Conclusion

A reader of this study will note that I have only at a few points highlighted the implications of Thekla’s female gender for the LM. [1] This is because I do not feel that this work is a “gendered” text in the way that word is used in scholarship on antiquity and the middle ages. [2] Thekla’s status as a woman has almost no special role at all for the author of the LM, especially in comparison with the ATh. [3] Much research has been done by other scholars to set the ATh in an original context and a reception-history of female piety, and in the Introduction I drew attention to the recent work of Stephen Davis in this regard. [4] Readers interested in this aspect of Thekla devotion through the centuries would do well to read his book.

What is lacking in Davis’s study, and Dagron’s edition for that matter, I have attempted to provide in the chapters above: namely, a reading of the LM that would take account of its literary nature. I have emphasized from the beginning that the LM is, first and foremost, an artful work of late antique {221|222} writing in Greek. My conviction is that to appreciate it in its cultural context is to read it as such. The close readings that I provide in Chapters One and Three attempt to carry this argument to fruition. Likewise, the literary histories in Chapters Two and Four stress above all that the LM is not alone in its endeavor but can be read alongside vibrant literary traditions of paraphrase and collecting in the ancient and late antique worlds.

It remains, therefore, for me to say in conclusion something about the theological context of Thekla devotion in the fifth century. This plays only a minor role in the chapters above, but it is nevertheless important because the author of the LM, an educated reader and orator on the scriptures (Mir. epilogue 31–45), would doubtless have been aware of the theological landscape taking shape around him.

In particular, a natural person to compare with Thekla is the Virgin Mary herself, whose title and role in the birth of Christ was a central topic of doctrinal debate just before the LM was completed (c. 470). One reason, however, that Mariology and Christology play a minor role in this study is because the author of the LM barely cites the Virgin (or the Christological debates in which she was prominent). He only mentions her accepted title Theotokos (“God-bearer”) at one point in the whole of the LM, and even that is in passing (Mir. 14.63). In a similar vein, Dagron says “le nom du Christ apparaît au total assez peu dans les Miracles.” [5] There is a near complete absence of contemporary theological language in the LM. Nevertheless, this absence is noteworthy in itself and is worthy of further investigation.

When the author does use theological terminology, it comes from an earlier period, in particular, from the late fourth century. Thus, when a reader of the Life comes across an anachronistic doctrinal statement in the mouth of Paul or Thekla (e.g. Life 7.38–50), it is without fail a Trinitarian one, which reflects the concerns of earlier Ecumenical Councils, such as Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381). [6] So, first (as I note several times in Chapter One), it is significant in terms of his literary art that the author does not feel uncomfortable using fourth-century terminology when inserting a speech into the mouth of a first century apostle, but, second and more apropos to the conclusion of this study, it is striking that he does not include in these passages any definition of Christ’s two natures or any formal title of Mary, except for the one instance just noted. While he may have a particular affinity for the writers involved in the Council of Constantinople (mainly Gregory of Nazianzus—see {222|223} pp. 32–35 above), there is no question that, writing as he is in the 460s, he has taken some pains to leave out more recent doctrinal formulations.

The absence of references to Mary may seem odd as well considering the level to which Thekla devotion had risen by the late fifth century. Surely these two female figures had similar trajectories over time within the cult of the saints? Surprisingly, this is not the case at all. It is precisely at the point when Thekla seems to have achieved the pinnacle of her success in Christian devotion and pilgrimage that the cult of Mary, at least in the eastern Mediterranean, is only just beginning to take off. Thus, it is not until the mid to late fifth century, after Mary’s role in Christology has been acknowledged by the Council of Ephesus (431), that personal devotion to her begins to grow in a substantial, textual way. Prior to this time it appears that Thekla is by far the most revered female saint, that is, if the popularity of her foundational legend, the ATh, can serve as an indicator. (And, as we have seen, there is little to show that Thekla’s cult continued to flourish at Seleukeia after the sixth century, at the latest.)

This is obviously not the place for a history of Marian devotion in the Christian East; however, a few high points can be mentioned for the sake of comparison with Thekla. [7] First, one of the only early apocryphal narratives to deal in any detail with Mary is the late second-century Protoevangelium of James, a fascinating text which describes the birth of Mary and her young life up to and including the birth of Jesus. [8] As a literary work the Protoevangelium clearly depends, as the ATh does, on certain holes in the narratives of the Gospels and Acts. These holes allowed for further elaboration: the elaboration in this case centers on Mary’s parents, Anna and Joachim, who are of course not mentioned in the New Testament and appear in the Protoevangelium to be literary inventions based upon Old Testament models (such as Hannah, mother of Samuel, and Sarah and Abraham). While the story does not include a doctrine of Mary’s “immaculate conception,” her conception and birth are suitably miraculous (imitating Samuel’s). [9] The Protoevangelium does, however, include Mary’s perpetual virginity and claims that Jesus’ “brothers” (e.g. Mark 3:33) were only half-brothers by a previous marriage of Joseph. For this reason the text was condemned by the western church in the so-called “Gelasian {223|224} Decree” of the sixth century. [10] The Protoevangelium also insists, interestingly, on Mary’s descent in the Davidic line, over and against the Gospel accounts that it was Joseph who descended from David (Matthew 1:16; Luke 3:23).

