The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity

A group of catechumens was arrested together: Revocatus and his fellow-servant Felicity, Saturninus, Secundulus, and Perpetua, a married woman of good family, about twenty-two years old, with a baby at the breast. The account that survives says that from this point it gives Perpetua’s story as she wrote it herself. She tells how her father tried to shake her resolve, how the prisoners were baptised, and how frightened she was of the dark and the heat of the prison until she was allowed to keep her child with her (Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 1.1–2). In a vision she climbed a narrow golden ladder hung with iron weapons, past a dragon, to a garden where a white-haired shepherd welcomed her, and she understood that she was to die (Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 1.3).

At the hearing the procurator Hilarianus urged her to spare her father’s grey hairs and her infant and to sacrifice for the welfare of the emperors. She answered, “I am a Christian.” All were condemned to the beasts (Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 2.1–2). Two more visions concerned her dead brother Dinocrates, whom she saw first in distress and then, after her prayers, refreshed; in a last one she fought and beat an Egyptian in the arena, and took it to mean that her fight would be against the devil (Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 2.3–3.2).

An editor completes the story. Felicity, eight months pregnant, feared that her execution would be put off; she gave birth in prison three days before the games, and a Christian woman took the child (Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 5.2). On the day, Perpetua refused on behalf of them all to let them be dressed as priests of Saturn and priestesses of Ceres. The men faced a leopard, a bear and a boar. The two women were tossed by a wild cow, and Perpetua helped Felicity to her feet. At the end all were killed with the sword, and Perpetua guided the hand of the young gladiator to her throat (Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 6.1–4).

The editor asks that the account be read for the building up of the church (Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 6.1–4). Tertullian appeals to what Perpetua saw of paradise on the day of her passion (Tertullian, On the Soul 55). By the middle of the fourth century the church at Rome kept the feast of Perpetua and Felicity on 7 March (Chronograph of 354 part 12, 7 March). The account itself names no city; Prosper of Aquitaine, in the fifth century, sets the deaths at Carthage (Prosper, Chronicle 757 (p. 434)). In the pages given as her own the martyr speaks in the first person: a woman, a young mother, whose chief opponent in the story is her own father.

How this is dated

Estimated date. A scholarly estimate from primary evidence, with a margin of years.

The Passion, in the Latin text translated here, gives neither a year nor the name of the city. It says that the martyrs died at games held for the birthday of “Geta Caesar” (Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 2.3, 5.3) and that the procurator Hilarianus was acting for a proconsul who had died (Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 2.1–2). The year comes from a late Roman list of consuls, which enters the martyrdom under Plautianus and Geta, the consuls of AD 203 (Fasti Vindobonenses priores AD 203 (p. 287)). Prosper of Aquitaine, in the fifth century, has the same notice but enters it after the consuls of 204 (Prosper, Chronicle 757 (p. 434)), so a neighbouring year cannot be excluded. Eusebius dates a persecution of the same reign at Alexandria to the tenth year of Severus, AD 202–203 (Eusebius, Church History 6.1–6.2.2).

The day comes from the list of martyrs’ feasts kept at Rome and preserved in the Chronograph of 354, which enters Perpetua and Felicitas, “of Africa”, on the Nones of March, that is 7 March (Chronograph of 354 part 12, 7 March); the consular list and Prosper give the same day (Fasti Vindobonenses priores AD 203 (p. 287)) (Prosper, Chronicle 757 (p. 434)). The city is named by Prosper, more than two centuries after the event: he says that they suffered “at Carthage in Africa”, in the camp (Prosper, Chronicle 757 (p. 434)). A Greek version of the Passion and the later, shorter Latin Acts say that the group was arrested at Thuburbo Minus, a town not far from Carthage; the editors of the Greek text judged that the amphitheatre, near a military camp, can hardly be any other than that of Carthage (J. Rendel Harris and S. K. Gifford, The Acts of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, 1890). Tertullian, writing to a later proconsul, recalls “the presidency of Hilarian” as a time of popular outcry against the Christians’ burial grounds (Tertullian, To Scapula 3).

The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity

How this is dated

Primary sources

The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity

On the Soul

The Chronograph of 354

Chronicle

Fasti Vindobonenses priores

Church History

To Scapula

Along the threads