E05615: The Miracles of Saint Thekla recounts how *Thekla (follower of the Apostle Paul, S00092) delivered the entire city of Seleucia from an epidemic of eye disease, with healing water at her shrine. Written in Greek at Seleucia ad Calycadnum (southern Asia Minor) in the 470s.
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posted on 2018-05-30, 00:00authored byjulia
Miracles of Saint Thekla, 25
A terrible eye epidemic afflicted the city of Seleucia [ad Calcadnum, Asia Minor], when the calendar year and summer were coming to an end [i.e. the end of August]. None of the inhabitants was spared by the disease and the healers were helpless.
'But the martyr, the true healer of human nature, considered with pity this inhuman affliction that affected so many, and she opened the healing shrine in her sanctuary and summoned all together to herself. She gave the instruction during the night to one of the afflicted people and then proclaimed it to everyone through him, that all who had fallen victim to this affliction should make use of her bath. For this bath was the place of healing which was able to combat the eye disease, from the very beginning, but when stirred up by the power of the martyr it became the greatest remedy to the entire city together. From then on, the highway overflowed with those who went up [to the shrine] with lamentations and tears, and those who came down full of joy and praise: for they ascended with their eyes shut, but descended with their eyelids opened again.
For it was not the grace of that poor and miserable pool [of Bethseda], which could save only one person - and hardly that – but the grace of an abundant and exceedingly generous fount. When all the assemblage of people grew weary and when the flow of the water into the pools slowed down, the grace of the martyr did not cease: she had hardly welcomed, healed, and sent the afflicted on their way when once more she was welcoming and healing again, sending everyone on their way with the same cure. The outcome was that, in three or four days total, the illness still affected only a very small number of people. I think they remained afflicted because of their lack of faith or because of some other evil in their life – [the martyr] having arranged for them to miss out on her general assistance or, perhaps, in order for us to understand the gravity of the affliction. For it resulted in blindness among those in whom it persisted: it removed sight either from both eyes at the same time or, at the least, from one eye. So terrible was the affliction, truly a demonic machination! Nevertheless, once vanquished by the miracle, it was destroyed and stamped out as it had never existed.'
Text: Dagron 1978. Translation: Johnson 2012. Summary: J. Doroszewska.
Literary - Hagiographical - Collections of miracles
Language
Greek
Evidence not before
470
Evidence not after
476
Activity not after
476
Place of Evidence - Region
Asia Minor
Place of Evidence - City, village, etc
Seleucia ad Calycadnum
Place of evidence - City name in other Language(s)
Seleucia ad Calycadnum
Nicomedia
Νικομήδεια
Nikomēdeia
Izmit
Πραίνετος
Prainetos
Nicomedia
Cult activities - Places
Holy spring/well/river
Cult activities - Non Liturgical Practices and Customs
Saint as patron - of a community
Cult Activities - Miracles
Miracle after death
Healing diseases and disabilities
Cult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Crowds
Source
The anonymous text known under the title of The Life and Miracles of Thekla was written in the city of Seleucia-on-the-Calycadnum in the province of Isauria in southern Asia Minor around 470. It was certainly written before c. 476, which is approximately when Thekla's shrine outside Seleucia (modern Meriamlik/Ayatekla in Turkey) was monumentalised by the emperor Zeno (r. 474-491), since this activity is not mentioned in the text.
The text consists of two parts: the first half is a paraphrased version of the second-century Acts of Paul and Thekla, a text which was widely known in Late Antiquity and translated into every early Christian language; this early text was rendered by our author into Attic Greek, and contains many minor changes to the original story, with one major change at the end: instead of dying at the age of 19 years, Thekla descends into the earth and performs miracles in and around the city of Seleucia in a spiritual state. The second half, from which this passage is drawn, comprises a collection of forty-six miracles, preceded by a preface and followed by an epilogue. It is written in a high literary style which distinguishes it among other hagiographical texts, which were typically composed in a low style of Greek.
The text was for a long time attributed to a 5th century bishop, Basil of Seleucia (fl. c. 448-468); but in 1974 Dagron demonstrated conclusively that the Miracles could not have been authored by Basil, since there is an invective directed against him in chapter 12. The anonymous author is himself the subject of a few miracles, including miraculous interventions on his behalf in ecclesiastical disputes.
Bibliography
Edition:
Dagron, G., Vie et miracles de sainte Thècle (Subsidia hagiographica 62; Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1978), with French translation.
Translations:
Johnson, S.F., Miracles of Saint Thekla, in : S.F. Johnson and A.-M. Talbot, Miracle Tales from Byzantium (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 12; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 1-201.
Festugière, A.-J., Collections grecques de Miracles: sainte Thècle, saints Côme et Damien, saints Cyr et Jean (extraits), saint Georges (Paris: Éditions A. et J. Picard, 1971).
Further reading:
Barrier, J., et al., Thecla: Paul's Disciple and Saint in the East and West (Leuven: Peeters, 2017).
Dagron, G., “L'auteur des Actes et des Miracles de Sainte Thècle,” Analecta Bollandiana, 92 (1974), 5–11.
Davis, S., The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women's Piety in Late Antiquity, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Honey, L., “Topography in the Miracles of Thecla: Reconfiguring Rough Cilicia,” in: M.C. Hoff and R.F. Townsend (eds), Rough Cilicia: New Historical and Archaeological Approaches, Proceedings on an International Conference held at Lincoln,
Nebraska, October 2007 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2013), 252–59.
Johnson, S.F., “The Life and Miracles of Thecla, a literary study” (University of Oxford, doctoral thesis, 2005).
Kristensen, T.M., "Landscape, Space and Presence in the Cult of Thekla in Meriamlik," Journal of Early Christian Studies 24:2 (2016), 229-263.