Saints Felicity and Perpetua are named in Eucharistic Prayer 1. They lived in Carthage. Perpetua was a young mother and Felicity, her slave, was pregnant. Perpetua’s mother and one of her brothers were Christian. Her other brother was a catechumen. When they were put in prison during the persecutions of 203 under the Emperor Septimus Severus, her father, still pagan, tried hard to persuade his family to renounce their faith. He wasn’t helped when their catechist chose to join them and share their sentence. We know about these martyrs through the diary that Perpetua kept during their imprisonment, which was completed by eyewitnesses after her death. Hers is the first writing of any kind by a Christian woman.
Most early female martyrs are celebrated for the tragedy of being killed while they were still young virgins with their whole lives ahead of them. Felicity and Perpetua were married women making mature choices in the most difficult circumstances.
Perpetua tells her own story: “We were still under surveillance and my father used to vex me with his words. He tried constantly to hurt my faith because he loved me: Father, I said, do you see, for example, this pot lying here, a pitcher, or whatever it might be? And he said, I see it. and I said to him, Can it be called by any other name than what it is? And he said, No. So can I call myself anything other than what I am, a Christian?”
She says this about the trial: “As we were eating we were suddenly taken away to be tried; and we were brought to the forum. My father also appeared with my son. He tried to get me to step down saying, Make the sacrifice (to the Emperor); have mercy on your son! The judge also said, Spare your father and the child. Make the sacrifice. I said, I am a Christian. At this point the judge had my father beaten and thrown out.”
Perpetua recorded the dreams she had while waiting for her execution. She saw other Carthaginian Christians who had died for their faith. One of them spoke in her dream to encourage her. He led her by a very rough path to the arena where she dreamt that she became a man and fought an ugly gladiator to the death. She understood the dream to mean that her real enemy was not the beasts that would kill her but the devil himself who was tempting her to give up her faith.
On the day of the execution, the prisoners were allowed to choose what they would have for breakfast. They used the opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist. The jailers were tackled by one of the deacons who asked them how they could behave as good friends one day, giving them food and drink and allowing them to celebrate according to their faith, and as enemies the next, sending them into the arena. The diary says that the jailers were discomfited by the question and some even became Christian later.
When the day came, the vicious crowd, eager for a bloody spectacle, first tried to dress the martyrs up as gods and goddesses but Perpetua refused the costume. Then they were scourged to draw blood. The men were attacked by a boar, a bear and a leopard. A wild cow was set on the women.[1] When the crowd had had their fun, the executioner finished them off with his sword. Their bodies were taken and buried.
The Church remembers them for their faith, their courage, their persistence (which is common to all saints) and the consequence of their martyrdom. Their example brought many more to give up their savage paganism and start to live more virtuous lives. They were celebrated throughout the Church, not just in Africa but also in Rome. The diary almost achieved the status of Scripture in the early Church.
Author: C B Whittle