Judith by August Riedel (1840) (Wikimedia)
There are more than a few women in the Bible and in church history who risked their lives for a godly cause. In this post, I look at three brave women who are not in the Protestant Bible. These women were, most likely, not even real people.[1] They are legendary ladies with inspiring stories. Their stories, however, give us insight into the religious thoughts and aspirations of past generations and deserve to be better known.
1. Judith of Bethulia in Judea
Judith was a heroic woman who has long been admired by both Jews and Christians. Her story is found in the book that bears her name which is included in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. It was also included in early editions of the King James Bible until it began to be published without the apocryphal (or deuterocanonical) books. Since then, the memory of Judith’s exploits has faded among Protestant Christians.
The Book of Judith was written around 100 BCE and is part of our Judeo-Christian heritage. It is mentioned, for example, in the early Christian letter known as First Clement (1 Clem. 55). Judith is a work of fiction and contains several historical inaccuracies. But it is an interesting tale with echoes of stories of real women in the Hebrew Bible.
The setting of the narrative is the siege of a town in Judea named Bethulia. The Assyrian army, led by Holofernes, has cut off the town’s water supply and the Jews of Bethulia appear to be doomed. So Judith, a beautiful, wealthy and respected widow, takes matters into her own hands. With her female servant, she goes to the enemy’s camp where she pretends to defect to the Assyrian side.
Judith asks to see Holofernes and, as she anticipated, the general is charmed by her beauty and wants to have sex with her. Judith waits a few days and at an opportune moment, when Holofernes is dead drunk, she stabs at his neck and cuts off his head. She and her servant then escape back to Bethulia with the severed head of the general, and with Judith’s virtue intact. The assassination of Holofernes marks a turning point in the siege and the people of Judea triumph over their enemy.
Throughout the story, Judith is portrayed as a formidable and pious woman who knows her own mind. The people around her, including the high priest and elders of Judea, respect her, listen to her, and do what she says. The Book of Judith also contains several of Judith’s prayers and her song of praise and victory. It’s a worthwhile read and can be read here. An article that looks at the historical inaccuracies in Judith is here.
2. Thecla of Iconium in Asia Minor
The account of Thecla is recorded in the Acts of Paul and Thecla which was written, like some of the other Apocryphal Acts, roughly around 150 CE.[2] Several early church fathers refer to Thecla, signifying the widespread influence and popularity of her tale of adventures.
The story goes that Thecla, a virgin belonging to a wealthy family in Iconium, is engaged to be married. One day the apostle Paul comes to town, supposedly as part of his first missionary journey (cf. Acts 13:51). From her window, Thecla overhears the apostle teaching and she is mesmerised. Paul’s words recorded in the Acts of Paul and Thecla focus heavily on virginity and celibacy; they don’t sound anything like his teaching in his canonical letters.
Thecla decides to remain a virgin, so she breaks off her engagement. Her rejection of family expectations and respectable social norms deeply angers both her widowed mother and her fiancé, and Thecla is condemned to burn at the stake. On the day, however, a large rain cloud puts out the fire and Thecla survives.
Later, in Pisidian Antioch, Thecla rejects the advances of a nobleman and humiliates him. As punishment, she is tied to a lioness who, surprisingly, licks her feet. The next day, Thecla is thrown to wild animals in the arena, but the same lioness fiercely protects her. Also in the arena is a water tank containing killer seals. Thecla throws herself into the tank and baptizes herself. Mercifully, a lightning strike kills the seals before they can maul her. Other animals are then brought in to torture Thecla, but she remains unscathed.
When a noblewoman, who Thecla has helped, faints from the suspense of the spectacle, Thecla is released. Her bravery wins the support of the women in the audience and of the governor who frees her.
Thecla remains resolute in her decision to remain a virgin and, newly baptized, she begins preaching and teaching with a group of male and female disciples in tow. She catches up with Paul in Myra who endorses her plan to return to Iconium; he tells her, “Go and teach the word of the Lord.” Thecla returns to Iconium, and she sits and teaches in the same spot where Paul had sat and taught.
