The life of Thecla, Equal to the Apostles
Her mother and the city's magistrates had her condemned to be burned, but she came through the flames unharmed; thrown afterward to wild beasts, she was again preserved. She spent her later years teaching and healing the sick in a remote region near Seleucia in Asia Minor, where tradition holds she reposed in great old age.
Her story survives only in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, written decades after the apostolic age. The early Church itself did not receive this text as history: the theologian Tertullian reports that the presbyter who composed it was removed from office once the fabrication came to light, though he had written it, by his own account, out of love for Paul. Whether a real Thecla of Iconium stood behind the story cannot be shown with certainty, though it is widely thought likely. Her memory spread across the ancient Christian world all the same, and churches were raised in her honor from Asia Minor to Rome.
