Was Christianity Good for Women? The Lives of Thecla, Perpetua, Felicitas, and Macrina Against Greco-Roman Expectations

Female Christians in the Greco-Roman world of the first through fourth centuries found themselves threatened from both inside and outside the community of faith. As the newly founded Christian community systematized theological beliefs, division ensued. The faithful, including women, were vulnerable to torture and martyrdom, and cultural norms both outside and inside the community valued male voices over female voices. It may seem ludicrous to claim that Christianity was good for the women of this era. However, assessing such a claim should include seeking out the voices and actions of the women themselves. This article explores how the ancient Christian women Thecla, Perpetua, Felicitas, and Macrina redefined the term “good” in relation to Greco-Roman standards. Through careful study of their lives, an unexpected answer emerges: these early Christian women did believe that Christianity was good for them.

Greco-Roman Expectations of Women

In the Greco-Roman world, both laws and social expectations reinforced the importance of familial commitment, marriage, and reproduction. Andrew Jacobs notes that Augustus Caesar’s desire to fill upper-class homes with married couples who had many children changed the model of marriage during the first to sixth centuries. Marriage was now a public good in addition to a private one, with a renewed sense of “conjugal cooperation and unity” as well as obligation to the Roman Empire.¹ Meanwhile, society at large continued to operate within the framework of the paterfamilias, the legal and social institution that vested authority in the male head of the household. Not only was a man’s dignitas or social standing at stake if he did not participate in marriage, but he lost certain benefits given to him by Roman law.²

In fact, both men and women benefited from participating in marriage and childbearing in the Greco-Roman world. Legal authority or potestas was solely a male right, and a man exercised rights over his children and slaves until he died. However, once a married man gained legal independence after his father’s death, he could practice that same authority over his own household as the paterfamilias. Additionally, by the first century, married women—though still considered the property of their husbands—gained rights over their own property once legally independent from their fathers. Roman law also gave benefits to those who birthed “proper heirs” and, thus, more Roman citizens. To couples who had at least three legitimate children, the ius liberorum granted husbands more priority for civic positions, and wives gained the freedom to sell their property without consulting their guardians.³

Indeed, while the Roman Empire emphasized marriage and childbearing, society also expected men and women to embody certain virtues. Many virtues in the Greco-Roman world were gendered, exhibiting a bifurcation of masculine and feminine. While society emphasized that men displayed the Stoic virtue of apatheia or self-control, a “virtuous woman [was to be] modest, industrious, and loyal to her family.”⁴ Modesty, loyalty, and industriousness took many forms during this time, some of which seemed contrary to their very definition.⁵ For instance, Susan Hylen explains that wealthier women could be patrons in their communities, donating money for public goods. Through this, they gained status, leadership opportunities, and honor for their family. While this may appear to be immodest––as exercising authority in public is neither submissive nor quiet––seeking to benefit one’s family was highly valued. The emphasis on familial loyalty and industriousness created room for modesty to be expressed in seemingly immodest ways.⁶ 

Greco-Roman society identified something as good if it benefited the empire. Marriage and childbearing were good because they created heirs and increased the population, which would (in theory) foster the continuation of the empire. Embodying gendered virtues maintained social hierarchy and control of society, clearly defining roles that separated men from women and freedmen from slaves. Deviating from these norms would invoke shame on oneself as well as one’s community.⁷ Yet, many early Christian women did deviate from these norms and expectations despite social, economic, and political repercussions. Amid such defiance, they embodied a countercultural belief: obedience to Jesus Christ was true goodness.

Thecla the Protomartyr (1st Century CE)

This exploration of early Christian women begins with the story of Thecla, described by Lynn Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes as the “Christian Female Protomartyr and Virgin of the Church.”⁸ These descriptors are provocative given her second-century Roman context, as she was an unmarried, childless woman who dedicated her life to something other than the Roman Empire. Though Thecla was a first-century woman who lived during the time of the Apostle Paul, we know of her story from the second-century text The Acts of Paul and Thecla.⁹ Most scholars question the details of this text, finding them unreliable. However, Thecla is generally regarded as a historical figure, and The Acts of Paul and Thecla is a valuable source for understanding how many second-century Christians viewed women and for understanding certain experiences of early Christian women.