The strong emphasis on life-long virginity in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, which seems excessive to modern Christians, resonated with early Christians, both men and women. And Thecla became a role model for many who chose an ascetic life as an expression of devotion and service to Jesus Christ.[3]
The Acts of Paul and Thecla can be read here. I have more about virginity and celibacy in early Christianity here.
Line engraving of Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1850) (Wellcome via Wikimedia)
3. Catherine of Alexandria in Egypt
Unlike the stories of Judith and Thecla, there is no ancient literary source that features our third legendary lady. Tradition, rather than literature, tells us that Catherine lived 287–305.[4] According to tradition, Catherine was born into an aristocratic family and was well-educated. It is thought her story was inspired by the true story of Hypatia because of a few similarities between the two women: both lived in Alexandria, both were extremely intelligent, and both were killed by religious adversaries. Hypatia was murdered by an angry mob of Christians in 415.[5]
Catherine’s story is set when Maximian was emperor.[6] Catherine, then aged eighteen, confronts Maximian about his brutality towards Christians. He responds by organising fifty of the finest philosophers and orators to debate with her against her Christian ideas. She wins the debate, however, and converts some (or all ?) of the scholars in the process. These scholars are promptly killed by the emperor, and Catherine is imprisoned for several years. During her imprisonment, she receives hundreds of visitors, including the emperor’s wife, and they are converted to Christianity.
Maximian is succeeded by his son Maxentius who offers to marry Catherine and set her free. She refuses because, in her mind, she is mystically married to Jesus Christ. Offended and furious, Maxentius orders Catherine to be executed on a breaking wheel, a cruel and barbaric instrument of execution. When Catherine touches the wheel, it shatters into pieces. She is beheaded instead and, according to the legend, milk instead of blood oozes from her severed neck.
Catherine, as defender of the faith and as an example of piety and courage, became a hugely popular figure in the late middle ages. She is ascribed with miraculous abilities and, in Roman Catholic tradition, is one of the fourteen holy helpers: sainted intercessors who are especially effective against certain diseases and afflictions. Catherine is also regarded as the patron saint of scholars, young women, and wheelwrights.
Our Heritage
Judith, Thecla, and Catherine of Alexandria are portrayed as virtuous women. But more than that, they are portrayed as courageous women with strong religious convictions. They break with social conventions, act on their own initiatives, and risk their lives in order to help God’s people and to follow his calling. The accounts of these legendary figures have served as inspiration for countless men and women throughout the centuries.
These stories are not in Protestant Scripture, and some ideas in Thecla’s and Catherine’s stories, in particular, sound fanciful and far-fetched. They reveal expressions of faith that are foreign and even distasteful to many of us today.[6] Nevertheless, the stories of all three women are part of our history and our Christian heritage. It would be a shame if they faded from memory.
Footnotes
[1] While the Apocryphal Acts are fiction, they do mention some real people. The Acts of Paul and Thecla mentions real people such as the apostle Paul, a noblewoman named Tryphaena who was related to Claudius, and Onesiphorus (2 Tim. 1:16; 4:19), among others. So it’s possible there was a real woman named Thecla who was a well-known Christian evangelist or teacher in the first century. The Eastern Orthodox Church has even given Thecla the title “equal to the apostles.” Nevertheless, the Acts of Paul and Thecla is a novel.
[2] I’m intrigued by the various Apocryphal Acts, about who wrote them and why. At least one scholar, Stevan L. Davies, has suggested these works were written by a community of women. Many women in the Apocryphal Acts are portrayed as strong, devout, and prominent in their communities. Sometimes their piety and prominence even eclipse that of the male apostle supposedly at the centre of the story. The purpose or agenda of these Acts is difficult to discern except for the obvious point that women make exemplary Christian disciples. Apart from providing some insight into the thinking of some second-century Christians, however, the Apocryphal Acts are, as F.F. Bruce has said, “historically worthless.” Bruce, Men and Movements in the Primitive Church (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1979), 140.
[3] In his excellent book on sexual renunciation in early Christianity, Peter Brown writes about the influence of the story of Thecla and he mentions three notable women who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries.
