For over a millennium before the birth of St Thomas Aquinas, March 7th was the feast day of Ss Perpetua and Felicity, two young women who were martyred in the stadium at Carthage on this day in the year 203. Their feast is already noted on the Philocalian Calendar in the mid-4th century, and they are first among the women named in the Communicantes of the Roman Canon, since they predate the other five. They have a Mass is in the Gelasian Sacramentary (750 AD) and the Gellone (780 AD), although they are missing from many other liturgical books of the same era, perhaps because March 7 almost always falls in Lent, when the Roman tradition discourages the keeping of too many feasts. They are included in the ordinal of Innocent III (1198-1216), the ancestor of the Tridentine liturgical books.
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| Ss Perpetua and Felicity (in the middle, directly above the medallion portrait of a bishop), depicted in the company of many other holy women in a 6th century mosaic in the basilica of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0) |
The primary source for our knowledge of them is the original account of their passion, which the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints rightly describes as “one of the greatest hagiological treasures that have come down to us.” This is not only because it gives us an eye-witness account of their martyrdom, one which is universally acknowledged to be authentic, but also because it incorporates a diary which Perpetua kept while she was in prison awaiting execution.
Both women were still catechumens at the time of their arrest alongside three others, Saturninus, Secundulus, and Revocatus, the last a slave like Felicity. (The Roman liturgical tradition, however, celebrates only Perpetua and Felicity by name.) Their catechist, a man named Saturus, soon joined the group voluntarily. Perpetua was only twenty-two, a woman of a noble family, recently married to a prominent man, and a new mother. In her diary, she describes how her father came to visit her, and grew very angry with her when she refused to abandon the Faith; later on, he would return to her and plead with her to take pity on him for the sake of his old age, and likewise, for her infant son, whom she was still nursing.
Felicity was in her eighth month of pregnancy, and anxious that she might be deprived of the chance to die as a martyr, since Roman law forbade that a pregnant woman be put to death. The soon-to-be martyrs prayed for her, and after much travail, she was safely delivered of a baby girl, who would then be raised by her sister. While she was in her birth-pangs, one of the prison-guards asked her how she could hope to face the pain of being attacked by wild beasts. To this she replied, “I myself now suffer that which I suffer, but there (i.e. in the stadium) Another shall be in me who shall suffer for me, because I am to suffer for Him.”
The diary also includes extensive accounts of the visions which were vouchsafed to her during her imprisonment. In one of these, she beheld a ladder of bronze reaching to heaven, fitted out along its rungs with various dangerous weapons, and a serpent at its base, representing the combat she was about to undertake.
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| A Dutch engraving of St Perpetua’s vision, 1740. |
In another, she beheld her brother Dinocrates, who had died very painfully of some kind of ulcer or cancer on his face when he was only seven. In the first vision, he appeared still disfigured, in a dark place, hot and thirsty, but unable to drink from a fountain which was too tall for him to reach, and separated from her “by a great gulf”, certainly a reference to the parable of Lazarus and Dives. From this vision, she knew that she was to pray for him, which she did assiduously, and after several days, she beheld him again, now healed, and able to drink from the fountain, “And being satisfied he departed away from the water and began to play as children will, joyfully.” This is, of course, an incredibly important testimony to the early Christians’ belief in the efficacy of their prayers for the dead.
This was followed by another vision of herself as if she were a male gladiator in combat, triumphing as the leader of a troop over a large Egyptian and his supporters. Saturus also had a vision of their company in the presence of God and some other martyrs who had recently been burnt alive or died in prison.
The account of the martyrdom itself that follows these visions was written by an anonymous eyewitness. Some scholars have posited that the author may have been the apologist Tertullian, but this is far from widely accepted. On their last night, they were given a final meal, which they kept as a Christian agape feast. This was held in a place where people were able to come and gawk at them, but many were deeply moved by their words and behavior, and wound up converting.
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| The Martyrdom of Ss Perpetua, Felicity and Companions, depicted in the Menologion of Basil II (ca 1000 A.D.) |
When they were brought to the stadium, the soldiers in charge wished to dress them in the clothing of pagan priests, but backed off from this at Perpetua’s forceful remonstration. Because of their general attitude of rejoicing and bold acceptance of their face, the crowd grew enraged against them, and when they spoke of God’s judgment against the man in charge of the games, the governor Hilarian, he had them scourged, but this only brought them to give thanks at the opportunity to share in one of the sufferings that the Lord Himself had endured.
The men were set upon by wild beasts, a leopard, a bear and a wild boar, but the latter turned upon its keeper and fatally wounded him, while the bear refused to come out of the pen where it was kept, even when Saturus was tied up to a pole in front of it. He was then killed by the leopard. The women were trampled on and tossed about by a savage cow, and after being badly injured, given the coup-de-grace by gladiators. But soldier assigned to kill Perpetua was inexperienced, and she had to guide his sword to her own throat. The account of their death ends with these poignant words: “Perhaps so great a woman, one who was feared by the unclean spirit, could not otherwise have been slain, had she not herself so willed it.”
Four sermons which St Augustine preached on their feast day have been preserved. In the first of these, he begins by making a play on the martyr’s names, speaking of the perpetual felicity which they enjoy in heaven, and also refers to the custom which prevailed in many places by which the acts of the martyrs were read during the Mass.
“This day, as an annual recurrence, reminds us, and in a certain way, sets before us the day on which the holy servants of God, Perpetua and Felicity, adorned with the crowns of martyrdom, flourished unto perpetual felicity, holding onto the name of Christ in their combat, and at the same, time, finding also their own names (i.e. “perpetual felicity”.) as a reward. As the account was being read, we heard how they were encouraged by divine revelations, and the triumphs of their passion; we have listened, we have beheld in our minds, we have honored with devotion, we have praised with charity all of their words, as explained and clarified for us.”
