   |
|
|
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).