… along the coast of Cilicia at Seleucia (Silifke), we can see, at the great shrine of Saint Thecla outside the city (at Meryemlik), a figure still vibrant with radical associations, in the process of becoming encrusted with a coral reef of utterly mundane, downtoearth preoccupations. A legendary heroine, Thecla had come to mean many different things to different people. Her defense of her virginity made her a “monument of perpetual chastity” for sheltered nuns, a silent guardian figure with whom a Macrina could identify herself. At the same time, the story of her daring journeys with Saint Paul provided a model for the selfexiled Melania, enabling her admirers to acclaim Melania as a “second Thecla.” Ascetic women would walk from Syria, fasting all the way, to visit her shrine. Aristocratic women from the West, such as Egeria—restless souls disenchanted with the torpor of their local church—would come to Thecla’s sanctuary and absorb the dramatic epic of her life. They would have found there many ascetic “renouncers,” male and female, who had modeled themselves on Thecla as she was known through the many versions of her legend.
Yet the Thecla of the daytoday miracles eluded the precise and radical definition of her person contained in the Life [of Paul and Thecla]. A hauntingly ambiguous figure, she would appear in visions, her human attributes swallowed up in an “angelic” shimmer, and dressed in a robe that was neither clearly male nor female. Like the living holy man Aphrahat, Thecla would help wronged wives, counseling soap from her shrine as a love potion. She showed far fewer qualms than did the prim ascetic priest [Jerome] who recorded her miracles, in engaging with the “vulgar, Jewish” hopes and fears associated with sterility, lovemaking, and pregnancy. Outside the shrine, Thecla, the wild virgin girl bewitched by the message of Paul, could now be invoked, on her feast day, to give her blessing to an orderly hierarchy, in which every category of woman was expected to strive to maintain the purity appropriate to her state: “Let the widow maintain her affection for her dead husband as if he was to return to life. Let the wedded wife kill in herself all wish for pleasure with others. Let those who throb with fornication dampen their fire with the dew of matrimony.” [M. Aubineau, “Le Panégyrique de Thècle attribué à Jean Chrysostome,” p. 352]
Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in the Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 328–329.
[4] Some believe Catherine of Alexandria was a real person, even though the first recorded mention of her dates to around 800. Furthermore, some believe that her body has miraculously not decayed and is kept in a monastery on Mt Sinai in Egypt. The monastery was built in the sixth century by Emperor Justinian I but was named after Catherine from around the 800s onward.
[5] Hypatia, a real woman, was a brilliant philosopher, mathematician and astronomer and, in around 400, became the principal of the renowned Neoplatonist school in Alexandria. Hypatia was well-liked and, though a pagan, she had friends and students who were Christians. When Cyril became archbishop of Alexandria he attempted to ruin her reputation. Christians began to distrust her which led to her savage murder.
[6] Maximian was co-emperor with Diocletian who is infamous for his persecution of Christians.
[7] Expressions of Christianity have changed and evolved over the past two millennia, and they continue to change.
A version of this article was first published in March 2018 for #WomensHistoryMonth on the blog of Christians for Biblical Equality International here.
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I have articles about real women in the early church here.
Professor Morwenna Ludlow has given an excellent lecture on Women Leaders in the Early Church where she compares the speaking ministries of Thecla and Macrina. You can watch it on the Greshem College website, here.
18 thoughts on “3 Legendary Ladies: Judith, Thecla, and Catherine of Alexandria”
I thank you, Marg, for your research and the information you share.
At the present time, I am doing some research on how women are represented and understood in the writing of St.Paul and in the deuteropauline epistles. I am a Roman Catholic by birth but am a member of the Episcopal Church where I live. I do this for several reasons but the main one is that the Roman Church does not give women their rightful place in the priesthood, etc. My membership in the Episcopal Church is my protest stand and the reason I’m doing the research that I am. One day I might write about it but I have a good bit of research to do before I can.
