Maninee Maity, UG III, Roll 02
“There were apprehended the young catechumens, Revocatus and Felicity his fellow servant, Saturninus and Secundulus. With them also was Vibia Perpetua, nobly born reared in a liberal manner, wedded honourably; having a father and mother and two brothers, one of them a catechumen likewise, and a son, a child at the breast; and she herself was about twenty-two years of age. What follows here shall she tell herself; the whole order of her martyrdom as she left it written with her own hand and in her own words.” (Shewring, 1)
This is how the unknown redactor who preserved Perpetua’s account of her imprisonment and collated it with those of Saturus and an eye witness to their deaths, ends his Prologue. Following this we have the first-hand account of Vibia Perpetua, a twenty-two-year-old wife and mother in Carthage, born to a free and possibly well-to-do family, who were most likely, as Gold believes “thoroughly Romanized, having probably received citizenship under Tiberius” (Gold, 238). Perpetua was arrested in 203 A.D. along with four others- Revocatus, Felicitas (then pregnant), Secundulus and Saturninus. Their instructor who was converting them, Saturus, turned himself in to the authorities so that his disciples would not have to suffer alone. During her imprisonment Perpetua had four visions and her first hand account of them is the earliest prose piece in Latin by any woman, making it a landmark in the history of Christian martyrdom and an early influence on the accounts of later martyrs.
In this paper I shall attempt to examine some aspects of Perpetua’s gender, motherhood and youth, in relation to her status as a martyr.
Perpetua’s account is remarkable in other ways as well. The details of her dreams pose important questions for Christian thinkers such as the relevance of a martyr’s gender, whether unbaptised children can be allowed to enter heaven, how much were Early Christians influenced by the Roman religion, etc.
Perpetua’s account chronicles an argument with her father prior to her arrest, her imprisonment, her family’s visit, her first vision concerning an ascent to (what is presumably) paradise, a second encounter with her father, her trial, her two visions concerning her deceased seven year old brother, a third meeting with her father and lastly her fourth and final vision, which showed her an allegorical version of her martyrdom.
Her writing is simple, unaffected and therefore easy to sympathise with. She recounts simply her arrest,
“In this same space of a few days we were baptised, and the Spirit declared to me, I must pray for nothing else after that water save only endurance of the flesh. After a few days we were taken into prison, and I was much afraid because I had never known such darkness. O bitter day! There was a great heat because of the press, there was cruel handling of the soldiers. Lastly I was tormented there by care for the child.” (Shewring, 3)
Perpetua does not speak of her ordeals with any sense of self-importance, nor does she attempt to project herself as a martyr. The addition of simple details like her fear of the darkness makes her account relatable and sympathetic. Dronke finds her Latin “colloquial and homely” where “no emotion, no fantasy of Perpetua’s appears disguised by stylistic ornaments” ( Dronke, 1). He adds,
“From the outset we see that Perpetua records her thoughts in an informal, graphic way, which is moving partly because she I not striving to be literary. There are no rhetorical flourishes, no attempts at didacticism or edification. The dialogue is (I think deliberately) artless in its shaping-“
Dronke’s opinion that her rhetoric was “deliberately” artless has evidence to support it. We see that Perpetua could both speak and reason well when it was required in the narrative of martyrdom, where in the account of Perpetua and her companions’ deaths in the arena, the witness recounts how the martyrs were asked to be dressed in the robes of the priests of Saturn and the priestesses of Ceres before stepping into the arena. The group was unwilling to do so and Perpetua argues in front of the tribune for their right to refuse this imposition.
“For she said: For this cause came we willingly unto this, that our liberty might not be obscured. For this cause have we devoted our lives, that we might do no such thing as this; this we agreed with you. Injustice acknowledged justice; the tribune suffered that they should be brought forth as they were, without more ado. (Shewring, 18)”
When it became necessary for her to argue or reason with the authorities, Perpetua speaks briefly, but confidently, on behalf of the group, securing them the right to not wear clothes of Roman rituals. In light of this it is even more remarkable that Perpetua refrained from any grandiose rhetoric in her diary, despite the gravity of her situation. The incident at the arena is an instance of how Perpetua despite her youth and only recent conversion to Christianity maintained her composure and held her own against the Roman authorities and her father- both of whom had greater power and standing than her.