From the start, the narrator points out Thecla’s indifference toward both her mother, Theocleia, and her husband-to-be, Thamyris. As Thecla becomes enamored by Paul’s teachings, she ignores Theocleia’s and Thamyris’s condescending pleas despite their weeping over losing her to her newfound Christian faith. Thecla’s conversion was a great familial loss according to ancient Greco-Roman standards. Thus, Thamyris protested to the governor against Paul, claiming that Paul taught marriage was unlawful. The authorities then imprisoned Paul, whom Thecla later visited. Upon learning about this visit, Thamyris’s and Thecla’s families relayed the information to the governor, who later questioned Thecla regarding her refusal to marry Thamyris. She responded with no words but rather directed her focus toward Paul. When her mother called for her to be burned, she looked out at the crowd and “saw the Lord sitting as Paul, and she said, ‘As if I am not enduring, Paul gazes upon me.’”¹⁰ In the face of death, she trusted Paul’s teachings about God. Though she was placed upon a pile of burning wood, she miraculously survived. She later sought out Paul, committing herself to following him wherever he went.

This led Thecla into a series of dangerous encounters. After refusing the forceful advances of a magistrate named Alexander, she was condemned to death once again. Yet she prioritized her singleness and requested that the governor let her stay with Tryphaena, a widow who became for Thecla a mother figure, protector of her virginity, and a financial supporter until Thecla was sentenced to execution. Upon the day of her intended death, Thecla miraculously survived a succession of attacks from various beasts that somehow managed to kill each other rather than Thecla. While in the arena, Thecla jumped into a pit of water filled with dangerous sea lions, taking it as an opportunity to be baptized. Later, upon her release, the governor questioned her about how she survived the various beasts. She responded that she believed in Jesus Christ, the son of the living God, whom she served.

After being freed, she once more sought out Paul who praised her for her baptism. Thecla then became a teacher herself and attempted, in vain, to persuade her mother into Christian belief. She then moved southeast to Seleucia. Several alternative endings exist which give details of her life in Seleucia. She taught women, cast out demons, healed many, and lived a monastic life. Jealous of her power, physicians in the area sent men to corrupt (rape) her. After recounting all that God had protected her from, she cried out to him for deliverance and for the protection of her chastity. In an astonishing turn of events, the side of her cave opened up and she walked through it, the door closing behind her. The narrator recounts that Thecla died as the first female martyr and, indeed, as an apostle.¹¹

Scholars note several important facets to Thecla’s response to all that befell her. First, given the Greco-Roman context, Thecla knew how vulnerable she was by embracing a life of ascetism: she would have no husband to provide for her, no children to care for her in her old age, and she would embody numerous social stigmas of her time. Although virginity and modesty were expected of her, she was also required to marry and produce children. Instead, Thecla embraced a new paradigm for Christian kinship. She found a spiritual mother in Tryphaena and welcomed into her life a new family that offered eternal community and spiritual guidance rather than economic security.¹² Indeed, she “[defied] her mother” and “[refused] the promise of motherhood with her rejected marriage,” yet “[gained] a surrogate mother,”¹³ which embodied Christ’s words: “For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt 12:50 NRSVue).

One might ask how Thecla could embrace a Christian faith that could not protect her from the economic and social perils she would face by living an ascetic lifestyle and not marrying. The answer lies within Thecla’s own words. After calling out to God to protect her chastity when she suffered at the hands of the evil men of Seleucia, she praised him for his faithfulness, professing her love to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thecla pursued ascetism for the sole purpose of worshiping God, and she trusted him amid the uncertainties that came with such a lifestyle.

Additionally, Thecla did not merely ignore the dangers she encountered––she welcomed them. Despite miraculously surviving two attempted executions, she still pursued the teachings of Paul. Certainly, she realized the danger she was inviting by following a man her ex-fiancé disdained, her mother disapproved of, and whom the governor himself imprisoned. Yet she continued to counter danger and suffering, regardless of the potential social and physical outcomes. She exemplified Paul’s words to the Roman church: “[W]e also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:3–5 NRSVue). To Thecla, goodness meant embodying the resurrection: Denying oneself, embracing suffering, and offering worship to God in perilous situations, even if that meant defying the Roman empire.

Perpetua and Felicitas: The Martyred Mothers (2nd to 3rd Century CE)

At the turn of the third century, not long after the story of Thecla, Perpetua and Felicitas were martyred. Perpetua left us a diary, her direct words recording her and Felicitas’s experiences in prison. Like Thecla, Perpetua and Felicitas were given over to the beasts in the arena, but their sacred encounters came in forms different from Thecla’s multiple divine rescues. Before Perpetua and Felicitas were martyred in the arena, Perpetua received a series of four visions, two that focused on her sufferings and triumphs over what was to come, and two regarding her dead brother.¹⁴ Ultimately, these visions brought comfort to her: She knew that whatever happened in the arena, she would be victorious and her prayers over her brother would be heard. Felicitas did not have divine visions, but she did receive a miraculous answer to prayer. While pregnant and imprisoned, she longed to give birth before the date scheduled for the arena so that she would be allowed to die alongside her fellow Christians. To her surprise, she went into labor early and delivered her daughter when she was eight months pregnant.

