch of her death more nearly than in the 1st century or at the beginning of the second.

elsewhere maculare*

perhaps nuptum*

§ III. The Saint's name inscribed in the most ancient Martyrologies; and indeed on various days.

[ ] The Saint's memory on this day in the Calendars: The Hieronymian Martyrologies vie with one another in announcing St. Thecla on this day, and on certain others, unless there be others of the same name who are commemorated on other days. The Epternach codex in Fiorentini has most briefly: In the East, of Thecla. The Corbie: At Seleucia, the birthday of S. Thecla the martyr. Fiorentini's codices have contracted some corruption, since from them he published the following: At Seleucia, the birthday of Thecla the virgin, who at Rome, being laid in the fire, escaped. These last words are certainly faulty; nor is the conjecture valid (which Fiorentini offered but did not defend) that Thecla could have come to Rome with St. Paul, and there been freed from the fire, before she withdrew to Seleucia. For not only is what was forged about the Circuits of Paul and Thecla to be held a fabulous Work; but I do not hesitate to hold as figments whatever is read inserted into the fabulous Acts from that Work about St. Thecla's journeys with Paul; since it is agreed that St. Paul was unwilling to lead women about in his company. Likewise faulty is the Blume codex, from which on page 1069 he expressed the passage thus: At Seleucia, the birthday of holy Thecla, who escaped from Rome, being laid in the fire. The Rheinau and the Reichenau have more correctly: In the East, of Thecla the virgin. Likewise the Augustan, the Labbean, and the Gellonense make mention of Thecla the virgin, the place being omitted, as most of those published by Martène in tome 3 of the Anecdota and tome 6 of the Most Ample Collection also have. Among these, however, the Martyrology of Auxerre has somewhat more, in this manner: On the same day the birthday of S. Thecla the virgin, resting at Seleucia, who was instructed by the blessed apostle Paul from the city of Iconium. In the Little Roman published by Rosweyde it is read more briefly thus: And of Thecla the virgin, resting at Seleucia. A prolix eulogy from the suspect Acts was given by Ado, omitting however Thecla's journeys with Paul.

[41] Ado's eulogy I transfer it hither, that the curious reader may have the contests asserted in the Acts, although some are less probable: On the same day, he says, the birthday of holy Thecla the virgin, resting at Seleucia, who was instructed by the blessed apostle Paul from the city of Iconium. Whom her mother, seeing her a Christian and repudiating marriage, choosing rather to cleave to Christ as her bridegroom than to lie under the corruption of the flesh, went to the judge and accused her virgin Daughter of being a Christian, saying that she ought to be burned alive, that other women might be terrified. And when the judge had ordered her to be brought to him, and had learned thoroughly her purpose of chastity, he had a pyre prepared, that he might burn her. Being seized therefore by the officers, that she might be cast upon the pyre, she of her own accord mounted the pile, and, having made the sign of the cross, stood with a manly soul in the midst of the flames. And suddenly, an inundation of rains occurring, the fire was extinguished, and the blessed Virgin is snatched away unharmed by heavenly power. Again, when she was giving herself to fastings, prayers and vigils, she was seized by a certain powerful man and brought to the governor, because she called herself a Christian. And when the same proconsul asked her whether what she was accused of were true, she answered that she was altogether a Christian. Whom the governor forthwith condemned to the beasts. Meanwhile, however, that she might be kept safe, she is committed to a certain noble woman, who was a kinswoman of Cæsar, by name Tryphæna. On the following day the beasts were brought out of their cages: the Blessed one is set in the midst of the sand, the people being astonished that the beasts did not touch her at all. The blessed Thecla is led back to the house of Tryphæna, that on the morrow she might again be cast to the wild beasts.

[42] And when the officers sought her again from the house, Tryphæna, full of grief, follows her even to the spectacle, in part seems fabulous, where there was an immense shouting and tumult of the crowd looking upon blessed Thecla. And when the blessed Virgin had been stripped, lions alike and bears are let loose upon her. But none of the beasts presumed to hurt her. Then, when she was being urged by the raging peoples into a ditch full of water, where serpents had been gathered and collected, she leaped in, fortified with the sign of the cross: but neither was she hurt by them in any way. Again more savage beasts are made ready: but in no way were they permitted to touch her. But not even yet does cruelty set a limit for itself. She is bound to two most ferocious bulls, goaded with white-hot iron, that they might tear her apart. And they, the ropes being broken, run wandering hither and thither, and leave the Martyr having suffered no harm. At last the proconsul, having summoned her, asks her who or whence she was, since none of the beasts had been able to hurt her. Blessed Thecla answered: I am only the handmaid of the living God. But the proconsul, terrified because she was of such great virtue, clothing her with garments, pronounced sentence: I release, he said, Thecla, the worshipper of godliness and of God. And being dismissed, she returned

to the house of Tryphæna, where she rested a few days, teaching Tryphæna and her household in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[43] Departing thence, she came to Seleucia, and there, instructing very many by the example and converse of her life and also by her teaching, as is implied by certain observations: after many contests of the twofold crown, of virginity and of martyrdom, she rested in peace. Thus far Ado, whose account seems clearly enough taken from the Acts, yet in such a way that he has tried to set forth some things in a more likely manner. He omitted, namely, St. Thecla's travels with Paul and to Paul, inserted in the Acts, and thence placed all the Saint's contests, which in the Acts are set partly at Iconium, partly at Antioch, in one and the same place, as indeed it is more probable that everything happened at Iconium. Besides, Ado departed from the Acts, nay even from the Fathers, so far as appears to me, when he says that St. Thecla was accused chiefly as a Christian. For the Acts and the holy Fathers assert that the Saint was called into judgment and condemned for refusing nuptials. Finally, in place of the seals, which are said to have been sea-monsters in the ditch into which, according to the Acts, St. Thecla leaped, Ado substitutes serpents. But it would have been more correct for the whole of that matter of the ditch to have been omitted, as unknown to the Fathers and improbable. For the words attributed to St. Zeno of Verona, and given at number 34, we do not know whose they are. Likewise the things which are said about Tryphæna, and about the bulls to which the Virgin was bound, lack the testimony of the Fathers, and therefore are at least uncertain and less probable.

[44] Bede celebrated St. Thecla with a shorter and truer eulogy, commemorated by others on the same day, writing thus: On the same day the birthday of S. Thecla the virgin in the East, in the city of Iconium: who, being instructed by Paul the apostle in the confession of Christ, overcame fires and beasts: and after many contests, coming to Seleucia for the teaching of many, rested in peace. Rabanus gave nearly the same. Notker however wove together several things from Ado or the Acts, already sufficiently examined. Usuard again has nearly the same as Bede, but omitted, I know not for what cause, that she was instructed by St. Paul. Wandelbert, dissenting from the rest, implies that she died amid punishment in this little verse: The ninth (Kalends of October) Thecla holds, bathed in rosy blood. Domenico Giorgi in the Annotations on Ado observes that she is also called martyr in the Corbie Martyrology; but we do not deny that she was a martyr; that Thecla departed from this Life bathed in blood, however, or fell amid torments, the Corbie Martyrology does not assert, so that that observation makes little for the purpose. In the more recent Martyrologies Thecla is commonly celebrated on this day. But, omitting the rest, I subjoin only the words of the Roman Martyrology: At Iconium in Lycaonia, holy Thecla, virgin and martyr, who, being brought to the faith by the holy apostle Paul, under the emperor Nero overcame fires and beasts in the confession of Christ, and after very many contests overcome for the teaching of many, coming to Seleucia, there rested in peace: whom the holy Fathers have celebrated with the highest praises.

[45] on which day a commemoration of her is made in the Office. On the same day in the Roman Breviary a Commemoration of St. Thecla is prescribed with this lesson: Thecla the virgin, born of illustrious parents at Iconium, trained in the precepts of the faith by Paul the apostle, is celebrated with the wondrous praises of the holy Fathers. Who, being in her eighteenth year, having left Thamyris her betrothed, when her parents had accused her of being a Christian, cast herself, first armed with the sign of the Cross, into the burning pyre which was prepared for her unless she should renounce Christ. But the fire being extinguished by a rain which suddenly arose, she came to Antioch: where, being cast to the beasts and bound to bulls driven in opposite directions, and presently thrown into a ditch full of serpents, she is freed from all by the grace of Jesus Christ. By whose ardor of faith and holiness of life many were converted to Christ. Returning again to her country, she withdrew alone to a mountain: then, distinguished by many virtues and miracles, at ninety years of age she passed to the Lord, and was buried at Seleucia. What in this lesson is less certain, or even less probable, will be sufficiently gathered from what has been argued before.

[46] Among the Greeks and others she is venerated on the 24th of September. The Greeks celebrate St. Thecla at the XXIV of September, on which day in the Sirletian Menology she has a eulogy contracted from the Acts, such as is also in the Basilian, but a little more prolix. A like eulogy of Thecla again is read at the same day in the printed Menæa, where an Office to be performed for her is prescribed. The Muscovites also celebrate St. Thecla on that day in their Calendars, as do the Copts of the Alexandrian church in Ludolf. Further, that the festival of St. Thecla was celebrated by the Greeks on the same XXIV day of September from the VIII century at least, is gathered from the Life of St. Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople, given among us at the XXV of February. For in it, at number 20, it is read that the first session of the second Nicene council was on the day on which Thecla opened the stadium to the contests of women martyrs. And that this session was held on the VIII Kalends of October is read at the very beginning of it in Labbe, tome 7, column 39.

[47] The same announced at the 22nd of February at Nicomedia, On other days too the memory of St. Thecla is found inscribed in the Latin Calendars. At the XXII of February, in the Hieronymian Martyrologies in Fiorentini, these words are read: At Nicomedia, the birthday of Thecla, virgin, disciple of Paul the apostle. The Corbie codex nearly agrees: and the Martyrology of the Queen of Sweden and the Reichenau announce Thecla at Nicomedia on the same day. In most of the other Hieronymian and other ancient Martyrologies in Martène the memory of St. Thecla is found on the same day, but generally without the place expressed. Rabanus and Notker likewise announce Thecla at Nicomedia on that day, and weave for her a fairly long eulogy from the Acts, as was observed in the Prætermissi at that day, where Bede also is named — that is, such as Bede's Martyrology then was as published; but in the genuine Bede this is not read. From the said eulogies it is certain that by most of the martyrologists praised the Thecla of this day, Paul's disciple, is designated. It is not established, however, for what cause she was announced on that day and at Nicomedia: nay, Fiorentini even doubts whether our Saint is rightly attributed to Nicomedia, because in the most ancient Epternach codex the place is not added. I can affirm nothing in an obscure matter; but various causes could have brought it about that she was venerated at Nicomedia on that day, such as the dedication of a basilica, the translation of relics, a benefit obtained by her patronage.

