The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity

Summary

The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity is an account of the arrest, imprisonment and death of a group of young Christians at Carthage in North Africa in 203. Its central section is a first-person prison diary written by Vibia Perpetua, a well-born married woman of about twenty-two. It is usually described as the earliest surviving text written by a Christian woman. An editor, whose identity is unknown, framed her narrative with a preface, added the vision of her teacher Saturus, and described the martyrs' deaths in the arena. Perpetua was arrested with other catechumens, including the slaves Revocatus and Felicity. Her father, the only pagan in her family, repeatedly begs her to give up her faith. In one scene she points to a water jug and asks whether it can be called anything other than what it is; she can no more call herself anything but a Christian. Her worry for her baby son, whom she is at first allowed to nurse in prison, runs through her account. Perpetua records four visions. In the first she climbs a narrow bronze ladder lined with weapons, treading on a dragon's head, to a garden where a white-haired shepherd gives her milk; she understands that she will suffer. Two visions concern her younger brother Dinocrates, who had died of a disease of the face as a child; after her prayers she sees him healed. In the last she fights an Egyptian gladiator and wins, and wakes knowing that her real enemy is the devil. At the trial before the procurator Hilarianus, Perpetua refuses to sacrifice for the emperors' welfare and is condemned to the beasts. Felicity, eight months pregnant, fears she will be separated from her companions because Roman law did not allow pregnant women to be executed; she gives birth in prison two days before the games. The editor describes the martyrs entering the arena calmly, Perpetua singing, and both women being attacked by a wild cow before being killed by the sword. The Passion was read in the churches of North Africa; Augustine preached on the martyrs' feast day and warned that the text was not Scripture.

Top Lessons

• Identity under pressure

  Perpetua's water-jug argument insists that what she is cannot be changed by renaming it. The diary shows the cost of that clarity to a daughter and mother.

• Equality in suffering

  The account places a noblewoman and a slave side by side; Felicity's fear of dying separately from her friends shows the bond between them.

• A woman's own voice

  Much of the text is Perpetua's own prison diary, one of the earliest surviving writings by a Christian woman.

• For the Christian reader

  Perpetua and Felicity are honoured as martyrs across the Christian world, and their feast is kept on 7 March. Perpetua chose Christ over the pleading of her father and the comfort of her infant son; Felicity, a slave, gave birth in prison days before her death. Their story shows the gospel making mistress and servant sisters (Galatians 3:28) and has encouraged persecuted Christians for eighteen centuries.

Verified Quotes