Thank you for sharing what you read and study. You write well and clearly and I really value receiving your articles. May the Holy Spirit continue to fill you with wisdom, strength and courage. Margaret Gloger (a.k.a. Meg)
Hi Meg,
I hope you enjoy your research as much as I do. It’s a fascinating study. There’s wonderful stuff in the Pauline letters!
Thanks for your kind and encouraging words.
Marg
Are you really so desperate for evidence of female “equality” in the early church that you would embrace heretical works? The acts of Paul and Thecla is certainly not an orthodox work, and there is good reason the church rejected it. Indeed, the text (along with the Apocryphal Acts of Peter, Andrew, Thomas, and John) upholds the encratite doctrine that all sexual activity, even in marriage, is immoral.
While the orthodox church rejected it, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, along with the other aforementioned Apocryphal Acts, were accepted as a canonical set by the gnostic Manichees as a substitute for the biblical book of Acts. Indeed the 4th century Manichean Faustus of Milevis appeals to the Acts of Paul and Thecla as justification for the Manichean rejection of marriage. See Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha vol 2 p 90.
Current scholarship does not believe that the document now known as the Acts of Paul was originally a unity (hence why you’ll see some referring to the Acts of Paul and the Acts of Paul and Thecla separately). It is notable that the few orthodox sources that have anything positive to say about the Acts of Paul only reference the events relating to Paul’s martyrdom, which probably circulated independently. see Origen, commentary in John 22, 12. The only explicit citation among the church father’s to the Thecla portion of the Acts of Paul is a negative one from Tertullian who states that it was forged by a presbyter who was defrocked for his forgery. See De Baptismo 17. Tertullian for his part makes it clear that the church at large disapproved of women teaching and baptizing in the same section.
Moreover, according to Wilhelm Schneemelcher in New Testament Apocrypha vol 2, the question of whether Thecla’s portrayal in the text represents memories of real historical individual must be answered “with an unambiguous negative.” see page 222. Thus it is unlikely that Thecla was a real individual and those who celebrated her were primarily heretics who rejected marriage itself as evil.
Allen, I agree with almost everything you say in your comment about the Acts of Paul and Thecla, but what’s with your tone? Sheesh!
As I say in the article, none of these three women were, most likely, real people. (If Thecla was a real woman, the story of her that survives is fabricated.) These women are “legendary” in every sense of the word and their stories are fiction. Nevertheless, as I also say in the article, their stories “give us insight into the religious thoughts and aspirations of past generations.”
Here’s another quotation from my article, “the Apocryphal Acts are, as F.F. Bruce has said, ‘historically worthless.’” Bruce, Men and Movements in the Primitive Church (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1979), 140.
Despite all this, Thecla was a hugely influential figure in the early church. Tertullian disapproved of the story, but Thecla is mentioned positively as an examplar of virginity and of suffering by several Church Fathers, including Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Methodius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and others. Ambrose’s cathedral in Milan was dedicated to Thecla as were other church buildings in other places. Interestingly, after the biblical name “Mary,” the most common female name in ancient papyri, inscriptions, and ostraka, etc, of real Christian women is “Thecla.”
It is obvious from the manuscript evidence that the Acts of Paul and Thecla was not part of a unified Acts of Paul. I briefly discuss the composition of the Acts of Paul, including the apocryphal Corinthian correspondence here.
The emphasis and approbation of virginity and celibacy in the Acts of Paul and Thecla is disturbing, even heretical. The beatitudes are quite shocking. I discuss some of the theology in Thecla’s story here.
Your scolding and condescension are unwarranted, Allen. You’ve not read my article carefully and you’ve completely misunderstood its point. I do not “embrace” Thecla’s story. I’m disturbed by the sentiments and theology in the story, they are alien to me, but I do acknowledge in this article that the story is part of our Christian heritage. And it’s heartening, to me at least, that these three women are portrayed as strong, determined, and courageous.
Hey Allen,
You do realize Tertullian inserted his heretical Roman mores into his vision of the church and yet, you quote him with approval. It’s kind of like the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn’t you say?
“But if Genesis 3:16 does not describe what should be, why did Luther connect the verse with 1 Corinthians 14:34 to affirm that women were excluded from the common priesthood? Because he followed tradition and not all traditions follow the Bible.