The child, for whose care Perpetua says she is “tormented” in the above extract, complicates her role as a martyr. As a woman in a prominent Romanised household in the early third century A.D., Perpetua’s role as a mother is to uphold the family structure and maintain the family integrity, while as a recent Christian convert living in an empire hostile to Christians, her faith leads her to break away from her family. Perpetua’s defiance and eventual imprisonment separate her from her family and prevent her from carrying out her duties as a daughter and mother.
Salisbury comments on the dichotomy between the values ascribed to motherhood in the third century Roman empire and that of early Christian martyrdom, where one demanded the continuation of culture and values and instilling these values in one’s children, and the other required her to break away from community values and follow one’s personal path to a new religion. Where do we locate Perpetua in this dichotomy? She was both a Christian martyr and a mother. She was a member of a prominent household and was breaking the culture of such a household by following a new religion and refusing to perform the rituals of the state religion. This break from tradition has greater implications because of her motherhood, which paradoxically entrusted with the duty of upholding tradition.
Joyce Salisbury notes how Felicity has to give birth a month early to join her fellow Catechumens on their day of martyrdom and also how Perpetua has to give up the care of her son after the trial (after which she stops lactating and the child too stops wanting to be breast-fed). He finds that their martyrdom demands of them to forfeit their roles as mothers.
“In this account of two martyr-mothers, we can see the degree to which Christians were expected to break the social obligations of motherhood if they were to achieve martyrdom. Both Perpetua and Felicity had to reject their maternal roles if they were to proceed to martyrdom. As significant as the social links that bound mothers were, motherhood represented a physiological state that seems to have been inconsistent with martyrdom.”(Salisbury, 74)
If Salisbury is right, Perpetua shows no recognition of such a demand made on her. She worries about the well being of her child when she is first separated from him, is thankful when reunited and dutifully breast feeds him (note she does not delegate this task to a wet nurse), and when she is finally separated from him for the last time she does not express dismay either in forfeiting motherhood or for her son being deprived of a mother. Felicity does not express any such grief either at having to hand over her child, whom she gives birth to in prison a few days before their deaths. This is not conspicuous since neither of them express any grief for any other family member or friend, and are form the start resigned to their fate. Perpetua’s father is the only one who enunciates her choice as Salisbury sees it- between motherhood and martyrdom. He says to her, “Spare your father’s grey hairs; spare the infancy of the boy. Make sacrifice for the Emperors’ prosperity” (Shewring, 6). Perpetua’s reply, “I am a Christian”, refuses to recognise this choice. She does not acknowledge the choice he presents to her but sees her decision as the only one available to her due to the nature of her being.
However, she does not entirely embody free willed rebellion; she does not break away completely alone, or leave the idea of community entirely behind. This is partly because in her martyrdom and her break from family, she also finds a new community- that of her fellow catechumens, whose attachment to each other is comparable that found in traditional families. Her group of six inmates had become what Salisbury calls “the early Christian communities that became surrogate families for Christians breaking away from pagan society” (Salisbury, 77). We find proof of this in Saturus, their leader who willingly gave himself up so his disciples would not have to die without him.
However, a greater objection to seeing her as an independent and lone rebel figure is her persevering attachment to her family. She, despite defying her father, continues to love him (as Augustine strongly emphasises). She also maintains contact with her mother and brothers – one of whom, like her is a Christian. Two of her visions concern her dead, seven-year-old brother Dinocrates. In the first she seems him poorly clothed, his face covered in sores as they had been during his death, and in pain. Moved by the plight of her brother, she and her fellow catechumens pray for him and Perpetua then has a second vision of him where he is healthy, better clothed and happy. Dronke believes that the episode concerning Dinocrates symbolically signals that “she can give spiritual help to all her family, and it is this that finally relieves her earthly anxieties over them” ( Dronke, 11). These two visions imply that not only does Perpetua sustain contact with her family throughout her imprisonment, she also revisits family ties that were by now likely forgotten over time. Her remembrance and salvation of Dinocrates strengthens her family ties even in her separation from them. Augustine sees the change in Dinocrates’ condition across the two dreams as a result of Perpetua’s prayers. Thus, despite the traditional view of Christian martyrdom in the second and third centuries as a break away from family tradition, Perpetua’s martyrdom encompasses both defiance and ties to family.
