Agoge Spells, Thecla, and the Interpretation of Christ Devotion as Magic
As a last point I would like to make a brief suggestion as to how these agoge-spells might in any case illuminate the construction of another malefemale relationship from antiquity - albeit a fictional one between Paul and Thecla - and how that, in turn, may shed further light on the ancient interpretation, by some in antiquity, of Jesus veneration itself as a form of magic.
One need only skim the ancient narratives about Jesus and his apostles to recognize the emphasis placed on wonder-working by early practitioners of Christ devotion. It is rather less than surprising, then, when one also periodically finds evidence that charges of magic were sometimes raised against the group. One particularly clear example of this is found in the Acts of Paul and Thecla.
The historical Paul was himself not shy about claiming abilities as a wonder-worker,[785] and tales of such deeds - healings, raising the dead, striking a competing wonder-worker blind - play a significant role in early narrative accounts of his praxeis, both canonical and extra-canonical. Interestingly, though, when the crowd in Iconium repeatedly denounces Paul as a magos in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, it is not in response to any such arresting display of overt power; Paul has performed no signs and wonders in Iconium. The crowd’s identification of Paul as magos, rather, is an interpretation of the effect that his preaching has had on the women of the city, and above all Thecla.[786]
One could in fact scarcely imagine a better narrative illustration of the effect that agoge-spells were intended to produce than the story of Thecla’s reaction to Paul. Hearing Paul from the window of her house, she is suddenly and obsessively consumed by a desire to be near him. She remains transfixed at the window “for three days and three nights,” neither eating nor drinking[787] - gripped, as her mother says, with a “new desire and a fearful passion (9, επιθυμία καινή καί παθει δεινώ),” “taken captive” (9, εάλωται) by the “strange man” (8, ανδρί ξενω) who has come into
their town.
While it is clear that Thecla has not literally forgotten that she has a mother and a fiance,[788] her singular obsession with Paul translates no less into an immediate and utter disregard for them:And those who were in the house wept bitterly, Thamyris for the loss of a wife, The- ocleia for that of a daughter, the maidservants for that of a mistress. So there was great confusion of mourning in the house. And while this was going on, Thecla did not turn away, but gave her whole attention to Paul's word (10).
Indeed, simply hearing Paul's words is not enough for Thecla. Desiring from the first to be in his presence (7), she is finally compelled to escape her household by night, bribing the doorkeeper to let her leave the house so that she can see him (18).[789] And while her relationship to the ascetic Paul of this tale is not, of course, consummated sexually, her submissive and rather dramatic reaction to Paul's physical presence - sitting at his feet,[790] kissing his fetters (18), later “rolling on the ground” where Paul himself had been sitting (20; cf. 42) - is not without a certain sublimated eroticism. The sudden intensity of Thecla's (and others') devotion to this stranger, and the broken social structure left in its wake, was in any event sufficient evidence for the crowds in Iconium to conclude that a magician was in their midst: “the whole crowd shouted: ‘Away with the sorcerer! For he has corrupted all our wives.'”[791]
Fundamental to the agoge-spells is the attempt to lead someone to a radical disregard for her existing social network in favor of a singular, totalizing devotion to a spell-giver. Consequently, as this episode from the Acts of Paul and Thecla suggests, any unexpected disruption in the normal family structure - as much as any overt display of wondrous power - could be taken as evidence of magic in ancient society.[792] Seen in this light, practitioners of Christ devotion were potentially vulnerable to charges of magic on two fronts.
For if the latter kind of display was clearly and even emphatically claimed for both Jesus and at least some of those that followed him,[793] such totalizing devotion, even to the point of radical disregard for one’s familial ties, was just as clearly the ideal presented to the group’s rank and file.[794] As the teller of Thecla’s tale seems to have recognized, what looked like ideal devotion to Christ and his followers from the point of view of the group’s insiders could look rather like magic to family members on the outside - perhaps particularly where women were concerned.Works Cited
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