Shaping Women’s Agency Through Temporality in The Life and Activity of the Holy and Blessed Teacher Syncletica

The present article attempts to discuss the relationship between two female characters, Thecla and Syncletica, against the wider theoretical background of temporality as it was perceived and construed through literary texts. Syncletica is portrayed as a ‘disciple’ of Thecla. However, while the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla appear to be pervaded with an eschatological expectation, the Life of Saint Syncletica shows signs of a different temporality. The detailed description of the whole life of Syncletica, with an emphasis on the course of illness, reveals a temporality more focused on the stages of life. Building on this evidence, I aim to identify a set of key features that may define the influence of different notions of time on two women saints closely related to each other.