[48] The memory of St. Thecla seems again to recur in the Hieronymian Martyrologies at the XX of December. at the 20th of December at Iconium, and on other days too, For on that day Fiorentini published: In the East, the birthday of Thecla, and of holy Liberatus. In the Corbie: The birthday of Thecla, and of holy Libertinus, of Zosimus. These indeed may suggest another Thecla. But the Thecla of this day is more clearly designated in the Epternach codex, in which is read: And at Liconium, of Thecla. That Iconium must be read the thing itself implies, and the Reichenau Martyrology confirms, since it has thus: And at Iconium, of Thecla. In both, Thecla is set without Companions and assigned to Iconium, so that scarcely any doubt is left that our Saint of this day is designated. Rabanus, however, has thus again: In the East, the birthday of holy Thecla the Virgin, and of S. Liberatus; as if he believed that they were either Companions or at least venerated together. But the Epternach codex repeats Thecla on the following day also, and there assigns one arena to Thecla, another to Liberatus or Liberati, as he is there called, another to Zosimus. Mention is made of Thecla in the East also in Martène, tome 3 of the Anecdota, in the Hieronymian to which he attributes an antiquity of a thousand years, and in the Murbach; as also among us in the Labbean, and in the Gellonense in d'Achery. Wherefore it is very likely that the Saint was venerated on the XX of December also, and namely at Iconium. In our Work St. Thecla is mentioned in the Prætermissi at the XVIII and XIX of May on account of the translation of an arm, which is celebrated in the metropolitan church of Tarragona in Catalonia. The History of the translation is given by Antonio Vicente Domenech in the Saints of Catalonia at the XVIII of May, but Juan Tamayo in the Spanish Martyrology placed it at the XIX of May. More about that translation will be said hereafter.

§ IV. The Saint's sepulchre near Seleucia in Isauria: her most celebrated cult in the same place: her church built in the IV century or earlier: another erected for her by Zeno.

[ ] The Saint died near Seleucia, where she had a magnificent Basil of Seleucia, even though he wrote the Acts of St. Thecla so that they are not free of fables, and in relating the miracles now and then exceeds measure, nevertheless deserves credit in those things which pertain to the Saint's sepulchre and cult, since he could know them beyond others, nor is he to be believed to have been of such impudence as to wish to write falsehoods about matters which at that time could be plain to all. Now when he had narrated that the Saint withdrew to Seleucia, he subjoins these things about the place to which she retired thence, and where she died and was buried: Having therefore stayed in this city, and being delighted with it, she took possession of the neighboring summit of the mountain which rises to the South, and chose this for the place of her habitation, as Elias chose Carmel and John the desert. Then, narrating her death, he says that she entered alive into the earth, where we believe her buried after death. And this he asserts to have happened in that place in which, he says, the divine and sacred Table of the Liturgy is set up, girt about on every side with a circle of columns shining with silver. There was therefore a magnificent altar built above the place where the Saint's body lay. Whence, says the author, as from a channel of her virginal beneficence flowing copiously in that place, she sends forth to the needy and the petitioners saving founts of remedies against every pain and sickness; so that that place has now become a public workshop of medicine and a common propitiatory of the whole world.

[50] temple dedicated to her, and rendered many things to her clients, And so you would never find her temple, or rather her city (for it afterward passed into the shape, the use, and the beauty of a city), without citizens and pilgrims, all flocking thither from every side; these indeed hastening thither only for reverence of the place, and for vows to be made there, and to dedicate and consecrate something of their possessions to the holy Woman herself; but those besides to obtain the cure and the help of the diseases and pains and demons by which they chance to be held. And presently: This is certain, that no one who there asked the cure and deliverance of his ills has suffered a refusal; that no one has been deluded with oblique and doubtful winding words (of which sort are frequent with those illustrious demons and Pythian oracles), and gone away accusing her fame because he had failed of the hoped-for cure. But that all whatsoever, having obtained something of the things which they ask and of which they stand in need, return so singing praises, giving thanks, and blessing, that they think they have found miracles and cures of diseases greater than fame had celebrated and than they had hoped. Of this temple of St. Thecla St. Isidore of Pelusium makes mention,

whose words I gave at number 36. St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 21 in praise of St. Athanasius, page 386, makes mention of the council of the Arians held at Seleucia, and on that occasion of the temple of St. Thecla in these words: Where there is a shrine to the holy and excellent virgin Thecla. The same, in Poem I On his own Life, page 9, testifies that, in order to flee the episcopate, he went to Seleucia and remained there a long time. His words, as they have been rendered into Latin, I subjoin:

First in flight I betake myself to Seleucia, Where the virgin Thecla has a shrine exceedingly famous: There I passed a time by no means short.

[51] She was honored there also by pilgrimages, Theodoret, in the Life of SS. Marana and Cyra, given among us at the III of August, relates that those Saints, who lived a life exceedingly austere, made a pilgrimage to the sepulchre of St. Thecla, and accomplished that journey fasting — a journey to which, in the Annotations there, about one hundred and twenty miles of one hour are assigned. And when it pleased them to visit the temple of the victorious Thecla, he says, which is in Isauria, that they might kindle on every side the flames of charity toward God, they went fasting likewise (as before to Jerusalem) and returned. So far did the divine love-charm carry them out of themselves: so did the divine love toward the Bridegroom madden them. This example clearly shows how celebrated was the temple of St. Thecla; since the Saints praised lived removed from the intercourse of men, and are not read to have undertaken any pilgrimages other than this and that to Jerusalem.

[52] which piety of Christians, approved by the Fathers, But I fear that Ittig, praised at number 20, may on account of this pilgrimage denounce those Saints as superstitious, and add to them St. Gregory Nazianzen, nay even Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom, and the other holy Fathers, who frequently commend pilgrimages to the sepulchres of the Saints. Hear, reader, and laugh, how kindly another heterodox writer treats St. Augustine. Christian August Salig, in his little work on the Diptychs of the Ancients, chapter 12, number 7, says: For my part I concede that Augustine suffered something human in this, when he both persuades himself and relates that many miracles and prodigies and healings of the sick occurred at the memorials and bodies of the martyrs, that by them the world might be strengthened and confirmed in faith in Christ. This must be granted to the excessive credulity of a good shepherd, which does not stand in the way of his sound and uncorrupted doctrine concerning the invocation of Saints, which is to be denied. These last things he says because from Augustine's denial of the cult of latria to the Saints he had wished to infer that the invocation of the Saints was denied by him, although at number 7 he had adduced these words of Augustine: For it is an injury to pray for a martyr, to whose prayers we ought to be commended. And presently he says that the martyrs are commemorated, not that we may pray for them also, but rather that they may pray for us.

[53] Even so, however, he strives to make Augustine partly his own, certain heterodox writers assail by the authority of the ancient heretics. and at number 8 he acknowledges other Fathers as more openly contrary to himself in these words: But for the other Fathers we do not vouch that they cherished thoughts so uncorrupted concerning the recitation of the martyrs from the diptychs. Of these he presently names Jerome, Basil, Nazianzen, the Nyssene. But in turn he leads his own Fathers into the battle-line in these words: Three especially were assailants of the invocation of the Saints in antiquity, Vigilantius, Eunomius and Aërius, who then went to meet the growing superstition, but bore away from it no profit save the odious title of heretics. Why did they bear away nothing but the title of heretics, unless because in the most learned IV century they wrote against the common sense of the Church? But let us leave to a doting man his Fathers, branded with the stigma of heresy from the IV century, whom he adopts and defends against our Fathers, and let us answer Ittig, on whose occasion we have somewhat interrupted the thread of our narrative, that we had rather ascend to the seats of the blessed with those whom he calls superstitious, than descend to the places of the impious with men who have cast off the religion of the more ancient Fathers, and try to defend themselves against all antiquity by nothing but obstinate error. I return to St. Thecla.

[54] That another church was built for the same Saint by the emperor Zeno, Another church erected for the Saint by the emperor Zeno. toward the close of the V century, we learn from Evagrius, book 3, chapter 8, where he teaches how Zeno, driven from the empire by Basiliscus, recovered it, writing thus: But Zeno, when he had seen in a dream, as they report, the holy protomartyr Thecla, illustrious by many contests, urging him on and promising him the restoration of the empire, moved his camp toward Byzantium. And when he had corrupted with gifts those by whom he was besieged, he drove from the empire Basiliscus, who had now reigned two years, and delivered him to his enemies as he fled to the sanctuary of a church. For which cause Zeno dedicated a most ample temple, remarkable for wealth and beauty, to the protomartyr Thecla in Seleucia, a city of Isauria, and adorned it with many imperial offerings: which are preserved there even to our own age. These things happened after the times of Basil of Seleucia. But the benefits which he relates could have stirred Zeno to venerate St. Thecla with a singular piety, especially since he was by nation an Isaurian. If anyone should wish to object, against the benefit which is said to have been conferred on Zeno, that Zeno was not very pious, and did not think rightly about the faith, we shall answer that various Saints have bestowed benefits not only upon the pious, but sometimes upon the impious too. If anyone, however, should not believe that the apparition made to Zeno is to be held certain, I shall not gainsay him; provided he does not doubt about the church built by him.

§ V. The Saint's benefits and miracles, from Basil of Seleucia.

[ ] The Saint's benefits to every kind of men. Since Basil of Seleucia mixes in with the miracles of St. Thecla many things little pertaining to our purpose, and too much affects profane eloquence, I have determined to choose from her benefits only those which cannot offend a pious reader, but to let the rest go, or only to touch them very briefly. In the preface, page 135, he speaks thus of the Saint's beneficence in general: But among these Saints the martyr Thecla is even the chief, always present, always coming to those who beseech her, and hearing them, looking with open face upon all at every time — the strong, the sick; the joyful, the sad; those making a journey by water, those by land; those brought into danger, those set outside danger; individuals, whole communities, houses, families, towns, peoples, foreigners alike and citizens; inhabitants, pilgrims; men, women; masters, servants; the older, the younger; the wealthy, the needy; magistrates, private persons; those engaged in the army, in the forum, in war, in peace. Nay, she has often offered herself to be seen by Jews also, and has shown the same power upon them too, conferring salvation upon them in the way of admonition or even of rebuke. And, to contract my discourse into few words, pervading every kind of men, she puts forth her miracles upon them with every kind of favor: just as, on the other hand, against all the wicked and those who provoke her she exercises her hostile power and wrath, so that she neither ever lays aside her care for those who live piously, nor spares the authors of nefarious deeds, doing now this, now that, most manifestly; and by both alike making her severity and her humanity attested by the fact itself. Thus far Basil in general.

