Biography
Vibia Perpetua was a young woman of Carthage, in North Africa, who died for her faith in the year 203. She was about twenty-two years old and of good family. She was well educated and married, and she had an infant son, whom she was still nursing. Her father was a pagan, and her mother and brothers seem to have been Christians. Her husband is not mentioned in the record, and it may be that he was absent or dead. She was among a small group of catechumens, people who were preparing for baptism, who were arrested in Carthage under the persecution of the emperor Septimius Severus. The group included Felicity, a slave woman who was eight months pregnant, and several young men, Saturninus, Secundulus and Revocatus.
The main source for the story is the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, a record that includes a section in her own words, which she wrote in prison. It is one of the earliest known texts written by a Christian woman. It is a diary, in which she described her experiences with unusual honesty. She wrote of her arrest, her fear and the tension with her father. Her father came to her in prison and pleaded with her to give up her faith and to take pity on her child and on him. He fell at her feet and kissed her hands. She was moved with pity, but she did not yield. She said that she could not be called anything other than what she was, a Christian.
She was baptized soon after her arrest. She was in a dark and crowded cell, and she was frightened by the heat and the lack of air. She was worried about her baby. Two deacons paid the guards to allow the prisoners to be moved to a better part of the prison, where they could rest. She was given permission to keep her baby with her, and her anxiety lifted. She said that the prison seemed like a palace. Her brother urged her to ask for a vision to learn whether she would be condemned or set free. She asked, and she had a dream of a ladder of bronze that reached to heaven, with weapons fixed on the sides. At the foot was a dragon. She stepped on its head and climbed up. She understood that she would suffer and that she would be victorious.
In a second vision, she saw her brother Dinocrates, who had died at the age of seven of a cancer on his face. He was in a dark place, hot and thirsty, with a wound on his face. She prayed for him, day and night, with tears. After some days, she saw him again, in a bright place, healed and drinking from a golden bowl that was filled with water. She understood that he had been released from his suffering. The vision reflects the early belief in the effectiveness of the prayer of the martyrs for the dead.
The prisoners were brought before the governor, Hilarianus, and were condemned to be thrown to the wild beasts in the arena. At the hearing, her father appeared again, holding her son, and begged her to offer a sacrifice. The governor himself appealed to her to have pity on her father's gray hairs and her infant son. She said that she would not. When her father tried to force her, the governor ordered him to be beaten with a rod. She felt as if she had been struck herself. She was returned to prison. She was unable to nurse her child any longer, and her milk dried up by God's will, she said, so that she was not in pain.
Felicity gave birth to a girl in prison, a few days before the games. She suffered in labor, and a guard mocked her. She said that in the arena another would suffer for her. The child was given to a Christian woman to raise. On March 7, 203, the prisoners were led into the amphitheater. They were joyful. Perpetua walked with a calm face. The women were stripped and put in nets and exposed to a wild cow. When the cow had tossed them, she and Felicity were brought back, bruised. She covered herself with her torn tunic and tied up her hair, so that she might not appear to be in mourning. She was seized by the arm and helped a young gladiator, who was shaking, to find the place to strike. The account says that she guided his trembling hand to her own throat.
The record of her death was added by an editor, who may have been the African writer Tertullian. Her story has been told for nearly eighteen hundred years. She is remembered for her courage and for her love of her father and son. Her life shows the cost of faith for a young mother and how the strength of a woman may be given in a time of trial.