Thecla

“ Even Jerome [13] though as we have seen he rejects the written narrative of her life, asserts the traditional prevalence of her fame by adducing her as an example of saintliness. Churches were built in Thecla's honor. As early as 385 A. D. the "Martyrium" of Thecla near Seleucia was visited by Sylvia of Aquitania, who in her travels gives a description of the locality with its monasteries and the church, which inclosed the "Martyrium" and states that she prayed in the "Monasterium" and read there the holy history of Thecla. ”

“ And Tryphsena having received the good news, went with the multitude to meet Thecla. Having embraced her, she said, "Now I believe that the dead are raised! Now I believe that my child lives; come within, [57] and all that is mine I shall assign to thee." And Thecla went in along with her, and rested eight days, instructing her in the word of God, so that even some of the maidservants believed. And there was great joy in the house.
40. And Thecla kept seeking Paul. And she was told that he was in Myra. And taking young men and maidens, she girded herself ”

“ Basil of Seleucia wrote the history of Thecla in verse. Baronius, Archbishop Wake, and also the learned Grabe consider the facts as being authentic history. On the other hand, Tertullian says that it was forged by a presbyter of Asia, who confessed that he invented the account out of respect for Paul. And again, it is held that The Acts of Paul and Thecla, as we have it, is not the original book of the early Christians. ”

“ The great popularity of the saint is due more particularly to her Acta, which in all their forms derive from the apocryphal work known as the Acta Pauli et Theclae. According to her Acta, Thecla was born of illustrious parentage at Iconium, and came under the personal teaching of the apostle Paul. ”

“ Modern decency would not permit all the details of the insults to Thecla, so these are shortened in the story here. She was exposed not only in the arena of Iconium but in the arena of Antioch for repulsing the lewd advances of the city magistrate, who in one of the fêtes represented the god Roma and proceeded to claim her as a vestal virgin. All these details have been omitted or shortened in the story, and her experiences have been centered at Iconium.
For the rest, the story conforms to the facts of the age. The Greeks were the rich trader class despised by the soldierly Romans. ”

“ Women were a pawn for empire; and I, for one, would hate to cast a stone at a girl of eighteen, who when she found herself a pawn between lust and power, if she had to pawn herself, aimed at the highest bidder. The name of Bernice’s second husband from whom she fled—Polemo or Polemon—should be noted carefully; for it comes again in the story of Thecla. The royal Roman lady, a relative of the Emperor, was either wife or daughter of this ancient satyr, and her sympathy for Thecla may have arisen from her own similar experiences. Apollonius’ Life gives the brand of the man’s vices. ”

“ He was variously tortured and then executed, in the reign of Vespasian, but where is not known.
SS. THECLA, V., AND JUSTINA. (3rd cent.)
[Authority for the lives of these Saints: the lections in the proper offices for this day in the church of Lentini, in Sicily.]
S. Thecla was a noble virgin of Lentini, and daughter of S. Isidore. She buried the bodies of the martyrs with loving reverence. For three years she suffered from paralysis, and could not leave her bed, but was healed by the [Pg 134] prayers of SS. Alphius, Philadelphus, and Cyrinus. ”

“ That the adolescent Church should thus have been enabled to triumph over all her enemies may seem to many a better proof of her divine guidance than the miraculous powers once attributed to her. We may not all of us be able to believe that a rainstorm put out the fire on which Thekla was to be burned alive, or that the crocodiles in the tank in the arena into which she was cast were struck by lightning and floated to the surface dead. ”

“ And Thekla said,—“I think the crown of the Queen Doña Juana must have been a very bright one. It is so hard to watch and wait.”
“My poor Thekla!” murmured Isoult, “thou hast had much thereof.”
“I!” she answered, with a smile. “I have done nothing. I have not been forsaken and ill dealt withal, as she was, of my best beloved, throughout many years. Compare me not with her! If I may sit down some whither in Heaven where I can but see her on the heights, that would be too good for me.”
“But art thou willing to see Christ only on the heights, Thekla?” said John. ”