Though imprisoned and awaiting their execution together, Perpetua’s and Felicitas’s experiences as mothers in prison differed vastly. Perpetua was visited several times by her father, who continually attempted to convince her to abandon her faith and end his shame, which was due to her apparent immorality and lack of piety.¹⁵ Undeniably, the Greco-Roman standards of familial loyalty meant her father experienced immense shame at Perpetua’s decision to defy him.¹⁶ Cohick and Hughes note that the second-century Greek philosopher Celsus critiqued Christianity for promoting “disobedience to the father” which “drives a stake into the heart of the family structure of the Roman family.”¹⁷ In a world centered around the paterfamilias, Perpetua’s denial of her father’s will was more than problematic––it was destructive. Her father’s words represented this devastation when he pleaded with Perpetua on behalf of their family: “Do not destroy us all together.”¹⁸

In addition to being a defiant daughter, Perpetua nursed her son during her stay in prison. This created a unique tension within her. On one hand, her faith identity enabled her to proclaim, “So can I call myself naught other than that which I am, a Christian.”¹⁹  Her unwillingness to recant her faith ensured that she would not be released. On the other hand, she dealt with her maternal need to breastfeed her young son, which proved quite difficult given her circumstances. Regardless, Perpetua sought to balance the two identities: she remained in prison and refused her father’s pleas to recant her profession of faith, and yet she mothered her child.

Perpetua and Felicitas embodied a seemingly paradoxical theology: they lost their opportunity to raise children but embraced their identity as children of God. From the perspective of Greco-Roman society, Perpetua and Felicitas failed the expectations of familial loyalty. Perpetua continually denied the will of her father, and Felicitas birthed her child in prison, only to die and leave her child motherless. However, Perpetua and Felicitas did not altogether desert their responsibilities as mothers. Perpetua herself, when realizing that her son no longer needed to be breastfed, stated “As God willed, no longer did he need to be suckled, nor did I take fever; that I might not be tormented by care for the child and by the pain of my breasts.”²⁰ These are the words of a mother who did not pass off her child to a wet nurse––a common practice at the time––but gave her own body to nourish her son.²¹ Furthermore, before entering the arena she gave her son to her father but also, later sent a deacon to retrieve him and integrate him into a Christian community. Though her father did not consent, her attempt to raise the child in a Christian community showed that she valued her son’s spiritual wellbeing. Similarly, Felicitas did not abandon her daughter in ways commonly practiced in Rome, such as abortion, exposure, or infanticide,²² but handed her daughter into the care of a Christian sister to raise as her own.

Given their circumstances, Perpetua and Felicitas embraced motherhood in unique ways. If they believed that commitment to their faith was the ultimate good that they should pursue, how were they to raise their children if they were sentenced to death because of such faith? They did so in the ways available to them: Perpetua by breastfeeding while in prison and Felicitas by birthing her child early and entrusting her daughter to the care of a fellow Christian sister. One could say that Perpetua and Felicitas were selfish to leave behind their young children, shirking their maternal responsibility to ensure their children’s safety. However, these women believed God gave them a deeper calling to fulfill, for commitment to God meant entering an eternal community. This family was held together not by a paterfamilias, but by God himself. If entering this community meant entrusting their children to family—blood kin and Christian kin—then they must have believed that this sacrifice was necessary, and necessarily good.

In addition to embracing their motherhood in ways contrary to Greco-Roman expectations, Perpetua and Felicitas welcomed suffering. In a culture that made a virtue of self-control (apatheia), childbirth was seen as pain that led to loss of self-control.²³ Felicitas not only embraced such labor, but she welcomed an even deeper suffering. In response to a prison guard who taunted her during her labor, Felicitas stated, “I myself now suffer that which I suffer, but there another shall be in me who shall suffer for me, because I am to suffer for him.”²⁴ Perpetua and Felicitas took on the sufferings of childbirth, separation from their children, and death in the arena—in mystic engagement with Christ. Since the death of a martyr led to eternal community, death provided a way to imitate Christ’s passion and embody the resurrection.²⁵ For mothers, birthing and nourishing children represented the new life they would be delivered into after death. Contrary to the Roman virtues of familial loyalty and apatheia, Perpetua and Felicitas held different standards of what was good: commitment to spiritual family through commitment to God and through death into his eternal community.

