The vita’s description of her illness is “graphically physical”.[32] Her lungs and vocal chords were afflicted first, then a single tooth and her gums, and finally her entire jaw, which decayed to the point that it blackened her mouth and caused “such a stench that her disciples could not bear to be near her”.[32] Eventually, she died of cancer and “consumption in the lungs” after a three-year long illness.[9] According to Wheeler, the vita portrays Syncletica’s illness and death graphically because it demonstrates the importance of “her identification with Christ through bodily pain, suffering, and death”.[32] The emphasis also encourages its readers to be more sensitive to how physical distress affects both the person experiencing it and the people around them.

Syncletica of Alexandria