“ The feminine, Theophila, was the name of the mother of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Theokles (Θέοκλής) , divine fame, was an ancient heathen name, and it is most probable that Θεκλα (Thekla) is the contraction of the feminine. St. Thekla was said to have been a disciple of St. Paul, at Inconium, and to have been exposed to lions at Antioch. Though they crouched at her feet instead of tearing her, she is considered as the first virgin martyr, and it was deemed that the highest possible praise for a woman was to compare her to St. Thekla. ”

“ If I did not know thee to be chaste, and pure, and maidenly, such abominable utterances would make me fear that thou art on the road to ruin!"
"I am aware," said Theckla, "that the Egyptians regard all females, young girls especially, as things; but I consider myself as a person, not as a thing at all. Nature hath granted unto me certain rights, privileges, powers of mind and body, and hath devolved upon me certain duties and responsibilities. Thou seest, therefore, that I am unfitted for association with young ladies who are merely things, not persons. ”

“ Just dying is the matter with me, Thekla. If I can't die one way I kin another. Now Thekla, I want you to quit crying and listen. After I'm gone you go to the boss, young Mr. Lossing—but I always called him Harry because he learned his trade of me, Thekla, but he don't think of that now—and you tell him old Lieders that worked for him thirty years is dead, but he didn't hold no hard feelings, he knowed he done wrong 'bout that mantel. ”

“ The heart of the human victim would be torn out and held up to the rising sun from the spot where the priest stood to observe the sunrise.
It will at once be urged against this solution of the difficulties attending the orientation of the Great Teocalli that the plan and tracings locate the Teocalli eight degrees from the east and west line, and that, therefore, my explanation fails. To this I can only reply that I plotted the measurements, taking the east and west line of the Calle de Tacuba from the modern map as a datum, and this may vary slightly from the ancient line of the street. ”

“ That decks his bier. Life is an empty casket:
I throw it from me. O! my only hope;—
To die beneath the hoofs of trampling steeds— 10
That is the lot of heroes upon earth! [Exit Thekla. [793:1]
(The curtain drops.)
FOOTNOTES:
[793:1] The soliloquy of Thekla consists in the original of six-and-twenty lines, twenty of which are in rhymes of irregular recurrence. I thought it prudent to abridge it. Indeed the whole scene between Thekla and Lady Neubrunn might, perhaps, have been omitted without injury to the play. 1800, 1828, 1829. ”

“ I called attention to the “full human face probably representing the Sun” between the Oratories of the Teocalli of Huitzilopochtli. The map is, I believe, in error in placing the Teocalli on the west side of the Temple Enclosure, but that the full human face is intended to represent the sun is confirmed by the following passage from Motolinia [8] :—
“Tlacaxipenalistli.—This festival takes place when the sun stood in the middle of Huichilobos, which was at the Equinox, and because it was a little out of the straight [9] Montezuma wished to pull it down and set it right.” ”

“ There is nothing but its historical memories of special interest in Tlaxcala. It is a town of some 3000 inhabitants, a few hundred feet higher than Mexico City, with many ancient buildings, mostly of stone, often mere ruins, from the seams of surely half of which sprout grass and flowers, as they do between the cobbles of its streets and its large rambling plaza. I visited the old church on the site of which Christianity—of the Spanish brand—was first preached on the American continent. Here was the same Indian realism as elsewhere in the republic. ”

“ Chriemhild and Atlantis had their stories of Kobolds, who played strange tricks in the cow-stall; and of Rübezahl and the misshapen dwarf gnomes, who guarded the treasures of gold and silver in the glittering caves under the mountains; and of the elves, who danced beside the brooks at twilight.
"And I," said loving little Thekla, "always want to see poor Nix, the water-sprite, who cries by the streams at moonlight, and lets his tears mix with the waters, because he has no soul, and he wants to live for ever. ”