St Augustine, writing on Perpetua, finds her gender an issue needed to be overcome to celebrate her martyrdom. Writing in the early fifth century, Augustine delivered three sermons on the martyrs Perpetua and Felicity on the occasion of their feast day. He begins by straightaway addressing the issue of their sex- an indication of the importance of the matter to him. In his sermon number 280, he writes,
“What, after all, could be more glorious than these women, whom men can more easily admire than imitate? But this redounds supremely to the praise of him in whom they believed, and in whose name they ran the race together with faithful zeal, so that according to the inner self they are found to be neither male nor female; so that even as regards the femininity of the body, the sex of the flesh is concealed by the virtue of the mind, and one is reluctant to think about a condition in their members that never showed in their deeds.”(Hill, 72)
Augustine is “reluctant” to think of their sex, which he finds thankfully “concealed” by the “virtue of their mind”. He finds their sex something incongruous to their deeds and therefore tasks himself with explaining it away. At the beginning of his next sermon on the subject (sermon 281) he quotes Ephesians 4:13, saying that Perpetua through her fight in the Roman amphitheater was, “hastening to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”. Hastening, that is, away from her womanhood. He goes on in this sermon to repeatedly assign the credit for Perpetua’s acts to Christ. Although it is a common Christian practice to ascribe great acts of men to the will of god, Augustine takes care to remove any doubt as to who was responsible for Perpetua and Felicity’s greatness. He writes,
“They had done well, I say, to cling to that man, from whom they had drawn the strength to withstand the devil; with the result that women knocked out the enemy, who through woman had knocked out man.” (Hill, 78)
Note the juxtaposition of genders above- Perpetua and Felicity had done well to “cling to the man”, “with the result that women knocked out the enemy”. Augustine seems to deliberately avoid using proper nouns so he can instead contrast the two genders. It is interesting to imagine to what extent Perpetua knowingly or unconsciously sympathised with Augustine’s reservations on the issue of gender and martyrdom, for in her fourth and final vision she sees herself fighting in a Roman arena (as she would in reality the very next day) where she is unclothed and she sees herself become physically a man before the fight. She writes,
“Also there came to me comely young men, my helpers and aiders. And I was stripped naked, and I became a man. And my helpers began to rub me with oil as their custom is for a contest; and over against me saw that Egyptian wallowing in the dust.” (Shewring, 10)
Barbara K. Gold believed that Perpetua saw herself become a man in response to her own deep-seated belief that manhood was necessary to fight her opponent and that as a woman she was insufficient as a fighter. “Perpetua’s sudden and brief transformation in Passio 10.7 into a masculus”,( Gold, 243) she writes,
“is both necessary in order to explain her victory over the large Egyptian man and a sign of confidence in her ability to win. She must prevail because she is fighting for God. Her victory is marked by her signifying male body; her transformation might be seen as a ‘culturally conditioned affirmation of Perpetua’s ultimate victory’”
Throughout her imprisonment Perpetua endures suffering- she withstands this while simultaneously meeting and reassuring her family members of her well-being, while caring for her baby (for a part of her imprisonment) and refusing to recant her Christianity in front of the procurator Hilarian and in face of threats of violence. Despite her grace and resilience during this period as a woman, Perpetua too cannot see herself fight violently in the Roman amphitheater, except as a man. Perpetua’s transformation does not however, seem to be permanent. Barbara Gold and Margaret Cotter-lynch write at length on how Perpetua’s gender grammatically varies throughout the account- right up till the end where the Gladiator-like figure (the Supreme Judge in her vision) addresses her affectionately as “daughter” before leading her to the Gate of Life[1].
