Thecla

Thecla, a virgin saint of the early church, a member of a noble family of Iconium in Lycia, where she was converted by the preaching of St Paul, and, having devoted herself to a life of virginity, suffered a series of persecutions from her intended bridegroom, as well as from her parents. She is said to have died at the age of ninety in Seleucia. The apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla were edited by Tischendorf in the Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha (Leip. 1851). See Lipsius on the Apocryphal Acts (Brunswick, 1886), or the monograph by Schlau (Leip. 1877).