Perpetua and Felicity
In 203 Perpetua and Felicity were two of several Christians killed in the amphitheater in Carthage, the leading city in Roman North Africa (modern Tunisia). Their story is told in The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, which starts by mentioning several young unbaptized believers (catechumens) who were arrested: Saturinus and Secundulus, the slaves Revocatus and Felicity, and the noble-born aristocrat Vibia Perpetua. What makes Perpetua’s story so remarkable is not only her inspiring heroism but the fact that it is her story (up to the point of her death). It is extremely rare to have a record from the ancient world of a woman’s story in her own voice. The story of Perpetua and Felicity is a uniquely feminine story, replete with concerns about caring for children, nursing infants, and female modesty. Scholars estimate that perhaps 10 percent of the ancient world could read and write, which means the literacy rate for women must have been minuscule. Nevertheless, Perpetua was not only literate but also spoke both Latin and Greek, and she was well connected to church officials. She must have come from an extremely privileged background.
Perpetua was twenty-two years old with an infant son who was still nursing, when she was placed under house arrest. Her father begged her to give up the name “Christian,” but she refused, pointing to a pitcher of water and saying that though you can call it whatever you want, that won’t change what it is. Throughout Perpetua’s imprisonment, it was her father who had the hardest time with her suffering. “I felt so sorry for my father’s misfortune,” she writes, “because out of all my relatives he was the only one who wouldn’t rejoice at my martyrdom.” While under house arrest, with her father away for a few days, Perpetua was baptized.
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A short time later, the group of young Christians was thrown into prison. Perpetua described the worst part: “I was tortured by worry for my baby the whole I time I was there!” Two deacons, Tertius and Pomponius, ministered to the prisoners. Perpetua was allowed to nurse her baby and kept him with her in the dungeon.
While in prison, Perpetua requested a vision from the Lord, and the Lord granted her request. In the vision, she saw a bronze ladder reaching into heaven—with spears, hooks, daggers, and darts on all sides of the ladder. At the foot of the ladder was an enormous dragon, ensnaring those who tried to climb and frightening those who dared to ascend.
Then Perpetua saw a man named Saturus climb the ladder. Saturus may have been Perpetua’s husband, a mentor, a presbyter, or some other church leader. Whoever he was, Saturus turned to Perpetua and said, “I am waiting for you, Perpetua. Just make sure the dragon doesn’t bite you.”
On her way up the ladder, Perpetua was careful to step on the head of the dragon but not be bitten by him. Perpetua records that the dragon was scared of her. As she climbed higher up, she saw an expansive garden and a tall, white-haired old man tending sheep. The old man invited Perpetua to draw near, gave her a cup of sweet curd, and told her that she was welcome in his garden. Perpetua understood this vision to be a sure sign that she was going to be a martyr and would be welcomed into heaven.
A few days later, her father came for a visit. Perpetua’s relationship with her father is what gives the story such emotion and honesty. Her father was not a Christian, but it is obvious that he deeply loved his daughter. As a desperate father, he repeatedly pleaded with her to renounce Christ and save her life. “Have pity on my gray hairs, daughter,” he cried. Repeatedly, he asked Perpetua to think of her family—her parents, brothers, aunt, and son—and how they wouldn’t be able to live without her. For her part, Perpetua was understanding but unmoved. “My father said these things like any loving father would. He kissed my hands and threw himself at my feet.” She then tried to comfort him, saying, “Everything that happens at my trial will be God’s will.” Although a resolute belief in providence may have been a balm to Perpetua, it meant nothing to her father who left his daughter’s side brokenhearted.
Later, Perpetua’s father showed up at the trial, bringing her baby to try to convince her to go along with official Roman policy. “Perform the sacrifice!” he pleaded. “Have pity on your baby!” Perpetua remained steadfast, even though, she said, “it broke my heart to see him endure such misery in his old age.” The governor even joined in: “Spare your gray-haired father! Spare your infant son! Just make a sacrifice for the emperor’s well-being.” The whole group of Christians refused to budge, and the governor sentenced them to face wild beasts in the arena. In one particularly feminine reflection, Perpetua noted that once she was separated from her son, “God made sure the baby no longer desired to nurse and I didn’t suffer any inflammation [mastitis], so I wouldn’t be burdened by anxiety for my son and pain in my breasts.”
A junior officer named Pudens was struck by the spiritual power at work within Perpetua and her friends. So against normal protocol, he allowed visitors to come and meet with the condemned Christians and provide for their needs. One of the visitors was Perpetua’s father. One last time, he pleaded with heaven and earth that his daughter would change her mind.
Though he tore the whiskers from his beard, fell to the ground, and cursed the years of his life, Perpetua would not budge. The day before the Christians were to go into the amphitheater and face the beasts, Perpetua had another vision. She was in the arena and was forced to fight the gladiator. Suddenly, in her vision, she became a male gladiator (perhaps because it would not be fitting for her as a woman to fight like a man). As the two pounded each other, Perpetua recalled, “I kept smashing him in the face with my heel.” No doubt, this was a deliberate allusion to Genesis 3:15. Just like Perpetua stepped on the head of the dragon as she climbed the ladder in her previous vision, so in this vision she defeated the giant Egyptian gladiator by “crush[ing] his head underfoot.” The referee gave her the victory branch, but just as she was heading in triumph to the Gate of Life, she awoke. Perpetua understood this vision to mean that her real opponent in the arena would be the devil, but that she would have the victory.
