Perpetua's Defiance: A Tale of Faith and Rebellion in Ancient Carthage

Exploring the Life and Martyrdom of Vibia Perpetua Through the Lens of History and Culture

{Trigger Warning: Death, martyrdom, suicide}

Photo by Aleksandr Sali on Unsplash

Imagine being transported back to Carthage, in North Africa of the early 3rd century—a time and place where the long arm of the Roman Empire is at once a bane and a boon to its many citizens. Second only to Rome in wealth, size, and prestige, Carthage is a city built on its own bones. The remnants of earlier annihilation by Rome, its now-protector, still rise out of the skin of the earth in places here.

It is here in the hot African sun, beside the reminders of three Punic wars, beneath the Roman-styled temples, that we place Perpetua.

Vibia Perpetua (of the House of Vibius) was a young Roman woman of twenty-two, newly married, newly mothering. At some point, she converted to Christianity, was arrested for that insult to emperor, and then was martyred.

This will be a two-part post, one to center Perpetua in her background, and the second to explore her visions and death.

We have her prison diary, certainly one of the earliest documents of its type, and often beloved by scholars because it is believed to be our earliest preserved writing from a Christian woman. Part diary, part hagiography (Hag-ee-AH-gra-fee, a saint’s biography), Perpetua records what it was like to die at the hands of the Roman empire, the anxiety she felt over the future of her infant son and father, and the visions she had through this undeniably intense experience. It stands out from any of her contemporaries' accounts of martyrdom; Perpetua doesn't make grand speeches, she records in modest Latin the cadence of real speech, she includes details that might be undignified; inflamed breasts and the drying up of her milk, exhaustion, relief when her father doesn't visit.

For me, Perpetua feels very real.

Perpetua would have deconstructed from a very pious, god-filled Roman religion with specific expectations on her body and behaviors.

Perpetua would have moved from sacred space to sacred space, each associated with a god requiring attention and appeasing, while her father required obedience in making political alliances through marriage and bearing sons, and her emperor would expect her worship and devotion.

It cannot be understated just how many gods Rome had. In animism, every thing has a soul. In Rome, every space had a god and often, more than one. Joyce Salisbury writes that St. Augustine "scornfully noted that the Romans needed three gods to guard the door: Forculus to guard the door, Cardea the hinges; Limentinus the threshold."

A good Roman girl would learn how to honor and appease each god. Dripping wine onto shrines when traveling, making the proper gestures when entering spaces, or sacrificing your best to earn benefits and protection was normal life for a Roman.

Describing this to Colin, he said, "So, a society-wide Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?" Which essentially is true. These were the compulsory rituals performed by Roman people to feel that they were safe. It was everywhere. Everyone participated.

Imagine, just for a moment, all of that shuddering to a halt.

I know that some of you have had the experience of feeling, after years of lively conversation, that your ceiling was just a ceiling and the God you talked to wasn't up there. Some of you have felt that sense of total and utter quiet.

Imagine that for every single space.

A complete and total cessation of this noisy "otherworld" with its demands on you, with its unceasing list of actions and gifts required just for basic safety in a fragile world.

Imagine the first time, daring to skip a ritual you had done a thousand times. The nervousness to do so. The relief when nothing happened.

And what was left was just One God. If the other gods were demonic spirits, the One God could protect you from them. You could ignore all of the Roman code of conduct, wine-dripping, ox sacrificing, all of it, because you weren't beholden to that noisy, grasping otherworld anymore.

You had one responsibility: to worship the One.

No wonder the Romans called Christians atheists.

(Also, the amount of exorcisms performed in this era makes more sense in this context. I'm sure they believed little gods were creeping about everywhere, just looking to take back worship for themselves.)

And Carthage had some gods with extreme demands.

Carthage was a North African city founded or taken over by the Phoenicians when it was (according to legend) founded by a Phoenician princess who came to be known as Queen Dido. A wealthy city just a few days sail from Rome got a lot of attention from the newly expanding empire, and Rome and Carthage engaged in three Punic Wars; Carthage was besieged and burned at the end of the third, its surviving 50,000 citizens sold into slavery. It was abandoned for nearly a century.

Painting of a Roman temple and statuary in North Africa, elephants walking in front of the temple

Later, around 43 BCE, Rome sent 3000 colonists to Carthage to rebuild the city, fusing Roman and African influences and gods. Carthage hung onto its Phoenician gods (Baal-Hammon and his consort Tanit) in the form of Saturn and Caelestis, which had the unfortunate side-effect of prolonging the practice of human sacrifice.

In a Carthaginian cemetery lie the remains of urns filled with the ash and bone of children and animal sacrifice. 20,000 urns are from the 400 - 200 BC era. The Punic Wars caused a major uptick in child sacrifice; 200 noble children were chosen for sacrifice during the first Punic War, another 100 children were volunteered, and families with no children purchased them from the poor. They were killed, and the bodies burned, and if the families shed a tear it was said to nullify the sacrifice. The practice was banned by Rome but seemed to be practiced privately.

So, too, was suicide practiced. While many Romans looked down on the practice, Carthage had a constellation of female role models who ended their lives in protest. Queen Dido built her own pyre and slit her throat atop it, the wife of General Hasdrubal, who lost a Punic war, denounced him as a coward and threw herself into the city's burning wreckage, and there was a princess of Carthage who promised to marry the man who could build an aqueduct for the city, then jumped from its highest point to avoid marrying the man who succeeded.

Carthage had a constellation of female role models who ended their lives in protest.

Perpetua would have been no stranger to dying for a worthy cause.

Perpetua would have been no stranger to dying for a worthy cause.

