Our Patron Saint

Feast Day, March 7

Died in Carthage, Tunisia, 203.

           Sometimes we have the impression that Christians were persecuted always and
           everywhere prior to the Edict of Milan in 312; conversely, many do not know
           about persecutions that occurred in Europe after Christianity was the established
           religion. Neither was the case. Persecutions tended to be sporadic and localized.
           Today's martyrs died during a local persecution at Carthage in North Africa.

           Why was popular sentiment so set against Christianity? For some good insights
           you might pick up the book The Christians as the Romans saw them by Robert L.
           Wilken (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). Basically, Christians were seen
           as outsiders--they refused to belong to trade guilds, attend theatrical performances
           or the games, or enter private houses, the baths, nor markets because in each of
           these places the gods were honored and sacrifices made.

           Christians were also believed to celebrate mysterious rites at night that included
           human sacrifice (we eat the body and drink the blood of Christ), while impiously
           refusing due sacrifice to the gods--a patriotic obligation of every Roman citizen.
           The gods of conquered peoples were incorporated into the life of Rome; why did
           these Christians stand aloof?

           The Passion of SS. Perpetua and Felicity with their four male companions is
           perhaps the most moving and impressive of the authentic narratives of the early
           martyrs. The document was written in part by Perpetua herself, in part by another
           of the martyrs, Saturus (her brother), and completed by an anonymous hand
           (believed to have been Tertullian) after the martyrdom. It is detailed and reads like
           a diary in the sections written by Perpetua. The story's fascination is so great that
           Saint Augustine had to forbid his priests from placing it on the same level as the
           Holy Scriptures.

           In 202 AD in Carthage, Emperor Septimius Severus issued an edict that no one
           was to become a Christian. Vibia Perpetua was a 22- year-old catechumen with a
           small son. She may have been a widow for her husband is never
           mentioned. Her father was a Roman proconsul and a pagan, her mother a
           Christian, her brother a catechumen. Her son was taken away and she was
           imprisoned in a private home with other catechumens--Felicity (her slave),
           Revocatus (Felicity's husband and a slave), Secundulus, Saturninus. There they
           were all baptized, probably by their catechist, Saturus, who joined them of his own
           free will to strengthen them.

           Later they were all transported to prison. Perpetua was given permission to keep
           her child with her in prison. She who had been so gently nurtured found prison
           conditions almost unbearable, yet she persisted in her faith. Conditions were so
           bad that Secundulus died in prison. The Bible speaks joyfully of songs in the
           nights, and Perpetua and her companions prayed and sang in their darkest hour to
           the glory of God.

           Her brother asked her to pray to discern their fate; thus, she dreamed of a ladder
           beset with knives and with a dragon at its base. Saturninus climbed first, she
           followed, trampling on the head of the dragon. She stepped off the ladder into a
           pasture, where a Shepherd sat with His flock. He greeted her, "Welcome, child."
           and gave her "milk and cheese that He had milked."

           Saturus writes that he saw another vision of the elders before the throne of God
           who told her: "Go and play." In the vision, Perpetua observed, "I was happy in the
           flesh. Now I am far happier."

           Thrice she refused her father's plea to renounce her faith outwardly. When she
           was taken before the tribunal, her father took her baby, who thereafter,
           miraculously did not need his mother's milk and her breasts dried up.

           She prayed for her brother Dinocrates, who died at age seven without having been
           baptized, and came to know he was in heaven. I believe that this passage attests to
           the antiquity of the belief in purgatory--that it was a common understanding.
           Remembering that Perpetua is a catechumen who had been raised in a pagan
           family helps to put the passage in perspective.

                "7. A few days after, while we were all praying, suddenly in the midst
                of the prayer I uttered a word and named Dinocrates; and I was
                amazed because he had never come to my mind save then; and I
                sorrowed, remembering his fate [he had died at age seven]. And
                straightway I knew that I was worthy, and that I ought to ask for him.
                And I began to pray for him long, and to groan unto the Lord.
                Forthwith the same night, this was shown me.