[56] [The Saint is said to have imposed silence upon an idol, of which nothing is established:] About to descend presently to particulars, I shall begin, he says, from those things which she herself chiefly accomplished in her own cause against the demons. But it may be doubted whether what he relates in the first place is sufficiently certain. Sarpedon is a promontory of Cilicia not far distant from Seleucia, which city was formerly in Rough Cilicia, but afterward became the metropolis of Isauria more widely extended. And on that promontory he says that an impious man was buried, whom he names Sarpedonius. And he asserts that that impious man, or rather demon, was worshipped by the heathen, and gave them responses. But, he says, as soon as the Virgin, coming to these places, had touched their borders, and had taken possession of this summit, she thenceforth restrained the most talkative of seers, commanded silence, and to this very day has rendered him utterly tongueless. This benefit therefore, if it be true, was not of St. Thecla dead, but living: but I had rather hear it from a more ancient witness. Certainly presently, in the second miracle, Basil himself relates things contrary to his own words: for, reporting that a Jewish woman was healed at the Saint's sepulchre, he says that she had first been mocked by enchanters and by Sarpedonius, who promised her health. Certainly I do not grasp how he promised health long afterward, if a perpetual silence had been imposed on him by St. Thecla.

[57] a woman healed of a broken leg: The second miracle may be true, provided we let go that added contradiction. There was another woman, he says, a heathen, but hostile neither to Jews nor to Christians. She had fallen from a mule and broken her leg, and had contracted an incurable evil. But after the woman, he says, … had been carried into the temple, and with many tears and groans … had implored the Martyr as a suppliant; before three whole days had run out, she went away standing on her own feet; so that she no longer needed the help of one to lead her by the hand; but hastened home at a stretched-out course, as they say. He adds that the woman, at the Martyr's bidding, laid upon her afflicted foot the scrapings gathered about the sepulchre, and so proceeds: She (the Saint) said these things, and the other did them: and the miracle is proclaimed to this day both by her, and by those who had seen her walking, running, and using the exercise of her feet, and (what is more) made a Christian by a miracle of this kind, and indeed such a Christian as it was fitting that one taught by so illustrious a proof should become. For the healing of her foot produced at the same time the health of her soul: and in this way both came from one and the same miracle.

[58] What he relates in the third place has not such marks of certainty. another Wherefore a few words about it will suffice me. A noble woman, Bassiana by name, was living at Seleucia in the position of a hostage … on account of the covenants agreed upon, by which peace from devastation was pledged. That she was a Christian, and assiduous in the church of St. Thecla, he narrates at length. But when she was with child, she is said on a certain night to have been so afflicted and to have burned with such heat that she went to a neighboring well, and wished to cast herself into it. Then St. Thecla is said to have appeared to her, and with her finger to have sprinkled a little water upon her, and thus to have refreshed her. And these things, he says, were done not by a dream, but by a most true sight. Of which thing also there is a witness, the son who was then born of her, Modestus by name, still living among men, and adorning the city which has its name from peace (Irenopolis in Cilicia): who proclaims this very miracle with the greatest charm; as he is a man eminent in all courtesy and in musical grace.

[59] The fourth likewise I shall deliver in summary. A woman whose name he does not declare, various but whom all the circumstances imply to have been well enough known, was married to Bitianus, a leader of the army under Theodosius II, of whom Socrates makes mention, book 7, chapter 18, as I said at number 19. She grieved over her husband's unfaithfulness, in that he violated the rights of matrimony by his lust, and made supplication to St. Thecla.

But the Martyr confers this benefit upon her, that forthwith, her husband's manners being changed for the better, he transferred the love with which he had unlawfully burned toward them (the maidservants) to her in seemly fashion. The author is then indignant that that woman, when Bitianus was dead, afterward married a certain Gregory, a base man.

[60] In the fifth place the author relates that at a wedding feast, which had been splendidly prepared, of various kinds a girdle of enormous price was stolen, the thief hiding it somewhere under the earth. When from this grief had arisen at the banquet, St. Thecla is said to have admonished Paula, the mother of the bride, and to have shown her the place, the situation, and the thief. And in this way, says the author, having wiped away all grief, she restored the mirth befitting a wedding; and honored Paula with this miracle, as one faithful and endowed with manners pleasing to her.

[61] To the sixth he proceeds thus: She did the like also in the case of a certain portion of her furnishings more carefully laid away. benefits. For someone had stolen one of the crosses dedicated to her, and had carefully buried it within a thicket at a certain part of the road which leads from the city to her shrine. But the Martyr … goes to one of her ministers and sacristans, and again gives information of the thief and of the place, and restores the sacred cross to the place from which it had been carried away.

[62] What follows as the seventh seems most fully attested. But the miracle, he says, A blind man's sight restored, wrought upon Pausicacus, who would willingly pass over in silence? For although he was reckoned among the poorer sort and the artisans, he was nevertheless held worthy of the Martyr's miracle in the same rank with those who excel in wealth and resources and splendor of name. This Pausicacus therefore, having fallen, either through the negligence or the ignorance of the physicians, into a sickness of the eyes, by the Martyr's benefit recovered anew the light of which he had been deprived. Presently he relates that he came to the Virgin's temple, and there persisted long in prayers. Then he adds: But he received it (the light of his eyes) in this manner: For certain scales, as they say, falling away from the inner part of the eyes, there fell out together with them the darkness which had dulled the keenness of the pupils, and his former light returned to him. And so those who had seen him blind for no short time beheld him long afterward using his eyes, and going about his accustomed duties, drawing up ships in the river, carrying burdens, and gathering his living from those same occupations which he had practiced before. Of which thing the whole of Seleucia, his native place and city, was witness.

[63] likewise a boy's eye healed: The eighth I contract into few words. A certain little child, lately taken from the breast, had come by excessive crying into danger of losing one of his eyes, so that thereafter the evil surpassed every faculty of medicine. His nurse, taking him, came down from the neighboring city which is called Olba, namely to the Saint's temple, as follows. But here a few things are to be observed about Olba. Stephanus indeed placed Olba near Seleucia. But Cellarius, in the Ancient Geography, tome 2, page 143, believes that Olba was confused by Stephanus with Holmus or Holmi. The name of the town could have been written in different ways. But it is certain from this passage that Olba is rightly placed near Seleucia. Now after the words given the author says that the nurse persisted with many prayers for the boy's eye; and he affirms that the boy was healed in this manner. When he was playing in the court of the church, where many larger birds were feeding, a crane leaped upon the boy, and with its beak pierced through that eye which was ill affected and thereafter dead. He says that by the same blow it came about that much evil humor flowed out from the eye: which being purged, he says, then first the infant began to see, and to recover the remaining light of his eyes, so that he was no longer diminished in the sight of his eyes, but returned home whole and perfect, stirring great wonder in the city, in his father, and in his grandfather. Of whom the former is called Pardamius, and the grandfather Anatolius, who is also a priest of that church.

[64] an eye-affliction of almost the whole city removed. Notable is the ninth which follows, and it is thus set forth by Basil: And since we have fallen upon the mention of eyes, let us by no means pass over in silence that also which happened in recent times. For it is known to all of us who also received the fruit of the miracle and of the healing. For when in the summer of last year a certain universal sickness of the eyes had invaded this city, a copious and sharp humor coming down from the upper part of the head into the eyes, so that no room was left to the physicians to use remedies for removing this evil; for this reason, that the humor continually flowing down washed away the medicine laid and smeared upon the eyelids, and so the eyes were destitute of all help, and the physicians, overcome by the evil and reduced to the utmost lack of counsel, hesitated what they should do, especially as they themselves were seized with the same disease along with the rest (for that plague fed upon all, sparing none) — the Martyr, moved with pity because of the monstrousness of the evil, so widely spread among men, opens in her temple a workshop of more healthful medicine for human nature, and calls all to herself from every side; by night commanding this very thing to one indeed who labored under that fault, but through him declaring to all, that whosoever had fallen into that sickness should use the water of her bath. For this alone was fitted for overcoming that ocular plague which hitherto had raged, tempered however by the Martyr's power, and a most excellent remedy for the whole city. So that thereafter the public road could no longer hold the men going up with lamentation and tears, but returning glad and with thanksgiving; going up, I say, with eyes pressed together and closed, but coming down with their eyelids parted and open. Nor indeed was that benefit the work of a bath so slight and laboring under such scarcity of water (as would scarcely suffice for healing one man), but of a most copious and abundant fount. And all the people indeed, who had run together in so great a number, while they see the waters continually drawn from the pool, lost heart lest it should not be enough. But the Martyr's zeal for granting favors did not slacken; now embracing these, healing them, dismissing them; now again receiving those, curing them, and sending them all home with the same soundness: so that within the space of three or four days the number of those who labored under that disease stood at a very few. And this too I judge must be attributed to their unbelief or to the wickedness of their life, that they did not themselves also obtain the common help and the aid made ready. Or perhaps it happened for this reason, that we might have knowledge of the gravity of the evil. For in those in whom it remained, it brought blindness; since it took away from them either both eyes, or certainly one of them altogether. So great was the plague and the atrocity of this diabolical contrivance: which nevertheless was by this miracle so conquered and routed and taken out of the midst, as though it had never at all existed.

[65] What Basil subjoins for the tenth has perhaps more of fable or of popular credulity than of truth, The Saint's cult at Dalisandus in Cappadocia: He affirms that St. Thecla is in great honor at Dalisandus. A town of that name is found in Cataonia, a prefecture of Cappadocia bordering on Cilicia. And presently: For since it venerates her with an eminent cult, it too has obtained from her an illustrious miracle. As to the festival formerly celebrated there, which he says was remarkable for the very great throng of men flowing in from every side, I shall easily give credit. But what he says, that at the time of that festival, or on its vigil, the Virgin was wont to be seen borne aloft through the air in a fiery chariot, and to come from Seleucia to Dalisandus, will not seem so credible to the learned, and certainly requires a witness who shrinks more from fables than Basil of Seleucia shrinks from them. At the end he adds: This same Dalisandus the same Martyr has often freed from siege, being seen from that summit of the mountain, and, after the manner of heavenly fire, dazzling with her brightness the sight of the enemies, and striking them down and driving them from the siege. There are also those who still remember this miracle, and glory in the telling of it. A like prodigy could have occurred at some time in the incursions of the Isaurian plunderers, and thence have arisen the occasion of inventing another fable.

