Born in southern Britain, Thecla was a relative of Saint Lioba. Thecla and Lioba were educated at Wimborne Abbey and later joined the Benedictine community of nuns there. When Boniface wrote to the Abbess Tetta, requesting helpers with his missionary work in Germany, Thecla and Lioba were among those sent.[4] Boniface seems to have had a threefold purpose in summoning these Anglo-Saxon nuns as his auxiliaries: to propagate the full observance of the Benedictine Rule by new foundations, to introduce it into already founded monasteries, and to restore its observance in others, and finally, to bring their gentle influence to bear on the local people, both by example and by the education imparted to their children.[3][5]
In 748, they arrived in Bischofsheim (“bishop’s place”), where Boniface founded a convent, and Lioba was made abbess. Later, Thecla became abbess of Ochsenfurt.[4] Sometime after 750, upon the death of Hadelonga, foundress and first Abbess of Kitzingen on the Main, she was also called to supervise that abbey.[6]
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