The Cult of Saint Thecla

The Cult of Saint Thecla PDF Author: Stephen J. Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198270194
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
"Thecla, a disciple of the apostle Paul, became perhaps the most celebrated female saint and 'martyr' among Christians in late antiquity. In the early church, Thecla's example was associated with the piety of women - in particular, with women's ministry and travel. Devotion to Saint Thecla quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean world: her image was painted on walls of tombs, stamped on clay flasks and oil lamps, engraved on bronze crosses and wooden combs, and even woven into textile curtains. Bringing together literary, artistic, and archaeological evidence, often for the first time, Stephen Davis here reconstructs the cult of Saint Thecla in Asia Minor and Egypt - the social practices, institutions, and artefacts that marked the lives of actual devotees. From this evidence the author shows how the cult of this female saint remained closely linked with communities of women as a source of empowerment and a cause of controversy."--Jacket.

The Cult of Saint Thecla

The Cult of Saint Thecla PDF Author: Stephen J. Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198270194
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
"Thecla, a disciple of the apostle Paul, became perhaps the most celebrated female saint and 'martyr' among Christians in late antiquity. In the early church, Thecla's example was associated with the piety of women - in particular, with women's ministry and travel. Devotion to Saint Thecla quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean world: her image was painted on walls of tombs, stamped on clay flasks and oil lamps, engraved on bronze crosses and wooden combs, and even woven into textile curtains. Bringing together literary, artistic, and archaeological evidence, often for the first time, Stephen Davis here reconstructs the cult of Saint Thecla in Asia Minor and Egypt - the social practices, institutions, and artefacts that marked the lives of actual devotees. From this evidence the author shows how the cult of this female saint remained closely linked with communities of women as a source of empowerment and a cause of controversy."--Jacket.

Thecla and Medieval Sainthood

Thecla and Medieval Sainthood PDF Author: Ghazzal Dabiri
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131651921X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Explores Saint Thecla and her story as preeminent models for medieval hagiographers across Eurasia and North Africa.

The Cult of Saint Thecla

The Cult of Saint Thecla PDF Author: Stephen J. Davis
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 019156835X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Thecla, a disciple of the apostle Paul, became perhaps the most celebrated female saint and 'martyr' among Christians in late antiquity. In the early church, Thecla's example was associated with the piety of women - in particular, with women's ministry and travel. Devotion to Saint Thecla quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean world: her image was painted on walls of tombs, stamped on clay flasks and oil lamps, engraved on bronze crosses and wooden combs, and even woven into textile curtains. Bringing together literary, artistic, and archaeological evidence, often for the first time, Stephen Davis here reconstructs the cult of Saint Thecla in Asia Minor and Egypt - the social practices, institutions, and artefacts that marked the lives of actual devotees. From this evidence the author shows how the cult of this female saint remained closely linked with communities of women as a source of empowerment and a cause of controversy.

Thecla

Thecla PDF Author: Jeremy W. Barrier
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789042932975
Category : Acts of Paul and Thecla
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book is the first modern collection of studies about the fascinating figure of Thecla and the development of her cult in East and West. While her role in the Acts of Paul and Thecla has often been analysed, and was the subject of an earlier volume in this series, the historical development of her cult from early Christian to modern times has received much less attention and is therefore the subject of this book. The volume starts with a series of four studies that trace her cult and its literary manifestations from late Antiquity to Byzantine times. We hear about visions of Thecla and additional miracles beyond those already known, and we can follow her cult from Asia Minor, through Syria, to Turfan in modern Western China, although the autonomy and uniqueness of Thecla was often suppressed in these new localities. From the East we move to the West where her figure appears in Latin texts and a previously unpublished Arabic version of the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Subsequently, three chapters analyse representations of Thecla in Turkish Ayatekla (ancient Seleucia), in the grotto of St Paul in Ephesus and in Coptic iconography. From the East we then move back to the West, particularly to Spain. Thecla's cult was brought from Asia Minor via Armenia to Tarragona, where it remains alive today. The last two chapters look at the historiographical trajectories of the Acts of Paul and Thecla and the testimonies of the Christian martyrs, respectively. As has become customary, the volume concludes with an extensive bibliography and detailed index.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual

The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual PDF Author: Risto Uro
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 019874787X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 753