After explaining this second vision, Perpetua noted, “Here ends the account of how I conducted myself up to the day before the games. Concerning what happened at the games themselves, let someone else write about that if he sees fit.” From this point in the narrative, Perpetua’s story is told by an unnamed narrator who many scholars think may have been Tertullian.
The Deaths of Perpetua and Felicity
In the second half of the narrative, we are more fully introduced to Felicity, who, we discover, is not only a slave but also eight months pregnant. Because it was against Roman law to publicly punish a pregnant woman, Felicity prayed that she might go into labor, thus allowing her to experience martyrdom and give her child a chance to live. After praying, Felicity went into labor and gave birth to a little girl. The baby was taken by a Christian woman who promised to raise the child as her own daughter.
As we might expect, the Christians in the dungeon suffered from extreme deprivation. Many condemned prisoners would be more dead than alive by the time they entered the arena. But once again, the Lord was with Perpetua. She challenged the military commander who oversaw the dungeon to give her and her friends more favorable treatment, arguing that no one wanted to see the infamous Christians thrown to animals looking scrawny and half dead. The commander, therefore, ordered Perpetua and her friends to be treated with more leniency and allowed for others to provide them food and comfort.
The day finally came for the games and for the Christians to be thrown to the animals in the amphitheater. The unnamed narrator records, “Perpetua went along at a calm pace with a radiant countenance. . . . Felicity was there too, rejoicing to have given birth safely so she could face the beasts. She was going from one kind of blood to another, from the midwife to the gladiator. Her postpartum washing would be a second baptism.” Once in the amphitheater, then officials tried to dress them in pagan garments for a kind of play acting, but Perpetua would not play along. “We came to this day of our own free will, precisely so our freedom wouldn’t be violated.” The commander abandoned his plans and let the Christians wear their own simple clothes. Then Perpetua “began to sing a psalm, already treading on the Egyptian’s head.”
The Christians were given different animals to torment them. Saturninus and Revocatus had to contend with a leopard and after that with a bear. Both men were quickly killed. Saturus was to be tied to a wild boar. The boar dragged Saturus throughout the arena, but Saturus emerged from the ordeal unscathed. Then the bear was released to make an end of Saturus. But the bear refused to come out, and Saturus was put back in his cell barely harmed. Later, the officials brought out Saturus again, this time to face a leopard. Saturus was busy evangelizing Pudens (the junior officer we met earlier) when the leopard rushed upon him. With his final breath, Saturus told Pudens, “Farewell! Remember me and my faith.”
The animal chosen for Perpetua and Felicity was unusual. In order to match their female sex with a female animal, they were presented with “a very fierce cow.” The women were stripped naked and draped in nets, but this harsh and provocative treatment proved too much for the crowd to bear. “The spectators were horrified when they saw one was a delicate young woman, and the other had just come from childbirth with her breasts still lactating. So the authorities put loose tunics on the women.” The cow tossed Perpetua in the air, ripping her tunic. Ever mindful of her Christian witness, she rearranged her tunic to cover her thighs, “for Perpetua cared more about modesty than pain.” She even looked for a hairpin to gather up her disheveled hair, believing it “was improper for a martyr to die with her hair unbound.” As Perpetua rose to her feet, helping Felicity stand up, they were joined by another catechumen, a young man named Rusticus, who comforted them both.
In the final scene, Perpetua, Felicity, and Rusticus are reunited with an unconscious Saturus in the spoliarum (the place where dead gladiators were stripped of their armor and dying criminals were finally killed by an executioner). Just as Perpetua foretold, Saturus was the first to die, ascending the ladder into heaven so that he might be there waiting for Perpetua. We aren’t told what happened to Felicity and Rusticus, but presumably they were killed in the spoliarum as well. The last to die was Perpetua, whose death is given in graphic detail. As the sword was thrust between her bones, she let out a shriek of pain. But she was not dead. In one last act of almost unbelievable courage, Perpetua helped the novice executioner do his job: “Then she herself guided the young executioner and inexperienced gladiator’s wavering hand to her throat.” Only with her help, could Perpetua finally be killed. “Perhaps we might say that such a great woman, who was feared by the demon within the executioner, couldn’t be killed unless she herself allowed it.”
A Credible Incredible Story
What should we make of this incredible story? First of all, we have to admit that some of it does strike us as incredible. Most of us don’t live in the world of visions, miraculous intervention, and an all-consuming desire to be martyred. This doesn’t mean we should disbelieve the stories about Perpetua and Felicity. The Christian who wrote these things and the Christians who read these things certainly believed them to be true. Perhaps some elements were retold with a dramatic flair, just like our tales of military leaders or athletic superstars get shared in ways that maximize the extraordinary and the heroic.
But the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity is a firsthand account (and in the second half, a contemporaneous account). We should not let the skepticism of our age rob us of properly lauding heroes from an earlier age. If we aren’t careful, we will find ourselves denying the supernatural altogether and wondering if God is too good to be true. In the end, the way to read martyr stories like those of Perpetua and Felicity is for our edification and our inspiration. The last line of the narrative puts it well: “They remind us that one and the same Holy Spirit is always at work, even now, along with God the Father Almighty and his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be glory and infinite power forever and ever. Amen!”
This article is adapted from Church History for Everyone: The Story of Christianity from the Fall of Jerusalem to the Dawn of the Reformation (Volume 1) by Kevin DeYoung.
