I have my breastplate of justice, I have the belt of truth: for I am not merely a wayfarer, but also a soldier. *The way that leads to life is narrow and straight* (Matt. 7:14). See, therefore, how Paul deals with the matter and how Moses provides the figures: how he deals with things sensible, and how he deals with spiritual things. Let us, therefore, also be eager, beloved, to imitate Abraham, that we may be received into his bosom, by the grace and loving-kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and power, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
MONITUM.
In his work *On Sophonias*, he says that women were the Apostles of the Apostles: not that Thecla usurped the office of teaching in the Church, as heretics were wont to claim from her apocryphal Acts—as attested by Tertullian in *On Baptism*, ch. 17, and by Jerome in *On Ecclesiastical Writers* under Luke—but because, as Ado writes, she instructed many by the example and conversation of her life and even by her doctrine. In the *Horologium* of the Greeks, I read on September 24: *Of the holy Protomartyr and Equal-to-the-Apostles Thecla*; yet in their calendar translated into Latin, *Thecla the martyr, first of women*. So also ibid., July 22: *St. Mary Magdalene*. *Equal-to-the-Apostles* (Isapostolos) is how she is titled; see Evagr. Bk. III, ch. 8: *Zeno, having seen in a vision the holy and much-enduring protomartyr Thecla; Zeno having seen in a vision the holy, strenuous and excellent martyr Thecla.*
The Latin interpretation is by the same Fronto Ducæus.
PRAISE OF THE HOLY PROTOMARTYR AND APOSTLE THECLA (a)
The grace of the Holy Spirit, for the sake of those who neglect the marriage of Thecla, has raised up for us yearly commemorations, the icons of the saints, and perpetually preserves, fresh in the passage of time, their deeds, which would otherwise fall into oblivion. For everyone who encounters them as if in an icon of memory reflects on the beauty of the deeds, and contemplates the actions set within the icon of memory. And it seems to me today that I am contemplating that blessed maiden, as if standing in an icon of memory, holding aloft in one hand the crown won against pleasures, and in the other the crown won against dangers; offering in the one hand her virginity, and in the other her martyrdom to the Master of all. For indeed, she possessed the elements of virginity, which to those who accurately consider the matter, is a martyrdom great even before martyrdom. For pleasures are certain cruel tormentors of the body; or rather, more cruel than tormentors. For they bind with invisible chains; they flay the soul through the eyes; they bring through the ears to the unyielding mind of the soul the torch of love for pleasure; they lash the intellect with a stinging whip, and stir up one battle-line after another against us. When one commands the eyes to be blinded to beauty, pleasures open what has been closed through the ears, relaxing the soul with lascivious songs; when they encounter ears closed against shameful songs, they play wantonly with the thoughts, adorned with lasciviousness; when, to speak briefly, we overcome them while awake through all things, they war against our shadows while we sleep; and this cycle of battle is eternal for them, neither setting with the sun, nor finding rest at night. But if they take hold of youth, it is a collision of fire with fire, a clashing of furnace with straw. For youth is easily ignited by pleasures, as if more oily for combustion, as if more delicate for the toils of temperance. These things, truly, all made of virginity for the blessed virgin a long sort of martyrdom; boxing with pleasures, as the martyr with wild beasts; struggling with thoughts, as he with tortures; engaging with the concepts of the love of pleasure, as with the necessities imposed by tormentors; yet conquering, nevertheless, the war so various and domestic. For in her, the fire of the mind was more searing and holy than the fire of nature. But while nature yielded to the maiden—though it reigns in others and rages for union—in Thecla it was practicing virginity. The parents, however, not knowing the covenants of their child regarding virginity, nor the betrothal…
(a) Compared with the Royal Codex 2343, which does not vary.