St. Thekla, Equal-to-the-Apostles

A young woman of Iconium who heard St Paul preaching from a window next door, broke off her engagement, and followed him. Her story is told in the second-century Acts of Paul and Thekla, which the Church reads for its witness rather than for its history: condemned to be burned, she was saved by a storm; thrown to the beasts, she was defended by a lioness. She taught and lived out her life near Seleucia, where her shrine became one of the great places of pilgrimage of the ancient world, visited by the pilgrim Egeria, and where St Gregory the Theologian went to pray. The Church calls her Protomartyr among women and Equal-to-the-Apostles. Feast: September 24.