Book contents
- Thecla and Medieval Sainthood
- Thecla and Medieval Sainthood
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I An Act to Follow
- Part II An Act to Surpass
- Chapter 7 Thecla, the First Cross-Dresser?
- Chapter 8 From Diotima to Thecla and Beyond
- Chapter 9 Reception and Rejection
- Chapter 10 A Medieval Sufi Thecla?
- Afterword
- Appendix Summaries of Texts
- Index
- References
Chapter 10 - A Medieval Sufi Thecla?
Female Civic and Spiritual Leadership in ʿAttār’s “Tale of the Virtuous Woman” and the Life and Passion of Eugenia
from Part II - An Act to Surpass
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 May 2022
Book contents
- Thecla and Medieval Sainthood
- Thecla and Medieval Sainthood
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I An Act to Follow
- Part II An Act to Surpass
- Chapter 7 Thecla, the First Cross-Dresser?
- Chapter 8 From Diotima to Thecla and Beyond
- Chapter 9 Reception and Rejection
- Chapter 10 A Medieval Sufi Thecla?
- Afterword
- Appendix Summaries of Texts
- Index
- References
Summary
The “Tale of the Virtuous Woman” (TVW) by the Sufi hagiographer and poet, Farīd al-Dīn ʿAttār, is quite unique, as Sufi tales go, in its depiction of a woman from a well-to-do family: young, beautiful, and virtuous, she becomes a recognized spiritual and civic leader independently and in a foreign land. It, thus, invites further inquiry. It has been noted that the TVW, which appears in ʿAttār’s long narrative poem (masnavī), the Ilāhīnāmah (Book of the Divine), shares popular motifs with ancient romances. Detailed examinations reveal that it is closer in affinity to tales of female Christian saints and heroines, such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Life of Eugenia, Life and Miracles of Thecla, and Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, in the way they adopt popular motifs for religio-spiritual aims. Strikingly, the former three and the TVW similarly depict independently attained female leadership. This article, thus, analyzes the versions of the TVW circulating in Iran and the possible routes the aforementioned Christian narratives circulated within and without the Iranian world. Then, it offers an analysis of the TVW and Life of Eugenia which, although separated in time, space, culture, and language, similarly explore female leadership and spiritual, familial, and civic conversion.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Thecla and Medieval Sainthood<I>The Acts of Paul and Thecla</I> in Eastern and Western Hagiography, pp. 282 - 317Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
References
Allberry, Charles R. C., ed. and trans. A Manichaean Psalm-Book, Part II. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1938.Google Scholar
Archibald, Elizabeth. “The Flight from Incest: Two Late Classical Precursors of the Constance Theme.” The Chaucer Review 20, no. 4 (1986): 259–272.Google Scholar
Aspegren, Kerstin. The Male Woman: A Feminine Ideal in the Early Church. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis/Uppsala Women’s Studies 4. Uppsala; Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1990.Google Scholar
Aubin, Melissa. “Reversing Romance? The Acts of Thecla and the Ancient Novel.” In Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative, edited by Hock, Ronald F., Chance, J. Bradley, and Perkins, Judith. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series 6. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998: 257–272.Google Scholar
Barrier, Jeremy W. The Acts of Paul and Thecla: A Critical Introduction and Commentary. WUNT 2.270. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009.Google Scholar
Barrier, Jeremy W., Bremmer, Jan N., Niklas, T., and Puig i Tàrrech, A., eds. Thecla: Paul’s Disciple and Saint in the East and West. Studies in Early Christian Apocrypha 12. Leuven: Peeters, 2017.Google Scholar
Bartolini, Maria Grazia. “‘Manlier Than Many Men:’ Images of Female Sanctity in Simeon Polockij’s Court Sermons.” Studi Slavistici XIII (2016): 59–88.Google Scholar
Bashir, Shahzad. Sufi Bodies: Religion and Society in Medieval Islam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Böwering, Gerhard, and Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. “Ḵānaqāh.” Encyclopædia Iranica, 2010. www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kanaqah.Google Scholar
Burrus, Virginia. Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts. Studies in Women and Religion 23. Lewiston; Queenston: Edwin Mellon, 1987.Google Scholar
Burrus, Virginia. “Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 25–46.Google Scholar