                "I beheld Dinocrates coming forth from a dark place, where there were
                many others also; being both hot and thirsty, his raiment foul, his color
                pale; and the wound on his face which he had when he died. This
                Dinocrates had been my brother in the flesh, seven years old, who
                being diseased with ulcers of the face had come to a horrible death, so
                that his death was abominated of all men. For him therefore I had made
                my prayer; and between him and me was a great gulf, so that either
                might not go to the other. There was moreover, in the same place were
                Dinocrates was, a font full of water, having its edge higher than was the
                boy's stature; and Dinocrates stretched up as though to drink. I was
                sorry that the font had water in it, and yet for the height of the edge he
                might not drink.

                "And I awoke, and I knew that my brother was in travail. Yet I was
                confident I should ease his travail; and I prayed for him every day till
                we passed over into the camp prison. (For it was in the camp games
                that we were to fight; and the time was the feast of Geta Caesar.) And I
                made supplication for him day and night with groans and tears, that he
                might be given me.

                "8. On the day when we abode in the stocks, this was shown me.

                "I saw that place which I had seen before, and Dinocrates clean of
                body, finely clothed, in comfort; and where the wound was before, I
                saw a scar; and the font I had seen before, the edge of it being drawn
                down to the boy's navel; and he drew water thence which flowed
                without ceasing. And on the edge was a golden cup full of water; and
                Dinocrates came up and began to drink therefrom; which cup failed
                not. And being satisfied he departed away from the water and began to
                play as children will, joyfully.

                "And I awoke. Than I understood that he was translated from his
                pains" (translation by Walter Shewring).

           Perpetua had another dream of fighting an Ethiopian before a celestial umpire in
           the amphitheater. This let her understand that the final battle would be one against
           evil.

           Felicitas was due to give birth in another month, and it was forbidden to give a
           pregnant woman to the beasts, so she was anxious lest she not be allowed to die
           with the others. In birth pangs, she was taunted with the pains she would suffer
           when she would be thrown to the beasts and replied, "Now it is I who suffer. But
           there, Another will be within me, who will suffer for me, and I for Him." A
           Christian woman adopted her baby daughter, who was one month premature.

           Their final meal together on the eve of the Emperor's birthday was celebrated as a
           "love-feast." The jailer Pudens was converted to Christ by this spiritual grace and
           grandeur. The next day they entered the amphitheater and freely gave their lives.

           Perpetua, we are told, was radiant and high-spirited. She was young and glorious,
           and all who saw her were moved by her youth and beauty as without hesitation
           she stepped into the stadium, refusing to wear the vestments of the pagan temple.
           They were scourged in union with Christ's passion. Saturninus and Satyrus were
           lacerated by a leopard and a bear, but not killed.

           The women were stripped, but reclothed because their tortured bodies offended
           the crowd, and given to a mad cow. Perpetua went first; after the ordeal, she fixed
           her hair beforehand, lest it be thought that she was grieving, then went to Felicitas
           and lifted her from the ground--not knowing that they had already withstood the
           test.

           When next it was the turn of her brother and Rusticus, she begged them to stand
           firm. After all had been tortured, they were thrown together for the deathstroke.
           There they managed to exchange the Kiss of Peace. When the executioner came to
           Perpetua, he hesitated and his first blow failed. She herself guided the sword for a
           second, fatal blow. "Perhaps so great a woman, feared by the unclean spirit, could
           not have been slain unless she so willed it."

           Their feast soon gained fame in the Christian Church and is recorded in the earliest
           Roman and Syriac calendars. They were buried in the Basilica Majorum in
           Carthage.

           These details need to be combined with those found elsewhere for a more
           complete story (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley, Delaney, Encyclopedia, Gill,
           Martindale, Sheed, White).

           I highly recommend that anyone reading this far, find and read the original,
           well-authenticated account written by Saint Perpetua herself. It reads like a diary.
           A translation of the complete Passio can be found in Sheed's Saints are not sad,
           pp. 7-18; I've also found it other places.

           In art, SS. Perpetua and Felicity are two maidens with a wild cow or ox in the
           amphitheater (Roeder).