Augustine finds her gender the source of an important reversal of the first temptation. He refers to the devil as “the enemy who through women had knocked out man”, to remind us of the first temptation. Perpetua’s gender is important because as a female martyr she is a source of salvation, salvation from a condition wrought upon man by woman in the Genesis. Describing Felicity giving birth in prison he writes, “The punishment of Eve was not missing, but the grace of Mary was at hand.” (Hill, 79)
Perpetua and Felicity as female martyrs are figured in terms of two binaries- that of Eve the temptress and Mary, the mother of God. It is pertinent to ask how much of their individual natures remain in discourse, once female martyrs are seen as successors of Mary or Eve.
As a woman, Perpetua is expected to have a male guardian. Her husband finds no mention in the Passio Perpetuae; it is possible they were estranged, that he was away or that she had left him after converting to Christianity. By Roman law her husband is meant to have custody of her children yet she hands them over to her mother and brother after her trial. It is her father instead who acts as a male guardian. He visits her twice during her imprisonment and is present at the trial, holding her child, trying to dissuade her from her convictions. On his first visit he reminds Perpetua of her filial duty to him and of the love he bore to her. Augustine finds the choice of “tempter” here interesting. He comments on the inversion of the temptation (that here it was man who would tempt woman)- the subject of the first temptation being one he returns to repeatedly.
“That old and crafty enemy had once, of course, beguiled a man through a woman; so in order to let slip no opportunity of treachery, and because he sensed that this woman was reacting to him in a manly way, he very sensibly tried to overcome her through a man.” (Hill, 78)
Although the absence of her husband might allow detractors to question Perpetua’s character (even so far as to question the paternity of her son), Augustine sees this as a reason to commend her. He reasons that the choice of who the devil sends to tempt Perpetua is a sign of her nature. Had her husband been sent to persuade her it would have reflected poorly on Perpetua- a sign that the devil thought she could be persuaded by carnal desire. That her father is sent to draw her from Christianity is proof that if she were to be persuaded at all, it would not be out of carnal desire but out of respect for her parents as commanded by god. Augustine finds her rejection of her father moderate and “that she neither violated the commandment by which honour is owed to parents, nor yielded to the tricks which the real enemy was practicing” (Hill, 79).
Not everyone would look as favourably upon her interaction with her father, which was likely to confirm the contemporary belief that Christianity encouraged men and women to forsake social ties. Salisbury notes,
“Perpetua seemed to break the filial ties with her father somewhat easily, confirming the anti-Christian polemicist Celsius’s opinion that Christians were ‘destroying the traditional authority of the pater-familias.'” (Salisbury, 72)
Celsius would not be entirely wrong. In the Passio Perpetuae we see Perpetua’s father stripped of his authority, he changes from the head of the family to a supplicant at Perpetua’s feet. In the beginning of the Passio he is the one driven to anger and loses his composure while talking to her. He lunges at her, seemingly to attack her but she remains unfazed, retains her hold over herself and answers calmly. Although his ability to feign an attack may mark authority of a kind, his subsequent encounters with her relieve him of even such a command. Henceforth he is described as “kissing” her hands and “grovelling” at her feet, asking her to have pity on him; in his final visit to her he falls on his face and plucks at his beard.
The Passio marks more than one inversion of hierarchy. Cotter-Lynch marks how remarkable it is that Perpetua, a young Catechumen who received a hasty baptism prior to her imprisonment, is granted visions in stead of her teacher Saturus. He asks her for a vision, showing that he is aware of her ability and she too appears confident of this because she unhesitatingly replies that she will receive a vision and tell him of it- by the very next day. The next morning, after her vision she tells Saturus the meaning of her vision showing that even as a recent convert she has the skills to decipher visions herself. Because of her youth and gender, it is easy to undermine Perpetua’s agency in choosing a marginalised faith; one might even imagine her as naïve or gullible and led astray by commanding preacher. Her diary and the account by the eye witness to her death furnish evidence to the contrary. Perpetua, through her visions, her arguments with her father and before the procurator, establishes herself as an individual, with her own capacity and standing.
