St Thecla

Thecla was a young noblewoman of Iconium in Asia Minor. According to the ancient and widely beloved Acts of Paul and Thecla, she sat at her window for three days listening to the apostle Paul preach on virginity and the resurrection, and was so seized by the word that she broke her betrothal to follow Christ. Condemned by her own city, she was preserved unharmed when the flames would not touch her; at Antioch she was thrown to the beasts, and the lions, the account says, lay down at her feet. She rejoined Paul, who blessed her to teach the word of God, and she settled at last near Seleucia in Isauria, living in ascetic solitude, instructing and healing, until great old age. The Church honors her as protomartyr among women — first to suffer for Christ, though preserved through her torments — and Equal-to-the-Apostles; the fathers constantly set her forth as the crown of virgins.