The passion of Perpetua - Christian woman martyred in Carthage in A.D. 203

Past & Present, May, 1993 by Brent D. Shaw

This public blood bath is a difficult document to read on many levels. The systematic cruelty, the levels and types of violence vented on the bodies of the prisoners, all part of a planned public celebration of imperial power, were neither unusual nor particularly extraordinary.(26) But the passion of Perpetua is less remarkable for all of these facts than it is for something quite different: Perpetua's account of her arrest, detainment in prison, and experiences leading up to her execution. Given that all the information we have concerning her is derived from this singular document, not much can be said about her social background that might explain her unusual actions. We know that she was part of a group of persons who were arrested on the charge of being a Christian, perhaps in the aftermath of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus' decrees of 202 that forbade conversion to Judaism and to Christianity.(27) As the Greek text of her martyrdom makes clear, she and her companions were arrested in the town of Thuburbo Minus about thirty-six Roman miles (fifty-three kilometres or so) on the Bagrada River to the west of Carthage.(28) In the midst of one of the wealthiest and most highly developed agricultural regions of all of north Africa, and in close proximity to one of the great cities of the empire, Thuburbo Minus would have to be ranked as a local centre of some consequence. Its local ruling class was, no doubt, relatively well-off by contemporary standards.

The "family" name of Vibia Perpetua ("Vibius") indicates a family that had held Roman citizenship for many generations before the time of her arrest.(29) She is described as "of high birth, educated in a manner befitting her status and formally and properly married", all terms normally used to describe a woman of higher social standing.(30) The descriptors are brief, but would suggest that she was from a family that was from the "more honest" ranks of Roman society -- probably from the decurial class of the town of Thuburbo Minus.(31) She came, therefore, from a solid municipal family, no doubt of some local wealth and prestige. She was arrested along with other young catechumens, two of whom, Revocatus and Felicitas, are specified as being slaves (Felicitas specifically as the conserva, or fellow female-slave, of Revocatus(32). Two other men arrested, Saturninus and Secundulus, were of unspecified social status (the latter was to die in prison, and therefore was not part of the group executed in the arena: 14.2). The introduction to the account of her martyrdom also provides a few basic facts about Vibia Perpetua's family background: she had a father and a mother still living, as well as two living brothers, one of whom was a Christian catechumen. From a report in one of her visions we know that at some previous time a younger brother, named Dinocrates, had died when he was only six years old, apparently from a terrible cancer of the face (7.4-5). Her own family situation is rather unclear. She was married, though her husband is never referred to once, either by herself (most importantly) or by any of the contextual material in the larger account that brackets her own words. His absence is something to be noted, and to be explained. Perpetua herself is described as being near the end of her twenty-first year in age, that is to say, twenty years old in our terms. At the time of her arrest, she had a baby boy whom she was still breast-feeding. There are no indications of any other children. The boy was presumably her first child, and would therefore indicate that she was married at about age eighteen or nineteen -- a paradigm of matrimonial normality.(33)