On this subject, we must examine her reasons for persevering in Christianity despite the pressure to recant. The Passio begins with such an argument between Perpetua and her father over the names of objects and people. Her father asks her to recant her faith and she answers by pointing to a vase and asking him if she could call it by any other name- inferring finally that as a Christian she could be called by no other name. At the tribunal, before she steps in front of Hilarian, her father begs her to reconsider, to “spare the child”. Perpetua replies again, “I am a Christian”. She does not give any reason to justify her actions, apart from stating what she is. She argues, in brief, that Christianity is the nature of her being and she can only act in accordance with it. To act otherwise would be to alter her being, not her judgement. Dronke calls Perpetua’s quibble over the names of things “the notion that names are not arbitrary, that there is a primordial, divinely ordained harmony between names and things”. This “notion” implies for Perpetua, according to Dronke, that to, “depart from the true name for a thing is to falsify”, Perpetua cannot recant her Christianity because once having named herself a Christian, she has become one. “It expresses her essence”, says Dronke (Dronke, 5). Her father also takes part in this line of reasoning. In his first visit to her in prison he refers to her as “Lady”, not “daughter”. Cotter-Lynch notes this,
“Simultaneously, we see the father undermining expected earthly categories, as he presents himself to his daughter as supplicant, and returns to the refrain of how one might speak, and what one might be called (“If I am worthy to be called father by you”).” (Cotter-Lynch, 24)
Like Saturus, Perpetua’s father also recognises that in light of Perpetua’s self-command and resolve the norms of hierarchy and authority do not stand. This break from social norms, from accepted hierarchies which Perpetua demonstrates, makes it difficult for Augustine, writing in the fifth century, to accommodate her as a martyr to be emulated. Augustine wrote at a time when Christianity had become a majoritarian religion, no longer comprising mostly of lone followers who had broken away from their families, but of entire families and communities where order and discipline must be maintained. As Cotter-Lynch, puts it, “Augustine’s sermons explicitly figure Perpetua as admirable but not imitable” (Cotter-Lynch, 63); the questions to hierarchy posed by her acts would have to be resolved before hailing her as a role model. Augustine while praising her is careful to note that as glorious as she may be, she must not be imitated. He asks, “What, after all, could be more glorious than these women, whom men can more easily admire than imitate?” (Hill, 72). One way of ameliorating the perhaps unwanted qualities that Perpetua might inspire was to attribute all her acts to god, as has been discussed earlier.[2]
To understand how moving the aspect of Perpetua’s youth, gender and motherhood is, we can look to the account by the witness to the group’s martyrdom. The anonymous account notes how the crowd, when they saw how young Perpetua was and how Felicity was a young mother, reacted.
“They were stripped therefore and made to put on nets; and so they were brought forth. The people shuddered, seeing one a tender girl, the other her breasts yet dropping from her late childbearing. So they were called back and clothed in loose robes.”
Salisbury notes the crowd’s “squeamish”ness on seeing Felicity’s breasts leaking milk. He finds this inconsistent with the crowd’s lack of sympathy for the martyrs and concludes that this surprise in a crowd on seeing signs of otherhood on Felicity was because of their inability to reconcile the state of motherhood with that of martyrdom. (Salisbury, 74)
Perpetua in the amphitheatre herself took care to maintain the norms of respectability expected from women. Even as she is thrown to the beasts, she takes care to cover herself up when her robe is torn at the side and pins her hair up when it falls loose. This cannot be read too far in terms of her gender since not only she but her fellow martyrs as well took pains to seem joyous at their fate and eager to die for their faith. Perpetua here does not have much choice but to maintain a look of joy according to the standards set for her as a woman.