[66] Then for the eleventh benefit he subjoins a wordy history about Selinus, churches built for her at Selinus in Cilicia: a maritime town of Cilicia, which, having once been taken by enemies, he says was afterward defended against them. He says that the inhabitants were admonished by the Saint to erect a church for her on the narrow path by which the enemies had taken the town. About that admonition through the Saint I rightly doubt; that the temple was built, however, I believe; and that the enemies were repulsed, since he speaks thus of these matters: And at this very time in which I write these things, the same has happened. For they, having executed as quickly as possible what was commanded, raised a temple in that place: and with this, as with a wall, fortified themselves against that road and against the enemies. Which enemies, as often at other times, so now too attempting to enter, by no means escaped the notice of the inhabitants; but withdrew with much disgrace.

[67] Isaurian robbers slain: For the twelfth he sets a miracle, drawn out at excessive length, in which he says that she punished the plunderers of her temple, the Isaurians. The matter I subjoin in summary. He confesses that plunderers once pillaged the temple of St. Thecla, but to their own hurt. At length, he says, an incursion having once been made, they took and subdued that very temple, as abounding in much gold and enriched with very many other riches, and, the sacred treasures being plundered, hastened to Læstrygonia their fatherland… But the Virgin, when she had for a little while yielded to their rashness, namely that they should enter, plunder, and pack up the sacred adornment, and having done this depart and betake themselves to flight; is reported thus to have mocked their army. For as they fled to their city Læstrygonia (which lies to the West of us and of the whole Eastern tract, and is divided off by frequent mountains which raise themselves even to the clouds), the chief refuge of their madness — changing their sight, overturning their mind, and driving them all together toward the East and to the plain lying beneath the East, without labor, without noise, she fitted them for an easy slaughter by our soldiers. Who, having understood the matter, borne by grief at so great a crime and by the impulse of the Deity into the places which I have named, sloping and suited to cavalry, cut the throats of all, of whatever age they were, and that with such swiftness that on the same day so great a slaughter of men was both begun and finished, and a trophy set up, and the sacred ornaments carried back to the Martyr by the victors themselves: who, singing a pæan, exulting, proclaiming the praises of the holy Woman, dedicated again to her the things which were the Martyr's. After many words he asserts that none of the plunderers survived to carry back to their own people the news of the disaster received. Adducing at the end witnesses of the benefit, he speaks thus: Nor indeed are they three or four only, a scanty and suspect number; but whole cities, and entire peoples, both those who come to us from the East, and those who extend again from us into Asia itself (properly so called). For the fame of the miracle, and the horror and amazement arising from it, has pervaded all things far and wide.

[68] the concourse of the Cilicians to the Saint's church: In the thirteenth place he relates a punishment inflicted, as he will have it, upon Marianus, bishop of Tarsus in Cilicia, and this its occasion. There was a dissension between Marianus of Tarsus and Dexianus, bishop of Seleucia.

And so, when the Virgin's (St. Thecla's) festival was at hand, says the author, at which all, and especially the Cilicians, used to run together to us (as they still run together; and, so long as there shall be men, the same will be done by each, both for the sake of venerating the Martyr and for the private advantage of their own souls; so that both land and sea are straitened by the multitude of peoples, households, and families flowing together hither), he, rising up, forbids by a public edict in his own church that any journey be made hither to us and to the Martyr… But scarcely had he perpetrated such a thing when he paid the penalty of his folly, or rather of his madness. For that Capaneus did not survive his rashness beyond the fifth or sixth day.

[69] he who forbade this punished, as the author will have it, by death: Presently in the fourteenth place he strives to prove, from a vision which he narrates, that death was inflicted upon Marianus as a punishment, St. Thecla avenging herself. But that vision is related as the multitude of people running together to the Saint's festival was just now related — not without exaggeration, I say. I shall therefore express the author's meaning in summary. Castor, deriving his lineage from Lycaonia but dwelling at Seleucia, is said on the vigil of St. Thecla's festival to have seen the holy Virgin with a sterner cast of countenance, … and accusing Marianus and his injury toward her with a clear voice, and threatening that she would presently take punishment upon him. Which thing was truly presented to him by sight, and was not a dream. For his death followed at once: so that these two things happened at the same time, namely that Castor was relating his vision, and that certain others were bringing the news of Marianus's death.

[70] Then he sets as the fifteenth miracle another, and that a twin, apparition of St. Thecla, burial of a dead man in the Saint's church forbidden. if he narrates truly, refusing that a dead man be buried in her temple. A certain orator in this court, he says, Eusebius by name, whose name has to this day great celebrity for his nobility, the charm of his speech, his courtesy, and because he was of most upright faith: he, I say, held Hyperechius, while he was among the living, in the highest love and esteem, partly because they were sprung from one city …, partly because of the man's skill and his excellence in every kind of virtue. And therefore, when he died in this very city of Seleucia, desiring to honor him most magnificently even in those things which pertain to the funeral rites (and he judged that there was no other greater or ampler honor than that his obsequies should be performed and that he should be buried in the Martyr's temple), he asks of Maximus, a most illustrious and most holy man, then prelate of this church (and formerly a fellow-disciple of St. John Chrysostom), that it might be allowed him to do this, and to inter Hyperechius in the right-hand portico of the Martyr's temple which looks to the South. And when Maximus, a man worthy of admiration, had permitted this to be done because he had regard for the man, those whose business it is to make sepulchres, having entered the temple and set about the work and begun to cut the pavement, suddenly the Martyr comes upon them, rebuking them, accusing their audacity, chastising them with words, and commanding them to withdraw. He adds that the workmen withdrew, but afterward, because they had not recognized the Saint, returned to the work: and that then, the Saint appearing again, they were so terrified that no limb of theirs did not tremble and shake. At last he says that the Saint on the following night appeared also to Bishop Maximus, and commanded that he should not permit that burial, adding these words: For places appointed for prayer have no fellowship with burials; unless someone departed from life be not truly dead, but live to God, and be worthy to use the same house and roof with the martyrs; as that divine Symposius, and likewise that divine Samus, and any other who has come nearest to them. The Symposius praised was a bishop of Seleucia in the IV century, which Le Quien likewise suspects concerning Samus, tome 2 of the Oriens Christianus, column 1013. For the rest, it may rightly be doubted whether the words which Basil attributes to St. Thecla are not rather to be attributed to the author.

[71] Here for the sixteenth he narrates a vision which he says befell himself, A vision which the author says was presented to him: writing thus: At the time when I was writing about this miracle (for it is not fitting that I should keep silent about what then happened to me through the Martyr), something of this kind befell me. I was already too negligent and slothful in seeking out and writing down her miracles, to confess my fault: and thereafter with a more remiss mind I took up my tablets and my pen, because I despaired of tracking them out and collecting them. And to me, thus disposed and yawning, the Martyr seemed to sit beside me, where I am wont to engage with my books; and to take up and read the quire in which these things had been transcribed by my hand from the tablets, and to rejoice and smile, and by her very countenance to signify that she was delighted with these writings of mine, and to intimate that the work begun by me ought to be finished and not left imperfect, so long as it should be permitted to learn what each man knew, and what could be understood from individuals by applied diligence. Whence it came about that, after that vision and the fear stirred up in me by it, I afterward became more eager to take up my tablets and pen again into my hands, and to do the same so long as she herself should command. Tillemont judges that little credit is to be given to this account, and not undeservedly, on account of the method of writing which Basil used. Since, however, he does not say that that vision was presented to him waking, it may have happened that he saw in sleep what he was turning over in his mind while awake.

[72] another vision: The seventeenth is about Bishop Dexianus, Basil's own predecessor, who was then still in charge of those upon whom the care of guarding the temple lay. I deliver the matter in summary. The Isaurians laying everything waste, Dexianus for fear of them transferred all the silver and gold adornment into the city. This precaution displeased the Saint, and she indicated it by a vision to certain virgins sleeping in the temple, if we believe the author. Wherefore Dexianus restored to the temple all the adornment, and the sacred furnishings dedicated to divine worship, gathered from the city.

[73] a blasphemer punished, From that which he sets as the eighteenth miracle it may be gathered that the festival of St. Thecla was celebrated over several days, since he says that it happened on the last day of the festival, or rather after the night of that day. The matter, related at length, I touch on most briefly. He says that a certain Orientius, of Irenopolis by birth, uttered with impure mouth blasphemous words against the Saint, and on the same day was seized by a demon so atrociously that he could not last to the third day, but was taken out of the midst by the demon.

[74] as also others What he subjoins in a prolix discourse as the nineteenth seems to have nothing of prodigy, but a punishment inflicted on two wicked men in a natural manner. They too were men of Irenopolis, who had come to the Saint's festival, not out of zeal for prayer, he says, but to satisfy their lust. Certainly they had already, as he narrates, carried off a certain virgin, that they might violate her: which nevertheless he affirms was not accomplished. But he says that both paid the penalty: For the one, he says, was cast down into this river from the ferry-boat which carries men over to us, and perished … but the other was in turn taken out of the midst by another kind of death, both being destroyed at the same time and place.

[75] certain men, The twentieth again contains the punishment of a certain Pappus, a decurion, who had had as colleague in his office Aulerius, now dead, to whose sons Pappus is said to have done injury. For this cause the author says that St. Thecla stood by Pappus in his sleep, and, a grave rebuke being sent before, foretold to him that he would die on the same day of the following week. Then he asserts that he was forthwith seized from terror with a grave illness, and confessed his injustice, but did not escape the punishment foretold. Scarcely therefore, he says, had the foretold day dawned, when he was taken away, and the truth of the prediction was proved by the outcome. From these sad things, which I have only briefly touched upon, because most of their circumstances are either scarcely credible or pertain little to the Saint, Basil says that he will proceed to more cheerful matters.

