Perpetua and Felicity
Vibia Perpetua
- Lived
- c. 182–203
- Era
- The fathers
- Where
- Carthage, North Africa
- Tradition
- The apostolic communities
A martyr's prison diary, in her own hand
A young woman of good family at Carthage, arrested with her pregnant slave Felicity and several companions, and killed in the arena during a birthday spectacle for the emperor's son. Most of the account is her own prison diary.
Why it matters
It is the earliest surviving writing by a Christian woman, and among the earliest by any woman in Latin. It records her father begging her to recant, the birth of Felicity's child in prison, and four visions, in one of which she fights as a man in the arena — material no later hagiographer would have invented. Augustine preached on them two centuries later, by which time their day was kept across North Africa.
In the record
-
64–313 AD Persecution
Imperial persecutions
Killed in the arena at Carthage
All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.