Canepa, Matthew. The Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual of Kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Clark, Elizabeth A. “Holy Women, Holy Words: Early Christian Women, Social History, and the ‘Linguistic Turn.’” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 413–430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Constantinou, Stavroula. “Performing Gender in Lay Saints’ Lives.” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 38, no. 1 (2014): 24–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conybeare, Frederick Cornwallis, ed. and trans. “The Acts of Saint Eugenia.” In The Apology and Acts of Apollonius and Other Monuments of Early Christianity: Edited [and Translated] with a General Preface, Introductions, Notes, etc., by Conybeare, F. C.. London; New York: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.; Macmillan & Co., 1896: 147–160.Google Scholar
Cooper, Kate. The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Cooper, Kate. “The Virgin as Social Icon.” In Saints, Scholars, and Politicians: Gender as a Tool in Medieval Studies, edited by van Dijk, Mathilde and Nip, Renée. Medieval Church Studies 15. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005: 9–24.Google Scholar
Cooper, Kate. “The Bride of Christ, the ‘Male Woman,’ and the Female Reader in Late Antiquity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013: 529–544.Google Scholar
Cooper, Kate, and Corke-Webster, James. “Conversion, Conflict, and the Drama of Social Reproduction: Narratives of Filial Resistance in Early Christianity and Modern Britain.” In Conversion and Initiation in Antiquity: Shifting Identities-Creating Change, edited by Bøgh, Birgitte Secher. Frankfurt am Main; New York: Peter Lang, 2014: 169–183.Google Scholar
Cornell, Rkia E. “Introduction.” In Early Sufi Women: Dhikr an-niswa al-mutaʿabbidāt aṣ-ṣūfiyyāt, Abū ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān ās-Sulamī, translated by Rkia E. Cornell. Louisville: Fons Vitae, 1999: 15–79.Google Scholar
Cornell, Rkia E. trans. Early Sufi Women: Dhikr an-niswa al-mutaʿabbidāt aṣ-ṣūfiyyāt, Abū ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān ās-Sulamī. Louisville: Fons Vitae, 1999.Google Scholar
Cornell, Rkia E. Rabiʿa from Narrative to Myth: The Many Faces of Islam’s Most Famous Saint, Rabiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya. London: Oneworld, 2019.Google Scholar
Dabiri, Ghazzal. “Reading the Elāhināma as Sufi Practical Ethics: Between Reception, Genre, and Muslim and Christian Audiences.” Journal of Persianate Societies 11, no. 1 (2018): 29–55.Google Scholar
Dabiri, Ghazzal. “‘When a Lion Is Chided by an Ant:’ Everyday Saints and the Making of Sufi Kings in ʿAttār’s Elāhināma.” Journal of Persianate Societies 12, no. 1 (2019): 62–102.Google Scholar
Dabiri, Ghazzal. “Who’s the Authority around Here? Zoroastrians as Sites of Negotiation in ʿAṭṭār’s Taẕkirat al-awliyāʾ and Ilāhīnāmah.” In Narrating Power and Authority in Late Antique and Medieval Hagiography across East and West, edited by Dabiri, Ghazzal. Fabulae 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021: 103-118.Google Scholar
Davis, Dick. Panthea’s Children: Hellenistic Novels and Medieval Persian Romances. Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series. New York: Bibliotheca Persica, 2002.Google Scholar
Davis, Stephen J. The Cult of St. Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Stephen J. “Crossed Texts, Crossed Sex: Intertextuality and Gender in Early Christian Legends of Holy Women Disguised as Men.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10, no. 1 (2002): 1–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Stephen J., ed. and trans. “An Arabic Acts of Paul and Thecla: Text and Translation, with Introduction and Critical Commentary.” In Thecla: Paul’s Disciple and Saint in the East and West, edited by Barrier, Jeremy W., Bremmer, Jan N., Niklas, T., and Puig i Tàrrech, A.. Studies in Early Christian Apocrypha 12. Leuven: Peeters, 2017: 106–151.Google Scholar
Drijvers, Jan Willem. Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of Her Finding of the True Cross. Leiden: Brill, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ernst, Carl W., trans. Rūzbihān Baqlī: Mysticism and the Rhetoric of Sainthood in Persian Sufism. London; New York: Routledge, 1996.Google Scholar
Hambly, Gavin R., ed. Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage and Piety. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Harbus, Antonina. Helena of Britain in Medieval Legend. Suffolk; Rochester: D. S. Brewer, 2002.Google Scholar
Hill, Joseph. “‘All Women Are Guides:’ Sufi Leadership and Womanhood among Taalibe Baay in Senegal.” Journal of Religion in Africa 40 (2010): 375–412.Google Scholar
Hylen, Susan E. A Modest Apostle: Thecla and the History of Women in the Early Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