[76] A murrain of animals driven off, and thence a chapel of the Saint built: And so he narrates the twenty-first in this manner: It was the summer season of the year, and the song of the cicadas, and the excessive heats of the sun overhead, and a certain grave force of disease was feeding upon mules, horses, oxen, asses, sheep, and, to say it in a word, every kind of animals, so that that murrain afflicted all with great lack of counsel and anxiety of mind; the villages and fields being laid waste, nay and in the city too the most splendid houses being emptied, no method of cure at all offering itself, because the origin of the evil was unknown, and it was not known whence it had rushed in with so great violence. For it was not possible to detect this from the animals which were perishing, because those seized with that evil were taken out of the midst before it was perceived, and many perished together in a heap. When therefore the matter was already despaired of, and surpassed all human skill, again the kindly and most powerful Martyr here, taking pity on the perishing cattle and on the men who were losing them, forthwith points out a most present medicine. For she causes a fount, never existing before, nor beheld by any of us or of the ancients, suddenly to gush forth, and that not far off, or in some foreign region; but in that very place where a chapel has again been dedicated to her. And this is a grotto situated over against the temple toward the setting sun, most pleasant and most delightful, and such as brings singular pleasure, whether one desire to walk about, or to linger, or with the greatest quiet to give himself to prayers there, and to obtain according to his heart's wish what he has asked of the Martyr… From this fount, therefore, so suddenly raised up, the Martyr drew forth health for all the animals afflicted with the disease. It was then to be seen that every path, every public road looking hither and leading hither, both from the level and from the higher places, was filled with horses, mules, sheep, goats, asses, nay and dogs and swine, hastening to this one place, to what was then rather health and medicine than gushing water. Then whatever animal came out of the water was no longer sick, but, just as if it had drawn thence not so much water as salvation itself, leaped forth with its strength restored, and hastened, each to its own field and house, being better than before, to ply its accustomed labors.

[77] Concerning the same fount he presently subjoins in the 22nd place: They report also that at that time a certain man, the Saint's fount for animals most distinguished among the citizens, sent his horse, sick and grievously suffering (its shoulder-blades, namely, being twisted backward and driving the rest of the body in the contrary direction, and contractions, as they say, of the sinews hindering its forward step), to that water, rather for the sake of making trial whether she could snatch it from so manifest a danger, than because he had faith in the thing: but that the Martyr, not being ignorant that this had been done for the sake of tempting her, sent back to Marianus his horse also safe. Nor is there anyone, I think, to whom it is not well known that he divulged these hidden feelings of his mind, and marveled beyond measure at the unhoped-for cure of the horse, and at the Martyr's power so present. What the author says about the tempting, not

I should think, is to be explained of tempting properly so called, which is a sin; but rather of a defect of sure confidence, so that he scarcely hoped the horse would be healed, yet sent it, because he believed that he might perhaps enjoy that benefit. The author indeed speaks otherwise, but he brings forward many other things less probable, and some altogether inept, which I have cut away here and there.

[78] Again he sets down another matter concerning the same water as the twenty-third. and beneficial to men. Nay, there is a report, he says, that a certain Cypriot patrician, born of most illustrious parents, deprived of his sight, was stirred up by the news which there was about this water and crossed over, and, that medicine being applied, returned to his Cypriots with his sight recovered. This, as the studious reader will be able to observe, he affirms with less certainty. Then he professes that he is coming to the healing of men of letters.

[79] First, then, he narrates a sufficiently prolix history about Alypius, the father of Olympius the grammarian, who taught grammar at Seleucia. He, he says, once fell into a grave illness which threatened the peril of his life. And when the physicians had already despaired of healing him, and the evil was judged thereafter to surpass human help, and every hope of life failed the man, he betakes himself to the Martyr, the only refuge for evils of this kind; and having entered the temple, he thenceforth held all his hopes of recovering health suspended from thence. Then he relates a dream in which the sick man seemed to see St. Thecla, and to receive from her in his hand a most beautiful pebble, by which health should be restored to him. But being awakened, and unfolding his hand, he found nothing, and conjectured that he had been led into error, and that that dream had truly been a dream. But on the following day his son Olympius stumbled upon a pebble on the road, being taken with its appearance and size, … and having picked it up, came playing and walking to his father. And when he stood by his bed, and the father noticed the pebble in his hand, recognizing the Martyr's gift, he seized it at once, and clasping it in his hands, was straightway freed from his long and difficult disease. A wonderful healing indeed, provided the things which the author narrates be sufficiently certain.

[80] of healings Wonderful too is what he subjoins as the twenty-fifth concerning Isocasius, a heathen sophist, but converted long afterward. Isocasius, he says, made a sophist from a schoolmaster, and, that title being lost, having by no means attained this one in fact, laboring at one time under ill health in Ægæ, a city of Cilicia, and then, as the sick are wont, desirous with a longing for much and deep solitude, is brought down to the Martyr's temple, a little removed from the city, as though in that place above all he should obtain this wish of his. Having therefore found much quiet there, and falling asleep a little, along with quiet he recovers his health, being taught by the Martyr what needed to be done; and having executed it and been relieved of the disease, she, when his unbelief had been reproached to him, nevertheless by no means begrudged him her help. For it was in about this manner that that illustrious Eudoxius, an eminent man and very distinguished, and holding nothing so precious as the truth, who adorns Tarsus, that most beautiful city, by his dwelling in it, used to narrate and report to us. Another temple of the Saint is here again intimated, near Ægæ, a city of Cilicia.

[81] of various sorts In the twenty-sixth place he affirms that by St. Thecla's benefit Aretarchus, a sophist of Seleucia, was healed, and he a heathen, whom he sharply censures as unlearned and estranged from the faith. He, he says, when he had fallen into a most grievous disease of the kidneys, so that for excessive pain he often longed for death; nay, because of the greatness of his torments loved it; nevertheless obtained help and health from the Martyr, who promised that the surest cure and remedy for him would be the nightly oil of the lamp by which her place is lighted. And he, asking that a supply of it be given him, and anointing himself with it (with which also he wiped away his sickness at the same time), obtained health, but was by no means freed from his impiety. For by the shrewdness and keenness, forsooth, of his own wit, although he says and confesses the author of the remedy, he yet ascribes the benefit of health as received from another.

[82] and benefits granted to the author himself. Of himself, at number 27, he likewise relates various things, and not sparingly, beginning thus: So great, moreover, is the Martyr's love of letters, and so is she delighted with oratorical praises (this might have been omitted) that I judge it worth while to relate something of those things which happened to me and in my own person. That this is so, and that I speak no falsehood, she herself knows, by whom it was done. For her anniversary assembly was being held, and I too had made ready to deliver a slight oration on the praises of the feast. Not that I thought I could bring forward anything illustrious, or worthy of her; but that in this way I might hunt after some good will of hers; especially because she knows how to reward with the greatest benefits even those who honor her sparingly. And when only one day now remained before the delivering of the oration, a certain exceedingly grave sickness, and one that brought the greatest pain, fell upon my ear, so that it was distended deep within, and torn from the inner parts, and drove a violent breath through the hollow cavity of the head, and on that account raised a vehement noise within; so that I now lost all hope of speaking, and was in expectation of a greater evil; nay, I began to be suffused with a blush, because, since most people expected that I would deliver an oration, now that the time of giving my specimen was at hand, I was deserting the order and the custom. That all these things might not befall me, the Martyr prevented it, standing by at night, and taking hold of my ear and pulling it, and, a little matter being pressed out, dissolving all the pain. And when it had slipped out of the tortuous and, so to speak, impassable channels, I appeared at the speaking place, … and said a few things. And the Martyr bestowed upon me such force and grace in speaking that I was judged to be somebody and to have spoken tolerably, and stirred the greatest admiration, though from no memorable saying of mine. The same Martyr was frequently present with me, when I had now been enrolled in the priestly senate and in the number of preachers and pontiffs, and appearing by night gave me some book or paper, which I took, and which seemed to be, no obscure proof of her approval of me. But if it must rather be said why she seemed to me to do this, the event which afterward followed declared it abundantly. He implies that he was stirred up by the Saint to write down her deeds and miracles. But what is to be judged of all these things, and whether they were mere dreams which Basil explained after his own fancy, let the prudent reader judge.

[83] The author subjoins for the 28th miracle a sufficiently prolix account concerning Calliste, the wife of a certain Papias. Some things But a few words will suffice me. He affirms that Calliste's face was disfigured by poisonous drugs by a wanton woman who was living in ruinous fashion with her husband Papias; but that Calliste fled to St. Thecla, and was taught by her by what medicine she might recover her former comeliness of countenance. In this way, if we believe the author, Calliste was again reconciled to her husband by the excellence of her most surpassing beauty.

[84] Just as it does not seem altogether certain that Calliste learned by a revelation of St. Thecla the remedy by which she should recover her beauty; so it appears no more certain that it must be attributed to the Saint that the thing was detected of which he speaks in the twenty-ninth. A certain Bassiana, on account of a quarrel with her kinsfolk, was dwelling in the temple of St. Thecla, and had there with her a little of her own gold, he says: these were mostly rings and certain small necklaces. These were carried off by theft: but the Martyr, as the author will have it, made the theft manifest, so that she who had committed the theft, being openly convicted, restored to Bassiana her gold, and thereafter lived so temperately that this lapse of hers was covered over.

[85] In the thirtieth and last place he begins to narrate a miracle which either he himself left unfinished, and of the author, or which afterward dropped out of the codex. But that we may relate as the last, he says, a miracle which lately happened: although it neither is nor ever will be the last of the Martyr's miracles: for as long as there shall be men, miracles too will always flow from her as from a fount, will always bubble up, always blossom, always bring every kind of health. But, however that may be, this too must be recorded, how a certain woman exceedingly illustrious, and sprung of a noble family, Dosithea by name. Here the narrative breaks off, and there is subjoined: But of these things enough. Wherefore the editor notes this in the margin: Some things are lacking: unless perhaps the author breaks off the narrative on purpose.

[86] who says that many things were omitted; the conclusion. At last the author says many things in general, and sets forth at length the diligence which he employed in collecting the miracles. It is pleasing to transfer these very words hither, although now and then somewhat at variance with one another. But of these things enough, he says. For what profit is there in dropping a few drops into an immeasurable sea? Nor, if it pleased me to say more, could I even find them. Inasmuch as I have scarcely gathered these very things, and, running about hither and thither on every side, gathering and collecting, have put together into one, as from some deep place of longer time and of oblivion, these miracles; as the merchants of the most celebrated gems are wont to do. But neither do few remain besides; nor are these things which we have related the greater part out of many: but their number is so great that an account of it can by no means be reckoned. Nor have I by nature been granted wings or adamantine strength, by which, penetrating all lands and seas, I might collect them all from each city, region, village and house: since a collection of this kind exceeds my powers, nor would any writing at all suffice; nay, nor is so long a life granted as would be enough for recounting so infinite a multitude of miracles. Wherefore, as I said, I shall here stay the course of my discourse undertaken concerning them, lest I should seem uselessly to pursue things which I cannot attain. And so, if I shall have added this one thing, that many men have attained to the highest praise of piety by the Martyr's help, and that likewise many women have been exercised through her in the zeal of virtue, I shall keep silence. Then he reviews some men and women outstanding in virtue, and subjoins: Of all of whom, whether of the men whom I have enumerated, or of the women, the life and manners ordered according to God's prescription are miracles of the Martyr, and indeed greater than those which I have reviewed above. For what more illustrious thing could be said of them, than that so great a company began under the Martyr's leadership to go forward to piety, to any single one of whom, man or woman, the whole world is not to be matched?

