Images: Brooklyn Museum (image 1; image 2)
Clavis number: ECMA 134
Other descriptors: image 2 may be a depiction of St. Sinnios
Object Number: 40.299 and 40.300
Category: limestones
Related Literature: Acts of Paul and Thecla
Featured characters and locations: Thecla
1. DESCRIPTION
Material: limestone
Size: 33.5 × 59 × 13.5 cm
Image: Thecla, in the center, flanked by two beasts and surrounded by flames. The imagery on this piece of artwork shows the rain that is dousing the fire. The beasts in this piece can been viewed as a combination of bears and lions to incorporate both animals mentioned in the narrative. Thecla is also reaching into the air and between her arms is a cross.
Size: 38.5 × 59 × 15 cm
Image: A second limestone relief, believed to be related to the Thecla limestone, may be a depiction of St. Sisinnios on horseback piercing his sister with a lance. But it could also be related to the Thecla traditions, with Thecla contending with a man on horseback.
Date: 6th cent.
Provenance: Egypt
2. RELATION TO APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE
The primary relationship that the limestone has can be found in the section of the Acts of Paul and Thecla where she has been taken prisoner in Iconium and her punishment for refusing to give up her purity and get married is to be burned at the stake.
The children and virgins brought wood and hay for Thecla’s burning. When she was brought into the arena naked, the governor wept, marvelling at the power he saw in her. They spread out the wood, and the leaders of the people ordered her to mount the pyre. Making the shape of the cross she went up onto the wood. And they lit it. But when it roared into a great fire, the flames did not touch her. For God out of his compassion caused a great roar underground, and overhead a cloud full of water and hailstones overshadowed the place; and there was an immense cloudburst so that many people were in danger of dying. The fire was extinguished and Thecla saved. (22; trans. Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
The previous section, however, does not mention the beasts that are shown in the artwork. While there are other sections that also mention the beasts, the lack of the lioness protecting Thecla demonstrates that it is most likely combining the scene of Thecla on the pyre with a later section where the beasts are attacking and she is reaching in the air as shown in the image.
Thecla was taken from the hand of Tryphaena and stripped, given an undergarment to wear, and cast into the stadium. Lions and Bears were cast in to attack her. And a fierce lioness ran up and lay at her feet. The crowd of women uttered a great cry. A bear ran up to attack her; but the lioness ran up, met the bear, and ripped him apart. Then a lion owned by Alexander and trained to fight humans ran up to attack her; the lioness tangled with the lion and was destroyed along with it . . . Then they cast a large number of wild beasts, while she stood, reaching out her hands and praying. (33–34; trans. Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
The second limestone, if the figure is intended to be Thecla, could be a depiction of a scene from Pseudo-Chrysostom’s Homily on Thecla in which the saint is attacked by a man on horseback.
After she had been freed from judgment, she pursued the chase for Paul, and guided by heavenly voices she took courage on the roads that led to Paul. The devil, however, was watching the maiden, and when saw her travel down the road he marched in the suitor against the girl, like a thief of virginity in the desert. As the noble woman continued on her way, the suitor, with the lewdness of a horse, lying in wait behind her, shouted for joy at the thought of seizing her. There was no exit anywhere. The attacker was strong, the attacked was frail. Where in a desert was there refuge for shelter? But turning toward heaven, the virgin shouted with a loud wailing to the one who stands by all anywhere who call, “O Lord, my God, I have hoped on you. Save me from all who pursue me, and rescue me, lest at any time he should seize my soul as a lion, while there is none to ransom, nor to save.” The maiden’s help was quick; immediately she became invisible and the suitor went away having won only one thing, a horserace of licentiousness. (trans. Dennis R. MacDonald and Andrew D Scrimgeour, “Pseudo-Chrysostom’s Panegyric to Thecla: The Heroine of the ‘Acts of Paul’ in Homily and Art,” Semeia 38 [1986]: 151–60 at 156)
3. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brooklyn Museum. Pagan and Christian Egypt. Art from the First to the Tenth Century A.D. Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum, 1941 (p. 27, plates 58 and 59).
Cartlidge, David, and J. Keith Elliot. Art and the Christian Apocrypha. New York: Routledge, 2001 (p. 151)
Nauerth, Claudia, and Rüdiger Warns. Thekla: Ihre Bilder in der Frühchristlichen Kunst. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1981 (pp. 63–81, fig. 24).
4. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Entry created by Katie Fuentes, under the supervision of Christy Cobb, University of Denver, 26 July 2023.