Paul and Thecla

The Acts of Paul and Thecla is a 2nd century romance about Paul and Thecla. Paul is an apostle and Thecla is a bride to be who is convinced by Paul's gospel message to abandon her role in life, leave her beau at the altar, and assume the role of disciple, preaching along with Paul, the message of Christ: that they are crucified to the world and the world to them; that what matters is a new creation and not this current state of affairs.
Thecla's mom and beau don't give up: they attempt all kinds of shenanigans to return Thecla to her role, wife of a benefactor, ruling the domicile as a piece of property. But Thecla doesn't want to be a piece of property, she wants to belong to Christ. And so it turns out that she is delivered to the lions in a great public spectacle. Instead of eating her, tearing her limb from sinew and crunching tasty dainty flesh, the lion is converted by Thecla. Thecla then pours water on herself and exclaims, in the only use of the middle voice that occurs in any canonical or non-canonical text of the word "baptizomai" - "I baptize myself." She baptizes herself (that she hadn't already been baptized is not unusual, since early Christians had established a catechumate as long as 3 years before baptism) and then she baptizes the lion.
Eventually Thecla is dispatched. Paul is dispatched - but not in this story - or any story: the book of Acts ends like the Sopranos: it goes black and you're left to fill in the blanks.
The lion isn't dispatched. Instead he, his name was Henry, was one of the early missionaries to Spain. When later he was complained to that his gospel was a bit Arian, Henry shrugged and said, "what's the big deal. I'm a lion and I'm talking to you and that doesn't seem to bother you?"
Ludwig Wittgenstein would later say that if a lion could talk we wouldn't understand him; Henry's tale says not so much "not understand him" as not "get him."