Macrina the Monastic (4th Century CE)

The fourth century brings us to Macrina, a sister of the theologian and bishop, Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory “pays [a] beautiful and moving tribute to his sister in Life of St. Macrina,” and this tribute, coupled with the “theological meanderings” of Gregory, allows readers to encounter Macrina.²⁶ Gregory regarded Macrina highly, calling her “father, teacher, guide, mother, [and] counsellor of all good advice.”²⁷

In his tribute, Gregory praises Macrina as he compares her to Thecla, the one “of great fame among the maidens.”²⁸ Such a comparison sets the stage for the ways Macrina embodied ideals that were different from Greco-Roman expectations. She was modest—Gregory recounts her “standard of humility”—and deeply loyal to her family.²⁹ At a young age, she was betrothed to a man who died early, and staying committed to her original engagement, she chose to never remarry. One might speculate the reasons for such a decision: Did she want to remain a virgin as a form of worship as Thecla did, or did she feel committed to a man she never married? V. K. McCarty argues that the death of her fiancé and “her resolve to remain chaste is remembered as her entry-point into a life of asceticism for the sake of Christ; even to the point of considering herself a widow.”³⁰ Regardless of Macrina’s motives, this death allowed her to pursue ascetism, which Gregory highly praised.

Within this life of ascetism, she enjoyed dynamic relationships that ran countercultural to those of the Greco-Roman norms. Macrina stepped up after the death of her brother Naucratius, helping to raise and teach her surviving brothers, and “[trained] her mother’s soul to be courageous” even as she grieved.³¹ Macrina’s leadership role impacted the relationship dynamics within their home. Eventually, in this role, she opened her home to those considered “the least of these” in Greco-Roman society. Gregory notes her humility: she “put herself on an equal footing with the community of maidens,” sharing the same life as if “difference of rank [was] eliminated from their lives.”³² Macrina taught her maids to embody a philosophy that valued things of an eternal nature over material things. Gregory observed that Macrina and her maidens showed “no anger, envy, hate, arrogance”—indeed, “self-control was their pleasure”³³—as Macrina guided them into ascetism.

Later in Life of St. Macrina, Gregory describes his experience with Macrina at her deathbed. Gregory told her his troubles. Macrina’s sharp response was: “Will you not put an end . . . to your failure to recognize the good things which come from God?”³⁴ In response to such a rebuke, Gregory longed for more time with her, interpreting her words not as disrespectful but as words of kindness and encouragement. He recounts Macrina’s dying prayer to God:

God Eternal, Upon whom I have cast myself from my mother’s womb, Whom my soul has loved with all its strength, To whom I have consecrated flesh and soul from my infancy up to this moment, Put down beside me a shining angel to lead me by the hand to the place of refreshment where is the water of repose near the lap of the holy fathers.³⁵

Cohick and Hughes posit that at this point Macrina had reached a somewhat juxtaposed state of humanness and otherness, transcending her body in her last moments.³⁶

In comparison to ancient Greco-Roman expectations, she flipped upside down the concepts of modesty, loyalty, and industriousness. Macrina lived modestly, embracing poverty and simplicity, but she did so to exemplify Christ’s resurrection rather to respect the Roman Empire. Macrina was loyal to her family, but in ways countercultural to the paterfamilias hierarchy: She never married, she guided her mother through bereavement, rebuked her brothers, treated her servants as her own sisters, and lived in a monastery with other women, effectively starting a new family. In these, she practiced the virtue of industriousness. Such countercultural living had nearly killed Thecla, and it martyred Perpetua and Felicitas. Arguably, Macrina knew of the social and economic repercussions that could have followed this lifestyle.

Yet, she sought a life that had greater eternal implications. Macrina embodied Celsus’s comment that “Christianity is a religion of women and slaves,”³⁷ but, given how she lived, she would not have considered it an insult. Indeed, she honored those at the bottom of the Roman social hierarchy, following the words of Jesus: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (Matt 25:40 NRSVue). Gregory reminds his readers that Macrina wanted nothing more than what God deemed as good. As she lay dying, she praised God, repented of her sins, and longed for the resurrection life. She embraced her suffering and lack of control—contrary to apatheia—and welcomed death, knowing that death would birth her into eternal life with God.

Conclusion

While Greco-Roman society strictly reinforced social, economic, and political norms, rewarding those who complied and punishing those who did not, early Christian women redefined those concepts. Thecla, Perpetua, Felicitas, and Macrina—in addition to countless women not named in this article—subverted Greco-Roman virtues like modesty, familial loyalty, and industriousness to align them with kingdom values. Even if doing so led to martyrdom or poverty, through their words and actions they declared that goodness did not lie in embracing Greco-Roman ideals. Rather, goodness was embodying Christ’s suffering, death, and subsequent resurrection. While they led countercultural lives that were provocative in this world (and still are), the stories of these women encouraged early Christians to live their lives in faithfulness to the Christian God, embracing his definition of goodness over the ideals of the world.