§ VI. The arm of St. Thecla translated in the XIV century from the East into Spain.

[ ] When James II, king of Aragon, had heard of the body of St. Thecla, Where the body of St. Thecla is now preserved I do not find, although some wrongly attribute it to various places. Juan Marieta, in the Saints of Spain, book 4, chapter 57, says that the body of St. Thecla is preserved in the metropolitan church of Tarragona, dedicated to her name, in Spain or Catalonia. But from what is to be related it will be plain that it is only an arm which was translated thither. Of the translation of this arm, therefore, let us treat first. Domenech, in the Saints of Catalonia, at the XVIII of May, narrates that translation from an ancient account, as he says, and from Letters of James II, king of Aragon, which he recites from the royal archive of Barcelona. He affirms that the church of Tarragona was anciently dedicated to St. Thecla, and that therefore the archbishop with the chapter and the citizens pressed James II, king of Aragon, that by his envoys

he should ask relics of St. Thecla from the king of Armenia, in whose dominion the Saint's body was then said to be preserved. From this, however, the reader ought not to infer that the body of St. Thecla was at some time translated from Seleucia into Armenia. For at the time in which these things were done, Cilicia, in which, taken more widely, Seleucia also is, obeyed Oshin or Ossinius, king of Armenia, as is gathered from the councils of Sis and of Adana, celebrated in Cilicia, of which the former is fixed to the year 1307 under Leo, king of Armenia, the latter under Oshin, the successor of Leo, and under Pope John XXII, who was made Pontiff in the year 1316. But the death of Ossinius, king of Armenia, Odorico Rinaldi assigns to the year 1320, so that the council must necessarily be fixed between 1316 and 1320. The said councils were published by Clemente Galano in his Work on the Reconciliation of the Armenian Church with the Roman, part 1, chapters 28 and 29.

[88] Now the Epistle of James II, king of Aragon, to Onsinus (as it is there written), king of Armenia, preserved in the dominion of the king of Armenia, he asked from him by an envoy by which relics of St. Thecla are requested, is read as given on the 2nd Nones of September in the year of the Lord MCCCXIX, so that everything agrees rightly, and the envoys, who are said to have been sent with the said Epistle to the king of Armenia, could sail to Tarsus or to some other port of Cilicia. And so I shall subjoin the whole Epistle from Domenech, some grammatical faults being corrected however from the Spanish Martyrology, in which it is likewise published. To the illustrious and magnificent prince, our dearest friend Onsinus, by the grace of God king of Armenia, James by the same grace king of the Aragonese, increase of prosperous successes with health. Let it be made known to your Serenity by the tenor of these presents, that it has newly come to our hearing by the reports of men worthy of credit, that the body of the blessed virgin Thecla, or a part of that body, is held in the parts of your kingdom. Indeed, since in the city of Tarragona, situated within the limits of our kingdom, a metropolitan church is founded under the title of that same blessed Thecla, whose foundation had its beginning from our predecessors in ancient time, an anxious care of devotion urges us that, because the aforesaid metropolitan church, which is very honorable, and which is preferred for much antiquity in these parts — so much so that since its foundation a thousand two hundred years and more have passed, as is found by sure writings — is entitled under the name of the aforesaid Virgin, some of her relics should be held in the aforementioned church: from which both our devotion and that of our subjects and of all the faithful who turn aside to these parts toward that Virgin might be increased, the faith renewed, and honor and reverence more earnestly rendered to her. And if we vigilantly desire this, we act devoutly, which is a pious thing, following the footsteps of our predecessors, who piously and devoutly founded the aforesaid metropolitan church under the name and honor of the aforesaid Virgin.

[89] Therefore we beseech your Serenity and dear friendship with heartfelt and inmost affection, and by his letters asked a part of it; as dearly as we can, that for the honor and reverence of Almighty God, and for the exaltation and glory of the aforesaid blessed virgin Thecla — considering that not only toward relics of this kind in these parts, but even toward the whole body of that Virgin, the devotion of the faithful inhabitants of these parts will be greatly increased toward the parts where it lies entombed — and also for our special favor, you may be willing and it may please you to transmit some great part of the aforesaid relics of the blessed Virgin, with which we may be able to adorn and build up not only the aforesaid metropolitan church, but also the other cathedral churches suffragan to it, to the honor and exaltation of our Lord and of the aforesaid blessed Virgin, and to devotion for the merit of ourselves and of all the faithful. And if perchance the aforesaid body or its relics are not held within your district, may it please your Serenity to procure to have them entirely, that you may with effect transmit them to us, as is set forth above, giving credence, if you please, in these matters to those things which Simon Salzeti, our subject and faithful servant, the bearer of these presents (whom for this cause we send to your presence), shall have to report by word of mouth. Further, because sanctuaries of this kind cannot be so becomingly administered by laymen as by clerics: therefore we have provided that two clerics, priests, men certainly of honest life and praiseworthy conversation, beneficed of the aforesaid church of Tarragona, be sent to your parts together with the said Simon, who may devoutly receive the aforesaid relics under your seal, and treat them honorably, and bring them to us together with our above-mentioned messenger. By this indeed you will render service both to God and to the aforesaid Virgin, and will be made a partaker of the good works which will follow thereupon, and we shall hold it exceedingly pleasing, and shall be much grateful to you, and in doing things pleasing to you shall reckon ourselves specially bound for this. Given at Barcelona on the 2nd Nones of September, in the year of the Lord MCCCXIX. Bernard de Fonte, by royal command, made through the provost of Tarragona.

[90] and he received an arm, brought to Barcelona in the year 1320, These letters having been received, the envoys boarded the great ship of Guillem Guerau, a merchant of Tarragona, and in it put in at the dominion of the king of Armenia, as Domenech narrates. That they were carried into a port of Armenia the Spanish martyrologist wrote unskillfully, since Armenia nowhere touches the sea. But they could have put in at some port of Cilicia, and thence set out to the king by a land journey. Certainly they reached the king of Armenia, and offered him not only the letters mentioned, but also various gifts, and those precious, which Domenech enumerates; and they were received courteously and honorably. Afterward, when the cause of the embassy had been set forth, the king wished first to take counsel with his own men, and then told the envoys that he would grant to the king of Aragon the arm of St. Thecla, the thumb, however, being reserved to himself. The king of Armenia therefore gave through his men the arm without the thumb, and that wrapped in cloth of gold and placed in a silver case. And this silver case was again enclosed in a larger wooden one. The king also added authentic Acts furnishing testimony concerning the arm of St. Thecla, which Domenech testifies were written in the year 1320; and precious gifts and letters addressed to James, king of Aragon. All these things having been received, the envoys of the king of Aragon trusted themselves again to the same ship, an honorable cleric of the king of Armenia accompanying them, and by a prosperous voyage came to Barcelona, as Domenech relates in Spanish. That all these things happened in the year 320, the dates of the letters imply. For since the envoys probably reached the king of Armenia before the end of the year 1319, everything could easily have been transacted there in the winter or spring, and the envoys could put in at Barcelona in the summer of the year 1320.

[91] and thence carried to Tarragona But that sacred deposit was not at once sent to Tarragona. For King James, who was at Barcelona, when he had learned everything, ordered the case to be adorned at Barcelona with silver plates, and then sent the envoys with those sacred relics to Port Salou , and thence to Gostantin, that it might be kept there until it should with great solemnity be brought into the city of Tarragona. Concerning the time in which that solemn translation was made, Domenech's statements do not rightly agree with one another. He says it was made in the year 1323, and on Sunday, the XVIII of May. But the XVIII day of May in that year was not a Sunday, but a Wednesday, as is gathered from the Dominical letter of that year, b. The Spanish martyrologist agrees as to the year; but concerning the day of the festival he notes this at the XIX of May: Some assign the day of this festival to the preceding day (the XVIII of May), others to the present one, because the church of Tarragona has been accustomed to celebrate this feast on the V Sunday after Pentecost.* That reason is not valid, because the fifth Sunday after Pentecost can never fall on the XVIII or XIX of May, but can fall on the XVIII and XIX of June. And in fact in the year 1323 the fifth Sunday after Pentecost coincided with the XIX day of June, as can be gathered from the Easter of that year, which was the XXVII of March. And so there may be a suspicion that the translation was made on the fifth Sunday after Pentecost, falling in the year 1323 on the XIX of June: yet I should not dare to call this certain, on account of the small accuracy of the Spanish martyrologist in writing; especially since Domenech asserts that the feast of the translation was fixed on the fifth Sunday after Easter. But whatever be the case as to the day, let us at least briefly touch upon the very great solemnity of the translation, which Domenech relates at length.

[92] James, king of Aragon, had come to Tarragona for that festival, [with the utmost pomp, and there deposited in the metropolitan church dedicated to the Saint.] and had summoned thither the chief nobles of his kingdom: the archbishop of Tarragona, Ximeno de Luna, had likewise called together the bishops suffragan to him, and abbots and Priors, and clerics established in dignities. All the places through which the very long procession of those piously advancing with the sacred arm had to pass were adorned. And so great was the multitude of the ordered procession, that besides the many confraternities forming the first column, and the other columns following, the author extends the number of those carrying tapers beyond four thousand; and affirms that the canons, and the other clerics distinguished by dignities, and the abbots and Priors, were seven thousand three hundred and fifty-four. After so great a multitude of ecclesiastics walked the archbishop Ximeno de Luna, bearing the arm of St. Thecla under a most richly wrought canopy, King James thronging close upon his right side, and Alphonso the king's son upon his left. The canopy was borne by men of the first nobility, among whom were two sons of the king, Peter on the right and Raymond Berengar on the left. After the sacred relics followed the first nobility in great number. To say the rest in a word, nothing was lacking to the magnificence with which that sacred pledge was carried to the city of Tarragona and to the metropolitan church, and there deposited on the altar of St. Fructuosus, while the archbishop chanted a solemn Mass, the bishops of Saragossa and of Lérida assisting.