Luther’s exclusion of women has it’s origin in a tradition begun by Tertullian (145-220). Karen Jo Torjesen describes Tertullian’s vision of the church as an essentially Roman institution.
“Tertullian’s description of the Christian community dramatically marks the transition of the model of the church from the household or private association to the body politic. With him the church became a legal body (corpus or societas, the term the Romans used for the body politic) unified by a common law (lex fidei, “the law of faith”) and a common discipline (disciplina, Christian morality). For Tertullian the church, like Roman society, united a diversity of ethic groups into one body under the rule of one law… Tertullian conceived the society of the church as analogous to Roman society, divided into distinct classes or ranks, which were distinguished from one another in terms of honor and authority.”
Only those who were full members of the political body could possess ius docendi (the legal right to teach) and ius baptizandi (legal right to baptize). Women could not be full members and therefore they were excluded from the clergy. But Tertullian excluded women also from the laity, for although the laity could perform the legal functions in the absence of the clergy, women could not.
“It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the church; but neither (is it permitted her) to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to claim to herself a lot in any manly function, not to say (in any) sacerdotal office.”
Weinrich considers Tertullian “a representative voice” of the universal church of the second century, but he cannot do so without excluding women from the church altogether.” (From “When Dogmas Die: The Return of Biblical Equality”)
Thanks for this interesting article, Marg.
I’m not sure I will get the killer seals out of my mind for a while, though!
There’s plenty of action and danger in her story! Much of it is far-fetched, but it does reveal how some second-century Christians thought. I love the Apocryphal Acts.
This doesn’t make sense. 1 Corinthians 11 states that if a woman does not cover her head while praying and prophesying, her head might as well be shaved (or cut, which is what the Greek meant). So if a woman with cut hair needed to cover her hair to distinguish herself, 1. We see that there were distinctions in hair length. 2 There was no purpose to the cutting off her hair. 3. The verse then means the exact opposite of what you say. If she doesn’t cover her head, then her hair might as well be cut is nothing like “She cut her hair so most now wear a covering.’ It doesn’t make sense because it was normal for women to cover their long hair. The subject of the verse is not short hair. It’s the act of covering. Long hair is given as a glory and is a blessing. Short hair on a woman was shameful. Hair covering was clearly a distinguishing aspect of women’s dress or age would not have been asked to wear one.
Hi Amy, Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 are about women and men praying and prophesying (as you say) in church meetings in Roman Corinth. Strictly speaking, they don’t refer to travelling evangelists, such as Thecla. No doubt, Paul’s words to the Corinthians about socially respectable hairstyles or head coverings were not in the minds of women like Thecla.
We have records of several Christian women who cut their hair and looked like men. Some women, such as Hilaria, Marina, Anastasia, Pelagia, and Polaria completely hid their femininity. They cut their hair, dressed like men, and lived as ascetic monks and hermits. (They weren’t praying and prophesying in church meetings.) Their asceticism was praised when their sex was finally discovered. Some women dressing and living like ascetic men may never have had their true sex discovered.
Early on in the church, there was an idea that sexual differences didn’t matter and many pious women renounced their sexuality. We see the beginnings of this in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy, and Paul disapproved.
In the Gospel of Thomas, there is a saying that some Christians believed as coming from Jesus: “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].”
In another saying in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus supposedly says of Mary Magdalene, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.” Being a “man” was seen as a generic state.
These sayings in the Gospel of Thomas and the examples in the Apocryphal Acts represent somewhat unorthodox ideas. However, even within orthodox Christian communities being a lifelong virgin, or being celibate, was considered desirable. And calling a woman a “man” or “male” could be a compliment. Chrysostom said about Olympias (a deaconess and his close friend), “Don’t say ‘woman’ but ‘what a man!’ because this is a man, despite her physical appearance.” Chrysostom, Life of Olympias 3.
“In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Acts of Andrew, Acts of Thomas, Gospel of Thomas, Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, Acts of the Martyrs of Lyons, and the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, all of the women who were eschatologically motivated to enkrateia [“ascetic self-control”] and martyrdom are transformed, and in the description of their holiness they are made male.” Jennifer L. Henery, Early Christian Sex Change: The Ascetical Context of being made Male in Early Christianity.
