The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Martyrs' Church
Perpetua of Carthage
c. 182–203Roman North AfricanEarly church martyr
A 22-year-old mother who kept a diary in prison and walked into the arena singing.
Summary
- Lived c. 182–203, Roman North African.
- Stood in The Martyrs' Church (AD 100–313).
- Hangs on The Martyrs.
- Tradition: Early church martyr.
The life
Vibia Perpetua was a young noblewoman of Carthage, newly a mother and newly a believer, when the emperor's edict made her faith a capital crime. Her father came to the prison again and again to beg her to recant; she answered that she could no more be called anything but what she was, a Christian. The diary she kept in prison, finished by an eyewitness after her death, is one of the earliest pieces of Christian writing we have from a woman's own hand. On the day of the games she and her servant Felicity, who had given birth in prison days before, went into the arena together and died together. The account was read aloud in North African churches for centuries.
What was happening while he lived2 moments · AD 100–313
- 177The martyrs of Lyons and VienneMob violence in Gaul turned into arrests, torture, and days in the amphitheater. The churches there wrote an account that Eusebius preserved (*Church History* 5.1). Two names stayed: Pothinus, the bishop, over ninety years old, who died in prison, and Blandina, a slave woman whose owners feared she would break first and who outlasted them all.
- c. 203Perpetua and Felicity die in the arenaVibia Perpetua, a young mother of good family in Carthage, and Felicity, a pregnant slave woman, were arrested with several companions. Perpetua kept a prison diary that survives inside *The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity*, one of the earliest firsthand writings we have from a Christian woman. Felicity gave birth in prison days before they were sent out to the beasts.
Go further
Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.
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Why this one hangs here
A 22-year-old mother who kept a diary in prison and walked into the arena at Carthage singing.
Hangs on The Martyrs: The witnesses who paid with their lives, from the arena at Carthage to the present day, and the confessors who paid with everything short of their lives.
Standing beside himThe Martyrs' Church · 40 on this stretch of wall
Stayed with his people through plague and persecution, then walked to his own beheading and paid the executioner.
Traced his teaching straight back to the apostle John through Polycarp, and wrote the first great takedown of the gnostics.
Kept wearing his philosopher's cloak after he met Christ, argued the faith to the emperor's face, and was beheaded for it.
Wanted to die with his martyred father as a boy, and spent the rest of his life laying six versions of the Old Testament side by side.
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The lawyer who gave the church the word Trinity and told Rome that the blood of the martyrs is seed.
Built Jerusalem's great Christian library and died in chains at Caesarea.