[93] That this translation was made illustrious by a signal miracle, Miracles wrought at the translation and afterward. Domenech testifies, and after him the Spanish martyrologist, whose words I transfer hither, cutting away, however, those things which the first author does not have. There were not lacking miracles, he says, to the festival of so great a translation: for a priest, Raymond Castellon by name, who for sixteen years had walked deprived of his eyes, having invoked the name of St. Thecla, virgin and martyr, … forthwith received … the sight of his eyes. Another which afterward followed is thus related: A certain woman, the wife of Raymond Palmer of Valls, who for two years had suffered from epilepsy, when she was being led into the church, that she might pass the night before the altar where the relic was laid up, a vow having been uttered of offering to the holy Virgin and martyr a taper of six pounds, … while she was waking that night, found herself entirely healed, and made this manifest to the people, says Domenech. A third both add, which Jerónimo Zurita also relates in the Annals of Aragon, book 10, chapter 39, at the year 1387, and Ribadeneira in the Life of St. Thecla. The Spanish martyrologist has it thus: St. Thecla defends the rights of her church from military incursions: which Peter, the IV king of the Aragonese of this name, is said to have experienced. Who, desiring to make away with the possessions of the cathedral church of Tarragona, sent an armed soldier against them,

who utterly laid them all waste. Which sacrilege the blessed Virgin and martyr avenged: for appearing to the king by night she dealt him a blow, by which the ill-fated king shortly departed from among the living. More fully concerning this controversy and the illness of Peter IV the aforesaid Zurita treats, affirming that the king when sick, before some bishops and men of the first rank, gave command that the church of Tarragona should be restored to all its rights.

[94] The body not formerly preserved at Tarragona. For the rest, from what has thus far been said about the translation of the arm of St. Thecla the studious reader will easily gather that those writers erred who affirmed that the body of St. Thecla is preserved in the metropolitan church of Tarragona — but by an error common to many, by which from some part the whole is asserted. That error, which cannot always be so detected, is the fount of most of the controversies and contentions which have arisen in the Church about the possession of sacred relics. It is plain besides that what Juan Tamayo in the Spanish Martyrology at the XIX of May reported, as if from the Adversaria of Liutprand, in these words, is utterly invented: In the third year of Sisenand, under Audax, Pontiff of Tarragona, an ark was carried over the Mediterranean sea, an angel guiding it, to Tarragona, with a part of the body of S. Thecla, Virgin and Martyr, the disciple of S. Paul, with an inscription found within, which signified this: In the year DCXXXIII it was received with immense joy of the prelate and the citizens: and the matter having been written by letter by the prelate Audax to King Sisenand, it brought wondrous gladness to Spain. I wonder that Tamayo was so simple as to presume to cite here that fictitious Adversaria, since from the letters of James, king of Aragon, recited above, it becomes clear that the relics of St. Thecla were not at Tarragona before the year 1319.

commonly el puerto di Salo*

§ VII. A gleaning concerning apparitions, churches, relics, and other things pertaining to the Saint.

[ ] St. Thecla appeared often to St. Martin, Sulpicius Severus, in the Dialogues on the Life of St. Martin, Dialogue 2, chapter 14, implies that St. Thecla with other holy virgins frequently appeared to St. Martin. For he brings in Gallus narrating thus: On a certain day I and this Sulpicius, keeping watch before his (St. Martin's) doors, were sitting for some hours already in silence, with immense awe and trembling, as if we were keeping an appointed watch before an angel's tabernacle: whereas indeed, the door of his cell being closed, he did not know that we were there. Meanwhile we heard the murmur of persons conversing, and presently we are encompassed with a certain awe, and, being astonished, we could not fail to perceive that there was something divine, I know not what. After nearly two hours Martin comes out to us: and then this Sulpicius (as no one spoke with him more familiarly) began to entreat him to declare to us who asked what that divine awe had been which we both confessed we had felt, or with whom he had been conversing in the cell; for we had heard before the doors a slight and scarcely intelligible sound of those speaking. Then he, after hesitating long and much (but there was nothing which Sulpicius would not extort from him against his will): "Perhaps I shall say things more incredible, but, Christ being witness, I do not lie, unless there be anyone so sacrilegious as to judge that Martin lied. I will tell you," he said, "but do you, I pray, tell no one: Agnes, Thecla and Mary have been with me." And he related to us the countenance and the habit of each. Nor indeed on that day only, but frequently did he confess that he was visited by them.

[96] In the Continuation of the History of the bishops of Verdun, in d'Achery's Spicilegium, tome 12, pages 262 and 263, another apparition of St. Thecla with the most blessed Virgin Mary is related, likewise once with St. Mary to Berengar, bishop of Verdun. made to Berengar, bishop of Verdun and kinsman of the emperor Otto I, for a salutary punishment. But I have heard from many relating it, says the author, that his foot became withered before his death: for on a certain day, as he was going down to the church of blessed Mary, he found a certain cleric prostrate on the ground, celebrating the memory of blessed Mary. Him he struck with his foot, that he might rise. Presently that man rose, and, having seen who it was, bore it patiently. But on the following night, at the bed of the bishop as he lay and was not yet sleeping, the Virgin Mary stood with the blessed Thecla: "Strike," she said, "that man's foot, Thecla, and be an avenger of the injury to my cleric." By this stroke his foot began from that same hour to burn, and in the aforesaid place (namely in the monastery of St. Vitonus) he became a monk. Berengar himself could then have related the apparition made to him, which nevertheless has not such marks of certainty as the preceding.

[97] Paolo Morigia, in the Sanctuary of Milan, enumerating the relics of the metropolitan church of Milan, [The Saint's head at Milan, formerly in the church dedicated to her, now in the metropolitan,] reckons among them on page 5 the heads of fourteen Saints, men or women, and in the first place, The head of the protomartyr S. Thecla, Virgin and martyr, disciple of S. Paul the apostle, and celebrated by the Greek and Latin doctors. Ughelli agrees, tome 4 of the Italia sacra reprinted, column 19, and at the same time teaches whence the metropolitan church received the Saint's head, writing thus of the metropolitan: Here is the head of S. Thecla, disciple of S. Paul and protomartyr of the female sex, translated from the ancient collegiate church sacred to Thecla's name, which Ferdinand Gonzaga, with the Pontiff's approval, destroyed in fortifying the city. Of the destruction of that church Ripamonti in the History of Milan, tome 2, page 1119, speaks thus: The square which lies before the metropolitan edifice was darkened and obstructed by the exceedingly ancient and ruinous edifice of holy Thecla. It was decided to level that edifice, so that both, its cult and ministry being transferred into the greatest temple, the cult of the holy Woman might be ampler in the metropolitan see, and spaciousness might be added to the square by that space being deconsecrated. St. Thecla therefore had at Milan an ancient temple, which was destroyed about the middle of the XVI century. Bosca in the Annotations on the Milanese Martyrology at the XXIV of September asserts that it was the summer church, because the metropolitan clergy used the church of St. Thecla in the summer season. But Tillemont was deceived when he wrote that the church which is today metropolitan is dedicated to St. Thecla. He says more correctly that her relics are preserved in the Metropolitan, if he understands this of the head, not of the whole body, as Baillet wrongly understood it.

[98] Now St. Thecla is venerated at Milan with an Office of double rite in the Metropolitan, where she has long been venerated on the 24th of September with a double Office. not on the XXIII, but on the XXIV of September, on which she is venerated by the Greeks. So it is noted in the proper Lessons of the church of Milan printed in the year 1642, and in the sacred Diary of Giovanni Battista Carisio, who adds that the Saint's head is preserved in the metropolitan church, and that the Mass and divine Office are celebrated in pontificals. In an ancient Milanese Missal, which we have printed in the year 1522, there is a proper Mass of St. Thecla with a particular preface, in which the Saint's deeds are set forth in a true summary. It is pleasing to transfer that summary hither, that the studious reader may see that the fables stuffed into the Acts were not adopted by the church of Milan. After the beginning of the preface these words follow: For here is present Thecla, that most celebrated virgin, who, imbued with the teachings of thy apostle Paul, manfully overcame the enticements of the world. And seizing the virginal shield, she first afforded to glorious virgins an example of martyrdom and of principal constancy. At length the renowned Virgin, cast into the raging pyres of flames, was not touched by bodily fire, because, kindled with the love of Christ thy Son, she overcame the twofold burnings of the flesh. Thereafter, exposed to ravening beasts, she nevertheless could not be harmed, thou protecting her; because the most gentle Ewe-lamb subdued their savage spirits. For this cause also, exalted both by the primacy of martyrdom and by the triumph of virginity, girt about with virginal choirs, she follows the footsteps of the immaculate Lamb, etc. All these things, as being conformable to the assertions of the holy Fathers, may be held for true and historically certain.

[99] Three churches built to St. Thecla at Constantinople, Constantinople had various churches sacred to St. Thecla. Four different ones are mentioned by Du Cange in Constantinopolis Christiana. Of these the first, certainly under the name of St. Thecla, seems to have been in the suburb which formerly had the name Sycæ, and which is now commonly called Galata. Of it the aforesaid Du Cange treats in book 4, page 190, and says that it was situated in the suburbs beyond Sycæ or Galata, Where, he says, stood the gate ἀπαγούση εἰς τὸ μαρτύριον τῆς ἁγίας Θέκλης (leading to the martyrium of S. Thecla). Of this church Flavitas was presbyter, who as the V century grew old was made patriarch of Constantinople: for by S. Nicephorus in his abridged Chronography he is called πρεσβύτερος τῆς ἁγίας Θέκλης Συκῶν, presbyter of S. Thecla of Sycæ. Of the same Liberatus the Deacon in his Breviarium, chapter 48, says: Acacius (the patriarch) dies, and after him is ordained Flavitas, a presbyter, who was from S. Thecla. From these things it is plain that that church of St. Thecla existed at least from the V century. Another church of St. Thecla, situated on the mount called Τὰ Κοντάρια, Du Cange assigns, page 150, in these words: The temple of S. Thecla the martyr, called Τὰ Κοντάρια, Constantine the Great built and consecrated to the Mother of God: then it was transferred by Justin Curopalates to the name of S. Thecla, as Codinus has it, page 28, and the author of the Constantinopolitan Collectanea, page 98. That perhaps is the one which Zonaras writes was renewed by the same Justin. An anonymous writer in Banduri, in the Antiquities of Constantinople, part 3, pages 44 and 46, treats of the same church, and adds that Contaria was the name of a mountain on which the Byzantines formerly kept watch, and on which Constantine built that church to the Mother of God. But this Justin Curopalates enlarged, he says, and adorned, and endowed with the appellation of S. Thecla. A third church of St. Thecla at Constantinople, built at the harbor of Julian by Justinian, Du Cange writes of, citing Procopius, On Buildings, book 1, chapter 4, where, enumerating many churches built by Justinian, he thus briefly touches upon this one: And the edifice of Thecla the martyr at the harbor of the city which has its name from Julian.