James, Liz. Empress and Power in Early Byzantium. London; New York: Leicester University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Johnson, Scott F. The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University, 2006.Google Scholar
Kaestli, Jean-Daniel. “L’utilisation des Actes Apocryphes des Apôtres dans le Manichéisme.” In Gnosis and Gnosticism, edited by Krause, M.. Nag Hammadi Studies 8. Leiden: Brill, 1977: 373–395.Google Scholar
Kargar, Dariush. “Jawāmeʿ al-Ḥikāyāt.” Encyclopædia Iranica, 2008. www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jawame-al-hekayat.Google Scholar
Kruk, Remke. The Warrior Women of Islam: Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature. London; New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014.Google Scholar
Kugle, Scott A. Sufis and Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power in Islam. Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Lewis, Agnes Smith, trans. “Eugenia.” In Select Narratives of Holy Women from the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest: As Written Above the Old Syriac Gospel by John the Stylite or Beth Manri-Qanūn in A.D. 778. 2 vols. Studia Sinaitica 9. London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1900: vol. 2, 1–35.Google Scholar
Lewis, Franklin D. “Sexual Occidentation: The Politics of Conversion, Christian-love and Boy-love in ʿAttār.” Iranian Studies 42, no. 5 (2009): 693–723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipsett, B. Diane. Desiring Conversion: Hermas, Thecla, Asenneth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Malamud, Margaret. “Gender and Spiritual Self-Fashioning: The Master-Disciple Relationship in Classical Sufism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 89–117.Google Scholar
Marzolph, Ulrich. “Crescentia’s Oriental Relatives: The ‘Tale of the Pious Man and His Chaste Wife’ in the Arabian Nights and the Sources of Crescentia in Near Eastern Narrative Tradition.” Marvels and Tales 22, no. 2 (2008): 240–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marzolph, Ulrich. “Crescentia’s Oriental Relatives: Four Translations.” Marvels and Tales 22, no. 2 (2008): 299–311.Google Scholar
McInerney, Maud Burnett. Eloquent Virgins: From Thecla to Joan of Arc. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.Google Scholar
Papaioannou, Stratis, ed. and trans. “Life, Conduct, and Passion of the Holy Martyr of Christ Saint Eugenia and Her Parents.” In Christian Novels from the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 45. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017: 183–261.Google Scholar
Perkins, Judith. The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. London: Routledge, 1995.Google Scholar
Puhvel, Jaan. Comparative Mythology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Reeves, John C. Prolegomena to a History of Islamicate Manichaeism. London; Oakville: Equinox, 2011.Google Scholar
Reeves, John C. “Jacob of Edessa and the Manichaean Book of Giants?” In Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan: Contexts, Traditions, and Influences, edited by Goff, Matthew, Stuckenbruck, Loren T., and Morano, Enrico. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016: 199–211.Google Scholar
Ritter, Hellmut, ed. Ilahi-Name: Die Gespräche des Königs mit seinen sechs Söhnen: Eine Mystische Dichtung. Bibliotheca Islamica. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1940.Google Scholar
Sarwar, Muhammad, ed. and trans. al-Kafi: Arabic Text and Translation. New York: The Islamic Seminary, 2013.Google Scholar
Shafīʿī-Kadkanī, Muhammad Rizā, ed. Ilāhīnāmah-i Farīd al-Dīn ʿAttār. 3rd ed. Tehran: Intishārāt-i Sukhan, 2013.Google Scholar
Smith, Thomas. “Recognitions of Clement.” In From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Book 8, edited by Roberts, Alexander, Donaldson, James, and Coxe, Cleveland. Buffalo: Christian Literature, 1886. www.newadvent.org/fathers/0804.htm.Google Scholar
Sterk, Andrea. “Mission from Below: Captive Women and Conversion on the East Roman Frontiers.” Church History 79, no. 1 (March 2010): 1–39.Google Scholar
Talbot, Alice-Mary. “The Byzantine Family and the Monastery.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990): 119–129.Google Scholar
Voicu, Sever J. “Thecla in the Christian East.” In Thecla: Paul’s Disciple and Saint in the East and West, edited by Barrier, Jeremy W., Bremmer, Jan N., Nicklas, T., and Puig i Tàrrech, A.. Studies in Early Christian Apocrypha 12. Leuven: Peeters, 2017: 47–68.Google Scholar
Walker, Joel Thomas. The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Wood, Philip. “The Invention of History in the Later Roman World: The Conversion of Isauria in ‘The Life of Conan.’” Anatolian Studies 59 (2009): 129–138.Google Scholar
Yarbrough, Anne. “Christianization in the Fourth Century: The Example of Roman Women.” Church History 45 (January 1976): 149–165.Google Scholar