“ THE LAST SACRIFICE OF THE WOMEN OF THE OTOMIE
Here in the courtyard of the teocalli, by the light of burning houses, for as they advanced the Spaniards fired the town, we mustered our array to find that there were left to us in all some four hundred fighting men, together with a crowd of nearly two thousand women and many children. Now although this teocalli was not quite so lofty as that of the great temple of Mexico, its sides were steeper and everywhere faced with dressed stone, and the open space upon its summit was almost as great, measuring indeed more than a hundred paces every way. ”

“ What comfort is there for so great misery! There is nothing left to hope for now, since earth contains no good which could be measured against such a grief!
“Now, therefore, let me seek my lord, and bury him; for it is not meet that his dear body should fall a prey to voracious beasts and birds.”
Don Ercilla was so much moved by her recital that he no longer doubted her, but helped her to search for Crepino’s body. When the morning dawned they found it, stark and cold, and disfigured by a cannon-ball. Tegualda’s agony revived when she came in sight of his shattered form. ”

“ At first the poor girl could scarcely believe that she had at last found a friend; but Thorstein looked so good and kind, that her fears quickly vanished.
“Alas!” she said, “I am a most unhappy maiden! [60] My name is Thekla, and my father is King Alfhelm. One day, as I was playing in a field near the palace with my maidens, a great giant suddenly rushed in among us from the neighbouring wood, and snatching me up in his arms, despite all my cries and struggles, carried me down to the shore, where his boat was waiting. ”

“ These facts explain his position and the reason why the “lord of Texcoco” was one of four lords who supported Montezuma when he met Cortés in full state. A careful investigation of the derivation and true significance of the word tecpan yields interesting results. Cen-tecpan-tli means, a count of twenty persons; the verb tecpana signifies, “to establish something in concerted order; to establish order amongst people.” The verb tecpancapoa means, to count something in regular order. ”

“ Now, what is yours?”
“Tecetl.”
“Well, then, Tecetl, let me undeceive you. In the first place, I am not Quetzal’, or any god. I am a man, as your father there was. My name is Orteguilla; and for the time I am page to the great king Montezuma. And before long, if I live, and get out of this place, as I most devoutly pray, I will be a soldier. In the next place you are a girl, and soon will be a woman. You have been cheated of life. By God’s help, I will take you out of this. Do you understand me?”
“No; unless men and gods are the same.” ”

“ At full gallop we rode into the town of Tequilla: considerably fatigued, for I had not slept in forty hours, excepting perhaps now and then a brief cat-nap in the saddle—of a second or two duration—wherein one may dream of years of adventure. However, I determined to hold on twelve leagues beyond, to Guadalajara. It was daylight, and I found Tequilla quite a large place: with picturesque church, clusters of fine trees, all snugly posed in a bowl-like valley—fertile and well watered, with extensive plantations of the argave extending far as the eye could compass, over the neighboring country. ”

“ The outer facing of the plateau, like that of the terraces below it, was a prodigiously heavy wall of squared stones set in cement; and for a coping this wall had great stones carved in the similitude of serpents' heads, with mouths wide open, that instantly recalled to my mind the like enclosure that the Spaniards found surrounding the principal temple in the city of Tenochtitlan—and I had a sudden strong longing that my friend Bandelier might be with me at that moment to see how precisely his very ingenious speculations concerning the snake-wall about the great Teocalli were here confirmed. ”

“ Effacing the Cathedral from my mind, I visualize the great pyramidal Teocali with its five stories each receding above the other, and its flights of steps leading from terrace to terrace, on the summit was the great jasper sacrificial stone. Before the altar stood a colossal figure of Huitzilopochtli, the war god and the deity. Here 157 burned the undying fires, which meant as much to the Aztecs as did the Vestal flame to ancient Rome.
It is amazing to recall that as late as 1486 the dedication of the Great Teocali was celebrated by human sacrifices to the extent of 20,000. ”

“ Various seamy sides of society are shown up in pretty plain colors, and the author does not hesitate to draw conclusions from them, too strongly convincing to be questioned by his readers. The old engraver, Karl Fischer, his wife and two daughters, are typical products of the time, especially the pretty and sensual Thekla, whose physical exuberance and innocent carelessness of social decencies are such a manifest result of her environment. ”