[100] Finally a fourth church of St. Thecla, built in the XI century by the emperor Isaac Comnenus in the palace of Blachernæ, and a fourth added in the XI century by Isaac Comnenus, the aforesaid Du Cange shows from various authors. The cause is related by Anna Comnena, book 3 of the Alexiad, page 90, by Zonaras, Scylitzes and Glycas in the deeds of Isaac Comnenus. Zonaras, having related Isaac's expedition against the Patzinaks or Patzinacites, and described the grave storm which caught the army returning toward Constantinople at Mount Lobitzus in Thrace, thus proceeds: But the rain and snow having abated a little, the emperor, having gone out of his tent, withdrew beneath a certain great oak nearby, some of the nobles standing about. But a crash having arisen in that place, both he and his men departed thence; and the tree, torn up by the roots, at once fell. Having returned therefore to the great city, in order to render thanks to God for the safety received, he indeed founded within the palace an edifice of holy Thecla the protomartyr, because on that day on which her memory is celebrated he had escaped that peril of the oak, but such an edifice as convicts him of great pettiness of soul: which his nephew by his brother's son, the emperor John, the son of Alexius,

the son of Alexius, restored most magnificently, in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ. Anna Comnena says that not only a crash or noise was heard before the fall of the tree, which she calls a beech, but also a voice. Concerning the church built, which she herself could frequently have seen before its restoration, she speaks thus: The emperor at once perceived and did not dissemble the benefit of his head divinely preserved, and … returning home more hastily, held nothing of greater moment than that he should found for the great martyr Thecla a most elegant temple, and magnificently furnish it at no small expense, and mark it out with ornaments both various in kind and precious both in material and in art and workmanship. These words imply a greater magnificence of that church than the words of Zonaras.

[101] But Du Cange judges that that church had been built already before the times of Isaac Comnenus, [perhaps distinct from it, an oratory of hers in the palace: her cult in the same place.] because the Continuator of Theophanes, book 3, in Theophilus, number 44, writes these things: But Thecla too, the eldest of his (the emperor Theophilus's) daughters, raised up from the foundations a chamber (in Blachernæ) where there is also an oratory of Thecla the protomartyr, it being most beautiful: in which place also, lying on her bed, she ceased to live. I had rather judge, however, that this chamber and oratory is different from the church just mentioned. An effigy of St. Thecla from a Greek panel Du Cange also exhibits, page 137, together with S. Stephen the protomartyr and S. Catherine. In the Greek Synaxary of Sirmond, at the XXIV of September, after the Saint's eulogy there is added: But her festival is celebrated in her martyrium, which is ἐν τοῖς κριθοπωλίοις, in Crithopolia. But this place I could nowhere find, so that I do not know whether this church be one of those mentioned, or another.

[102] What I find further about the relics of St. Thecla is this. Various relics and churches of St. Thecla in Germany and Italy: Our Papebroch, in tome III of May, page 37, in St. Epiphanius, recites from a letter of Thomas de Czechorod, bishop of Samandria and dean of Prague, these words: that certain relics of St. Epiphanius, together with an arm of St. Thecla and the head of one of the Innocents of Bethlehem, were in the year MCCCLIV brought into Bohemia, and presented to the emperor Charles IV by Protiwa Swihowski of Segna, a man illustrious among the Bohemians and of royal blood. This letter was written in the year 1677, that is, four years after the Phosphorus Pragensis of the same author, in which he does not have this. But in the aforesaid Work, page 518, he writes only this at the XXIII of September: Of S. Thecla, V. and M., sacred ashes bound in a small bundle of red color. Masini in Bologna Surveyed, page 461, observes that on the XXIII of September the festival of St. Thecla is celebrated at Bologna in her own church, founded by S. Petronius, as he asserts, and there, he says, are her relics. Flaminio Corner, in his Work on the Churches of Venice, tome 13, gave a Venetian Menology, in which are set forth the Saints who have a cult either in the whole city or in some church of it. And in it at the XXIII of September, page 391, St. Thecla is neatly and accurately announced in this manner: At Iconium in Lycaonia, holy Thecla, virgin and martyr, who after very many contests overcome, coming to Seleucia, there rested in peace. Then he adds this annotation: A notable relic of S. Thecla, virgin and martyr, is exposed on this day in the church of the nuns of S. Catherine, in which her Office is solemnly performed. Piazza in the sacred Hemerologium of the City, at the XXIII of September, assigns indeed no relics of St. Thecla at Rome; yet he mentions a church dedicated to her name by Clement VIII, which is that of the Girls and nuns of the Holy Spirit, and testifies that her festival is celebrated there. Martinelli in Roma sacra, page 311, mentions the same church most briefly, calling it a chapel, in these words: S. Thecla in the borgo, the chapel of the nuns of the Holy Spirit. The same on page 403 shows that there was an ancient monastery of St. Thecla at Rome, writing thus: The monastery of S. Thecla was in the Vatican beside S. Peter's, and it is mentioned by John XIX and Benedict IX in privileges, in Ughelli, vol. 1 of the Italia sacra, fol. III D. and 123 C.

[103] likewise in Gaul The French in various places ascribe relics of St. Thecla to themselves. For Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology at the XXIII of September has the following: On that same day in the episcopal church of Riez and in its whole diocese is celebrated the birthday of holy Thecla the virgin, patroness of that see, and the first martyr of all the female sex. And after a eulogy, which is to be corrected from what has been argued before, he speaks thus of the relics: Further, the sacred spoils, carried over from the East into Gaul, were laid up for perpetual veneration at Chartres, in the basilica of the most holy Mother of God famous throughout the world, for the protection of that city and the everlasting adornment of all Gaul. Yet two arms of the renowned Virgin were plucked from these, the one at Vernon on the Seine in the basilica of the holy Mother of God; the other at Riez in the aforesaid cathedral church, together with her jaw and two shoulder-blades, and they are kept with all seemliness and religion. Thus far Saussay, with whom, as regards the church of Chartres, Sébastien Roulliard agrees, in the History of the church of Chartres, part 1, chapter 8, number 3, where he reckons several bodies of Saints to that church. He does not, however, declare whence the people of Chartres received the body of St. Thecla, or at what time. And indeed I doubt whether all the things which that advocate liberally asserts about the relics preserved in the church of Chartres are sufficiently certain, especially since other French writers, and namely Tillemont and Baillet, keep deep silence about a body preserved at Chartres. In the Breviary of Chartres, which we have printed in the year 1633, the Office of St. Thecla is prescribed to be celebrated with a semidouble rite; nor in it is a word read about relics of St. Thecla preserved in that church. Therefore, if any relics of St. Thecla are preserved in the church of Chartres, which I would not deny, I am at least compelled to doubt whether they are so notable that they can rightly be called a body. In the proper Offices of the church of Riez there is prescribed for the festival of St. Thecla a double Office of the first class with an Octave, certainly in the Offices printed in the year 1635.

[104] in various places; Baillet, in St. Thecla, ascribes relics of this Saint to the collegiate church of Chamalières in Auvergne, as, he says, the inscription cut on a leaden plate teaches, which was lately found in the chest in which they are preserved. Some judge that the inscription, engraved in capital letters, is at least nine hundred years old: and that those relics may have been brought into Gaul from the time of the foundation of the monastery of Chamalières, built toward the end of the VII century by S. Genesius, whom they make count of Clermont, and afterward turned into a chapter of canons. From that church in the year 1699 a part of the relics of S. Thecla was taken out for the college of daughters which has most recently been established under her name and protection at Paris in the street commonly called Vaugirard. So he, citing a Letter of Mabillon to the bishop of Blois. But others have held that some Saint of Auvergne was laid up in the church of Chamalières, whom they also name Thecla, and announce as a Saint, but without proof of cult and without suitable foundation, as has been said today in the Prætermissi. In the Life of St. Bonitus, bishop of Clermont, given in tome 1 of January, page 1075, there is mentioned Moderatus, rector of the Teclatensian monastery, whom some think to have been the superior of the monastery of Chamalières. The same monastery could indeed be called Camalariense from the place, and Teclatense, if it were dedicated to St. Thecla. This, however, I have not yet seen proved by certain arguments. Yet they increase the suspicion of relics of St. Thecla being preserved there, which things are read in the tracts of an anonymous writer on the churches and monasteries of Clermont, in Savaron, book 2, number 2, where the anonymous author has thus: In the monastery of Chamalières, the altar of holy Mary, the altar of holy Præjectus, the altar of holy Agatha, the altar of holy Martin, the altar of S. Pardulphus, where S. Thecla rests. Again in the same place, at number XI, these words are read: In the church of S. Præjectus, the altar of holy Præjectus, the altar of holy Martin, the altar of holy Thecla. These things indeed bring in a vehement suspicion of relics of some holy Thecla being preserved there; but whether they are of the Saint of this day, I leave to be examined by the learned who are nearer to the place.

[105] The people of Cologne also ascribe some relics of St. Thecla to themselves, in Gelenius, in Colonia Agrippinensis. in Germany and Belgium For the author, enumerating the sacred treasure of the church of S. Gereon, together with other relics, on page 266 reckons a good part of S. Thecla. And on page 311 he attributes to the church of the blessed Virgin Mary ad Gradus three teeth of S. Thecla the virgin, and a great part of her jawbone. Raiss in the Hierogazophylacium Belgicum, page 415, reckons among the relics of the collegiate church of S. Peter at Douai also something of S. Thecla of Iconium. Relics likewise of St. Thecla are had at Munich in the church of the Society of Jesus dedicated to S. Michael, as is gathered from the instrument which was recited in tome 3 of April, pages 982 and 983. In the same place, page 154, in S. George, it is said that by a revelation of this Saint there was found in the Holy Land by the crusading Christians, in a little phial, some of the blood of the holy virgin and martyr Thecla. For the rest I do not doubt that several other churches too believe themselves to have some relics of St. Thecla, chiefly in Catalonia and the neighboring provinces of Spain, to which particles of the arm translated to Tarragona could have been communicated. Mention is made of a certain ancient church of St. Thecla in the diocese of Gerona in tome 2 of May, page 134, in SS. Eovaldus and Sixtus. But let these things suffice for our design.