Notes

1. Andrew S. Jacobs, “‘Her Own Proper Kinship’: Marriage, Class and Women in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles,” in A Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Amy-Jill Levine and Maria Mayo Robbins (T&T Clark, 2006) 25.
2. Jacobs, “Her Own Proper Kinship,” 24, 27.
3. Susan E. Hylen, “Virtuous, Active Women in the Greco-Roman World,” in A Modest Apostle: Thecla and the History of Women in the Early Church (Oxford University Press, 2015) 20–21.
4. Hylen, “Virtuous, Active Women,” 23.
5. Exploring the complexity of these virtues and the various ways in which women embodied them is beyond the scope of this essay. For more, see Susan Hylen, Women in the New Testament World (Oxford University Press, 2019)
6. Susan Hylen, “Interpreting Evidence for Women’s Lives,” in Women in the New Testament World, 26–27.
7. Holly Beers, “Day of Sol/Helios,” in A Week in the Life of a Greco-Roman Woman (IVP Academic, 2019) 118.
8. Lynn H. Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes, “Thecla: Christian Female Protomartyr and Virgin of the Church,” in Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second through Fifth Centuries (Baker Academic, 2017) 1.
9. The Acts of Paul and Thecla is not recognized as part of the Christian canon, and Thecla herself is not mentioned in the New Testament. The historical existence of Thecla is debated among scholars, yet she remains venerated as a saint in some traditions. Whether she was a historical figure or a legendary one, her story encouraged countless Christians in the early church. She is also esteemed by several church fathers, including Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, and Augustine. Many of these writers valued her virginity as a powerful witness to Christ, demonstrating Thecla’s influence as a Christian figure from whom both women and men could draw encouragement. Evidence of her impact is also seen in the art created to memorialize her. To learn more, visit the Visual Museum of Women in Christianity’s collection on Thecla.
10. Jeremy W. Barrier, The Acts of Paul and Thecla: A Critical Commentary and Introduction (Mohr Siebeck, 2009) 121.
11. Cohick and Hughes, “Thecla,” 7.
12. Cohick and Hughes, “Thecla,” 19.
13. Cohick and Hughes, “Perpetua and Felicitas: Mothers and Martyrs” in Christian Women in the Patristic World, 28.
14. Cohick and Hughes, “Perpetua and Felicitas,” 43.
15. Cohick and Hughes, “Perpetua and Felicitas,” 47.
16. Cohick and Hughes, “Perpetua and Felicitas,” 46.
17. Origen Cels. 3.55, in Origen: Contra Celsum, ed. and trans. Henry Chadwick (1953), quoted in Cohick and Hughes, “Perpetua and Felicitas: Mothers and Martyrs,” , 47.
18. H. Shrewing, trans., The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity London: 1931) 5.
19. Shrewing, trans., The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, 2.
20. Shrewing, trans., The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, 4.
21. Cohick, “Martyrdom and Motherhood” (class lecture in WT 311 at Northern Seminary, Lisle, IL, Aug 30, 2022).
22. Beers, “Prologue,” in A Week in the Life, 118.
23. Cohick, “Martyrdom and Motherhood.”
24. Shrewing, trans., The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, 7.
25. Cohick, “Martyrdom and Motherhood.”
26. Cohick and Hughes, “Macrina the Ascetic Entrepreneur and the ‘Unlearned’ Wisdom of Monica,” in Christian Women in the Patristic World, 158, 160.
27. Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Saint Macrina, trans. Kevin Corrigan (Wipf and Stock, 2005) 31.
28. Gregory, Life of Saint Macrina, trans. Corrigan, 22.
29. Gregory, Life of Saint Macrina, trans. Corrigan, 29.
30. V.K. McCarty, “St. Macrina: Teaching Gregory of Nyssa on the Progress of the Soul,” in From Their Lips: Voices of Early Christian Women (Gorgias, 2021) 117.
31. Cohick and Hughes, “Macrina the Ascetic,” 166.
32. Gregory, Life of Saint Macrina, trans. Corrigan, 29.
33. Gregory, Life of Saint Macrina, trans. Corrigan, 32.
34. Gregory, Life of Saint Macrina, trans. Corrigan, 39.
35. Gregory, Life of Saint Macrina, trans. Corrigan, 42.
36. Cohick and Hughes, “Macrina the Ascetic,” 169.
37. Cohick, “Martyrdom and Motherhood.”