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Book Description
Scholars of religion have long assumed that ritual and belief constitute the fundamental building blocks of religious traditions and that these two components of religion are interrelated and interdependent in significant ways. Generations of New Testament and Early Christian scholars have produced detailed analyses of the belief systems of nascent Christian communities, including their ideological and political dimensions, but have by and large ignored ritual as an important element of early Christian religion and as a factor contributing to the rise and the organization of the movement. In recent years, however, scholars of early Christianity have begun to use ritual as an analytical tool for describing and explaining Christian origins and the early history of the movement. Such a development has created a momentum toward producing a more comprehensive volume on the ritual world of Early Christianity employing advances made in the field of ritual studies. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual gives a manifold account of the ritual world of early Christianity from the beginning of the movement up to the end of the fifth century. The volume introduces relevant theories and approaches; central topics of ritual life in the cultural world of early Christianity; and important Christian ritual themes and practices in emerging Christian groups and factions.

Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt

Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt PDF Author: David Frankfurter
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004298061
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Book Description
This volume deals with the origins and rise of Christian pilgrimage cults in late antique Egypt. Part One covers the major theoretical issues in the study of Coptic pilgrimage, such as sacred landscape and shrines' catchment areas, while Part Two examines native Egyptian and Egyptian Jewish pilgrimage practices. Part Three investigates six major shrines, from Philae's diverse non-Christian devotees to the great pilgrim center of Abu Mina and a Thecla shrine on its route. Part Four looks at such diverse pilgrims' rites as oracles, chant, and stational liturgy, while Part Five brings in Athanasius's and an anonymous hagiographer's perspectives on pilgrimage in Egypt. The volume includes illustrations of the Abu Mina site, pilgrims' ampules from the Thecla shrine, as well as several maps.

The Life and Miracles of Thekla

The Life and Miracles of Thekla PDF Author: Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674019614
Category : Acts of Paul and Thecla
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Life and Miracles of Thekla offers a unique view on the reception of classical and early Christian literature in Late Antiquity. This study examines the Life and Miracles as an intricate example of Greek writing and attempts to situate the work amidst a wealth of similar literary forms from the classical world. The first half of the Life and Miracles is an erudite paraphrase of the famous second-century Acts of Paul and Thekla. The second half is a collection of forty-six miracles that Thekla worked before and during the composition of the collection. This study represents a detailed investigation into the literary character of this ambitious Greek work from Late Antiquity.

Strange Beauty

Strange Beauty PDF Author: Cynthia Jean Hahn
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271050780
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
"A study of reliquaries as a form of representation in medieval art. Explores how reliquaries stage the importance and meaning of relics using a wide range of artistic means from material and ornament to metaphor and symbolism"--Provided by publisher.

Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire

Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire PDF Author: Marianne Sághy
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633862566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Do the terms 'pagan' and 'Christian,' 'transition from paganism to Christianity' still hold as explanatory devices to apply to the political, religious and cultural transformation experienced Empire-wise? Revisiting 'pagans' and 'Christians' in Late Antiquity has been a fertile site of scholarship in recent years: the paradigm shift in the interpretation of the relations between 'pagans' and 'Christians' replaced the old 'conflict model' with a subtler, complex approach and triggered the upsurge of new explanatory models such as multiculturalism, cohabitation, cooperation, identity, or group cohesion. This collection of essays, inscribes itself into the revisionist discussion of pagan-Christian relations over a broad territory and time-span, the Roman Empire from the fourth to the eighth century. A set of papers argues that if 'paganism' had never been fully extirpated or denied by the multiethnic educated elite that managed the Roman Empire, 'Christianity' came to be presented by the same elite as providing a way for a wider group of people to combine true philosophy and right religion. The speed with which this happened is just as remarkable as the long persistence of paganism after the sea-change of the fourth century that made Christianity the official religion of the State. For a long time afterwards, 'pagans' and 'Christians' lived 'in between' polytheistic and monotheist traditions and disputed Classical and non-Classical legacies.

Thecla and Medieval Sainthood

Thecla and Medieval Sainthood PDF Author: Ghazzal Dabiri
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100902065X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Saint Thecla was one of the most prominent figures of early Christianity who provided a model of virginity and a role-model for women in the early Church. She was the object of cult and of pilgrimage and her tale in the Acts of Paul and Thecla made a tremendous impact on later hagiographies of both female and male saints. This volume explores this impact on medieval hagiographical texts composed in Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Greek, Irish, Latin, Persian, and Syriac. It investigates how they evoked and/or invoked Thecla and her tale in constructing the lives and story worlds of their chosen saints and offers detailed original readings of the lives of various heroines and heroes. The book adds further depth and nuance to our understanding of Thecla's popularity and the spread of her legend and cult.