We also have some records of people who criticised and condemned Christian women who cut their hair and dressed as men. For example, Jerome stated, “Other [women] change their garb and assume the mien of men, being ashamed of being what they were born to be — women. They cut off their hair and are not ashamed to look like eunuchs.” (Epistle 22.27) And Canons 13 and 17 of the Council of Gangra (AD 340) state, “If any woman, under pretence of asceticism, shall change her apparel and, instead of a woman’s accustomed clothing, shall put on that of a man, let her be anathema.” And, “If any woman from pretended asceticism shall cut off her hair, which God gave her as the reminder of her subjection, thus annulling as it were the ordinance of subjection, let her be anathema.” (Source: Early Church Texts)
I think the total renunciation of sexuality was misguided, but there is no doubting the sincerity of the Christian faith of women who did these things. Lots of things early Christians believed and did are totally foreign to western Christians today. Some of it is just plain weird and disturbing.
I have several articles that refer in some way to celibacy in early Christianity here.
https://margmowczko.com/tag/celibacy/
And I have several articles about hair and head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11 here.
https://margmowczko.com/category/1-corinthians-11-2-16/
[…] Three Legendary Ladies: Judith, Thecla, and Catherine of Alexandria […]
[…] In the Eastern Orthodox Church (EOC), the Seventy are regarded as apostles. (In Luke 9, Jesus called and sent the Twelve; in Luke 10, Jesus appointed and sent Seventy, or seventy-two, others.) Furthermore, the EOC has conferred the title of “Equal to the Apostles” (isapostolos) on several women including Mary the Magdalene, the Samaritan woman (John 4), Apphia of Colossae (Phm. 1:2), and Nino of Georgia. The legendary Thecla also has this title. […]
[…] [3] The book of Judith was originally written in Greek and is not part of the Hebrew canon of the Jews. It is regarded as deuterocanonical scripture by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Protestants include the book in the Apocrypha. I have more about Judith here. […]
[…] (9) Kill the generals of enemy armies by driving a tent peg through their skull or by decapitating them: Jael (Judg. 4:17–22; 5:24–27) and Judith (Judith 13:6–10). […]
[…] The “Proverbs 31 woman” is described as andreia (“courageous”) in the Septuagint (cf. eshet chayil). Esther and Judith are described as andreia (“courageous”) in 1 Clement 55:3–6. (I mention more andreia women in my article Revisiting Eshet Chayil: Woman of Valour.) […]
[…] [14] More on Thecla here. […]
[…] Kyria is used for a woman with a relatively high social standing in the following examples. Hermas (a freed slave) calls Rhoda (his former female owner) kyria in the Shepherd of Hermas 1:5 (circa 100 CE), and he frequently calls a woman who appears to him in visions as kyria (e.g., Herm. 5:3; 9:3; 13.3).[5] In the Acts of Paul and Thecla (circa 150 CE), Thecla is referred to as a kyria, or “mistress,” in relation to the maidservants in her household (para. 10). Kyria also occurs several times in the Septuagint (Gen. 16:4, 8, 9; 1 Kings 17:17; 2 Kings 5:3; Psa. 123:2; Prov. 30:23; Isa. 24:2).
Sarah, Perpetua, Rhoda, Thecla, and the real and figurative ladies mentioned in the Septuagint, were high-status women or householders. […]
[…] In chapter 17 of his treatise on baptism, Tertullian responds to the spurious but popular story of Thecla baptising herself and others, and he implies that only usurping women baptise others. However, Thecla’s story indicates that not all Christians held the same views on what women could or couldn’t do. […]
[…] The author of 1 Clement 55:3-6 wrote that many women were andreia and he gives Judith and Esther as two examples.[4] Few people were, or are, given the opportunity to exhibit courage the way these three heroines did, however; and the women in Proverbs 31:10ff and Proverbs 12:4 displayed their strength without defeating powerful enemies or shedding blood. […]