At some point, Perpetua comes into contact with the Christian community and becomes a catechumen (kat-uh-KYOO-men). Catechumens were those who had become Christian and were preparing for baptism. We see echoes of this in today's religious education and Confirmation.

Gone were the days of Apostle Phillip splashing some guy in a roadside puddle and calling it a day.

Catechumens were invited into the community, received an exorcism to get rid of any creeping gods' influence, were sealed with the sign of the cross, and trained in character and conduct for two to three years before they could be baptized.

Baptism was a whole other rite. After their years of training, on the eve of their baptism, catechumens would fast, be exorcised once again (pesky gods!), and the sign of the cross would be made on the head, ears, and nostrils. Then at daybreak, the group of baptizees would walk to a place of flowing water. There they stripped naked before the whole community (unheard of for modest Roman women) and were anointed with oil from their heads to their soles.

Then she would enter the pool and submerge three times, and upon arising from the water would be wrapped in white robes and given the tastes of paradise: milk and honey.

Early Christianity knew how to throw a good ritual.

At that point, she would be a full member of the community and could participate in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Perpetua would have known about and anticipated this ritual. She might have been nervous, but probably longed for it. She might have seen friends undergo it.

Salisbury lays out Perpetua's timeline like this:

In the warm months of 197 AD, Carthage threw a festival season of Emperor worship that was the equivalent of Christmas, the Super Bowl, Halloween, the Oscars, and New Year all wrapped into one. Houses were decorated, feasts were thrown, and people outdid each other making sacrifices to the emperor.

But some houses weren't decorated. Some people didn't go to feasts.

Some people took the Fest out of Festival.

And it was noted.

The emperor served as the über-god, sewing together vast territories and pantheons. People who hold a religion in common tend not to attack each other, and colonization from Rome came with a handy new religion. Worship the emperor, or else.

Judaism and Christianity were two religions that didn't play nicely with a side-car of emperor worship.

In fact, in the years following this festival season, Emperor Septimius put forth a new edict: No one could convert to Christianity or Judaism.

From there, we know that a governor Hilarianus took charge of Carthage. He was just the sort of man to remember just who was taking the Fest out of Festival, and who would take advantage of Septimius' edict to rid his city of a few more Christian converts.

Upcoming was the 14th birthday of Geta, the youngest son of the emperor, who was progressing with his father around North Africa. Carthage was known for human sacrifice. Hilarianus sought to deliver an impressive birthday present.

Perpetua's diary states that the first to be arrested were the slaves of the Vibii household. But on the night of the arrest, Perpetua, the daughter of the household was caught in the net as well.

She also had a brother who was a catechumen who was not arrested. Did Perpetua step forward to be arrested with her fellows while her brother stood back? Would Romans refuse to arrest a son? Was he not there at the time? We don't know.

As we get further into Perpetua's journal, I must make a brief aside.

There is some division among scholars on whether Perpetua's journal is actually from her hand or was written later. We will likely never solve this to anyone's perfect satisfaction.

As of today, the major consensus is this. There was an original Latin version of this story that had four parts: a narrator section giving a biography of the martyrs, Perpetua's journal, Perpetua's teacher Saturnus' vision, and the narrator's conclusion. From this version was made a newer Latin version and a Greek translation for the wider Christian audience, many of whom spoke Greek.

After a lot of argument, scholars largely believe that the Latin version was first because it retains a sense of being written by separate people, as in the "feel" of the writing changes with the sections. The Greek reads more smoothly, which many scholars attribute to a single translator whose style served to sand out the differences between the sections.

The conclusion of the narrator's section is this:

“Young catechumens were arrested: Revocatus and Felicitas (a woman, eight months pregnant), who was enslaved with him, Saturninus and Secundulus; among them also was Vibia Perpetua, of notable birth, well brought-up, lawfully married. She had a father and mother and two brothers, one of whom was likewise a catechumen, and an infant son at the breast. She was around twenty-two years old.

This entire account of her own martyrdom from this point she has narrated, just as she left behind written in her own hand and from her own experience.”

Perpetua's account begins:

“While we were still under arrest my father out of love for me was trying to persuade me and shake my resolution. 'Father,' said I, 'do you see this vase here, for example, or water pot or whatever?'

'Yes, I do,' he said.

And I told him: 'Could it be called by any other name than what it is?'

And he said, 'No.'

'Well, so too I cannot be called anything other than what I am, a Christian.'

At this my father was so angered by the word 'Christian' that he moved toward me as though he would pluck my eyes out. But he left it at that and departed, vanquished along with his diabolical arguments.

Then for a few days I thanked the Lord that I was free of my father and I was refreshed by his absence. In that interval of a few days we were baptized; and the Spirit told me not to ask for anything else apart from the water except the endurance of the flesh.”

I want to draw your attention to something.

Perpetua was baptized in prison.

Because Christian persecution was so sporadic, there arose a Christian belief that if you were persecuted, it was because God had chosen you. So you better believe that Perpetua and her fellows were fast-tracked past whatever education period they had left as catechumens.

It was probably closer to roadside-puddle baptism than glorious-white-robe-milk-and-honey baptism, but Perpetua, good Roman girl, mother of a nursing infant, daughter of a noble father, spit in the face of the emperor's edict not to convert.

This would be like getting arrested for beating someone up, and then going ahead and just murdering the guy in prison.

Perpetua, Revocatus, Felicitas, Saturninus, and Secundulus had sealed their fate.

Stick around for Part Two, posted Thursday!

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Learn more:

Salisbury, Joyce E. Perpetua's Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Jacobs, Andrew S. In The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas in Late Antiquity. Edited by L. Stephanie Cobb. 1st ed. University of California Press, 2021.