Critics have found that the four visions of Perpetua, despite having Christian subjects- an ascent to heaven, her brother’s soul and lastly her future martyrdom- contain much imagery from Roman religion and Classical literature. “Furthermore,” E.R. Dodds writes, on the subject of her visions, “these dreams have little of the specifically Christian colouring which we should expect to find in a pious fiction (and which we do find in the vision of Satyrus)” (Dodds, 51).
Details such as the ‘Supreme Judge’ in her last vision being a trainer of gladiators and not Christ, her reward not being the martyr’s crown but the “golden apples of the Hesperides”, the nature of her brother’s misery (having a source of water just out of reach), etc, Dodds suggests are based more on “ancient pagan notions” than on Christian symbolism- which he finds to be natural in a recent convert to Christianity (Dodds, 51-52). His suggestion raises important questions regarding Perpetua’s understanding of Christianity. Of course, she was not alone in finding pagan imagery seep into her understanding of Christianity.
Paul Johnson notes the inconsistency between accepted mainstream/canonical Christian belief and that of the early Christians and even Christian martyrs. He notes how they were liable to practice unorthodox superstitions (such as prophecy), which attracted the attention of the Roman authorities- sometimes leading to crackdowns on Christian communities. He adds, “The great majority of the early martyrs were Christians of a type which the Church would later classify as heretic” (Johnson, 62).
He also notes how early Christian believers’ faith carried symbols, rituals and other elements of other cults and religions. He notes how many early Christians “did not make a clear distinction between this sun-cult and their own” going so far as to refer to “Christ ‘driving his chariot across the sky’” (Johnson, 58). Constantine himself worshiped the Sun god till his death. Religious beliefs and imagery were not separated into water-tight compartments and early Christians’ faith carried remnants of older faiths.
As Johnson points out,
“The first stories of martyrs reflect not only Jewish martyrologies, as one might expect, but a form of literature echoing the defiant opposition of Greek rebels against Roman domination.” (Johnson, 62)
When we see the pagan Roman symbolism in Perpetua’s dreams, we may note what Dronke says about the sources of Perpetua’s visions. He reminds us that as a recent convert she had had an upbringing rooted in Classical Latin and that the symbols and figures in her dreams were sourced “from what she had heard and read”- which was by no means exclusively Christian literature. He adds,
“That is, she was new to biblical texts, but must have been familiar with a number of classical ones. […] the most important literary stimulus to the images in her dreams may well be Vergil rather than the Bible”(Dronke, 7)
The symbolism in her visions are a marker of the gradual transition, not only personal but of the community, that takes place in a new religion.
Perpetua’s account tells us much about the Early Christian community in Carthage and the interaction of gender and motherhood with martyrdom. The four dreams of Perpetua themselves have much to offer to studies in the interaction between pagan and Christian ideas; the remembrance of Perpetua and discussions on baptism, motherhood and women that it generated were foundational in Early Christian thought.
Works Cited
- Cotter-Lynch, Margaret. Saint Perpetua across the Middle Ages: Mother, Gladiator, Saint. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
- Dodds, Eric Roberstson. Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
- Freeman, Charles. A New History of Early Christianity. London: Yale University Press, 2009.
- Gold, Barbara K. Gender Fluidity and Closure in Perpetua’s Prison Diary. New York. https://eugesta-revue.univ-lille3.fr/pdf/2011/Gold.pdf
- Hill, Edmund, translator. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century: Sermons III/8 (273-305A) on the Saints. New York: New City Press, 1994.
- Johnson, Paul. A History of Christianity. New York: Touchstone, 1979.
- Salisbury, Joyce E. The Blood of Martyrs: Unintended Consequences of Ancient Violence. New York: Routledge, 2004.
- Shewring, Walter, translator. The Passion of SS. Perpetua and Felicity, MM. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/perpetua.asp
[1] For more on this, refer to Gold, 245-148; Cotter-Lynch 29-32
[2] For more on this subject refer to Cotter-Lynch, “Saint Augustine’s Sermons on Perpetua”, Saint Perpetua across the Ages: Mother, Gladiator, Saint.
History, Literature, Criticism 