Following this initial outburst of devotion to the Virgin—coincident, by the way, with Justin Martyr’s and Irenaeus’ declarations that Mary was the “Second Eve”—there is more or less silence for a couple of centuries. [11] It will be good to reiterate here that in Methodius’ Symposium (c. 300), it is not the Virgin Mary who is crowned chief of the virgins but Thekla. Nevertheless, in the fourth and fifth centuries some examples of Marian devotion show up, such as the few wall paintings of Mary in the catacombs of Rome and the incomparable mosaics of the Annunciation and Adoration of the Magi in Santa Maria Maggiore. It is not until the sixth century, however, that eastern devotion to her begins in earnest: in sixth-century Constantinople, for example, icons of the Virgin are produced, liturgical feasts are dedicated to her, and hymns, such as the famous “Akathistos,” are written in her honor. While it is true that Mary’s virginity is often cited in the fourth and fifth centuries as proof of the value of sexual renunciation (especially by Ephrem, Ambrose, and Augustine), her role in the doctrinal debates of the fifth century is, as noted above, primarily for the purpose of defining Christ’s two natures, divine and human—is she to be called Theotokos (“God-bearer”) or Christotokos (“Christ-bearer”)? Thus the Council of Ephesus in 431 declared Nestorius anathema and Mary Theotokos in the same breath. Nestorius, in the view of Ephesus, had not allowed the divine nature of Christ its proper place; and the positive counterpart of his condemnation is to name the mother of Jesus the “the one who bore God.”

From the time that Theotokos was formally defined and accepted, eastern sermons on the Virgin increase in their detail and emotional attachment to her. Thus, the important sermon by Proclus of Constantinople before the attendees of the Council of Ephesus inaugurates a new era of personal devotion which in time produces the characteristically Byzantine “Dormition” sermons of the next few centuries. [12] The first texts in the East that describe {224|225} the Virgin Mary’s Dormition, or “going to sleep” (κοίμησις), date from the late fifth century. They seek to define how Mary left the earth in a special manner appropriate to her status. Common to almost all of these accounts are the following elements: Mary died in Jerusalem; some of the apostles were involved; Christ received his mother’s soul; and Mary was transferred in body and/or soul into Heaven. Beyond this essential story, the variations are huge—notably on the question of whether Mary is bodily taken up to heaven (i.e. “assumed,” thus the western term “Assumption”). Most important to note, however, is that the Dormition stories begin at the same time that devotion to Mary is beginning to take off in every other area of late antique Christian piety. [13] Moreover, this is the very point in time when devotion to Thekla is, from all appearances, starting its speedy decline in Asia Minor. [14]

The great irony of these differences in trajectory between Thekla and Mary is that there is very little evidence that Thekla was a real person at all, whereas Mary has numerous early witnesses in the Gospels and Acts. In this study I have left to the side the question of Thekla’s historicity, partly because I am simply more interested in the ATh’s literary reception, but partly also because there is no evidence with which to address this problem. It goes without saying that the ATh is not the sort of text that you would want to base a historical study on, even though that has been attempted in the past. [15] What is so striking from a late antique point of view, however, is that the prominent romantic or nostalgic element in the ATh, Egeria’s pilgrimage account, and especially the LM is not applied elsewhere to the historically grounded person of Mary until the fourth and fifth centuries (except for the rather unique Protoevangelium of James). [16]

One lesson to be learned from this brief comparison is that the cult of the saints is rarely simply a “bottom-up” or “top-down” social phenomenon. In reality the development of devotion to Thekla and to Mary shows both elements: text and cult mutually interacted to the point that there is no {225|226} way today to separate them without doing damage to the surviving record. Nevertheless, in Thekla’s case the ATh is preeminent in every surviving reception of her persona: not least because there was nothing else to go on—for the ancients as much as for us. The crowning jewel of late antique devotion to Thekla, the LM, is in one way a “top-down” approach: it is clearly a literary text in both its paraphrase and collection forms. However, the genius of the LM is its reorientation of the cult: this is less a “top-down” imposition as a “bottom-up” (i.e. localized) exegesis of a mysterious, haunting, living saint.

The ATh provides above all the possibility of locating Thekla’s home in Seleukeia. The author of the LM is obviously dependent on the fact that this was already established by the second century, yet it is still his genius to declare that she disappeared into the ground alive and spiritually claimed Seleukeia as her own. His is both an ex post facto argument and a felicitous conjunction of cult and text. Of course, he is not the only one to say that she disappeared: the contemporary (or later) extension of the ATh also knows this. [17] The writer of that other text, however, cannot see beyond the disappearance. The author of the LM, by contrast, has a masterful literary vision and a personal devotion that is itself a type of “bottom-up” cult. He lets us in on that vision and attempts to adorn it with all the trappings of a classical or biblical epic. While Dagron has perceptively announced that the Life is his Iliad and the Miracles his Odyssey, [18] the author himself claims the canonical Luke-Acts pair as his literary model (Life preface).

Thus, it is a sad conclusion to the saga of this author that, despite his extensive reworking and adornment of the received tradition, his unique reading of Thekla’s local legend in the LM was ultimately unsuccessful in the Byzantine literary world. Among the three main Byzantine witnesses to the legend of Thekla, all three appear to know only the second-century ATh: Pseudo-Photius, Nicetas the Paphlagonian, and Symeon Metaphrastes all work exclusively from the earlier text. [19] Consequently, no mention of the LM occurs outside the twelve Byzantine manuscripts that preserve it. This is a silence which testifies more, one would hope, to the long term resonance of Thekla’s association with the Apostle Paul than it does to the literary success of the Life and Miracles in overturning that tradition. {226|}