A first-century convert of Saint Paul at Iconium, celebrated since antiquity as one of the earliest and most honored women of the apostolic Church.

Saint Thecla of Iconium was converted to the faith after hearing Saint Paul preach, and she became one of the most celebrated women of the apostolic age, her story preserved in the ancient Acts of Paul and Thecla. Tradition associates her final years with Seleucia, where a major shrine to her later developed. This record dates her death to the first century, though the wider ancient tradition, strongest in the Christian East, holds that she survived repeated trials and lived on to old age rather than dying by violence.

Quick Facts

• Died: 1st century (Seleucia, Turkiye)
• Feast Day: September 23 (Western calendar)
• Venerated as: Virgin; among the earliest and most honored women disciples of the apostolic Church

Who Was Saint Thecla of Iconium?

Thecla’s story begins at Iconium, where she is said to have heard Paul preach and resolved to follow his teaching, breaking off an arranged marriage in the process. The ancient Acts of Paul and Thecla, widely read and revered though not part of the New Testament canon, recount a series of dramatic trials she is said to have survived rather than died in, before she settled to a life of prayer and teaching near Seleucia. This batch’s controlled record notes her death in the first century in Seleucia, and it is worth stating plainly that this sits alongside, rather than fully replacing, the older and more widespread tradition of a long life rather than an early martyrdom.

Historical Setting

Thecla belongs to the first Christian generation in Asia Minor, the very territory of Paul’s missionary journeys recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Her later cult at Seleucia became one of the great pilgrimage sites of the early Christian East, drawing visitors for centuries and shaping how the wider Church remembered women’s discipleship in the apostolic age.

Why the Church Remembers Saint Thecla of Iconium

Few figures from the first century are honored so widely, in both East and West, as an example of a woman’s public and costly commitment to the apostolic preaching. Whether or not she ultimately died a martyr’s death, the Church has long venerated her courage under trial as equal in kind to that of the martyrs, a status reflected in titles like protomartyr among women given to her in Eastern tradition.

Canonization and Feast Day

A figure of the apostolic age lies entirely outside the reach of any formal canonization process; Thecla’s veneration is instead among the very oldest in Christian history, continuous since the first centuries of the Church.

What Catholics Can Learn Today

Thecla’s example encourages Catholics, and especially women in the Church, to see in the New Testament era not only the apostles themselves but also the ordinary converts, like her, whose resolve to follow Christ reshaped their entire lives.

A Prayer to Saint Thecla

Saint Thecla, first among women to stand fast for the preaching of Saint Paul, obtain for us your courage to choose Christ even when it costs us what the world expects of us. Watch over all women who seek to follow the Gospel with your same resolve. Amen.

Sources

• New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia (Acts of Paul and Thecla)
• Butler’s Lives of the Saints
• Roman Martyrology