The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity · §2 · Passion of Perpetua and Felicity

The arrested youths are introduced

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The editor lists the arrested group and introduces Perpetua before her prison diary begins.

Those arrested were young catechumens: Revocatus and Felicity, his fellow slave, Saturninus and Secundulus. With them was also Vibia Perpetua, well born, educated as a freeborn woman, and married as a matron. She had a father and mother and two brothers, one of them likewise a catechumen, and an infant son still at the breast. She herself was about twenty-two years old. From this point on she herself told the whole course of her own martyrdom, as she left it written in her own hand and felt in her own heart.

Latin

Apprehensi sunt adolescentes catechumini, Reuocatus et Felicitas conserua eius, Saturninus et Secundulus; inter hos et Vibia Perpetua, honeste nata, liberaliter instituta, matronaliter nupta. Habens patrem et matrem et fratres duos, alterum aeque catechuminum, et filium infantem ad ubera. Erat autem ipsa circiter annorum uiginti duo. Haec ordinem totum martyrii sui iam hinc ipsa narrauit, sicut conscriptum manu sua et suo sensu reliquit.

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About this text

The prison diary of Perpetua, a young mother of Carthage, with the visions of Saturus and an editor's account of how she, the slave woman Felicity and their companions died in the arena in 203.

This account was put together by Perpetua, Saturus, and an unnamed editor. Perpetua wrote her prison diary in her own hand, Saturus wrote his own vision, and the editor arranged and supplemented their words with a beginning and an end. It is addressed to fellow Christians, called brothers and little children, who will hear or read the account in the church.

It was written because new visions and martyrdoms had occurred. The editor holds that they should be written down and read in church like older examples, so that God is honored and faith is strengthened rather than supposing that grace worked only in the past. He argues that recent prophecies, visions, and martyrdoms carry the same authority as ancient ones because the Holy Spirit was promised for the last days and God still acts for believers and against unbelievers.

The reader will meet Perpetua, Felicity, Revocatus, Saturninus, Secundulus, Saturus, Dinocrates, Hilarianus, Tertius and Pomponius, Pudens, Optatus, and Aspasius, with Perpetua and Saturus speaking in the first person and the editor speaking around them. Here martyrdom means suffering from arrest to execution accepted as faithful witness, vision means sleep vision received as promised revelation, to confess Christ means to declare Christian identity before interrogation, wild beasts means the arena animals and the public execution, public games means the imperial birthday show where the sentence is carried out, baptism covers water baptism and blood as a second cleansing wash, relief means release from prison misery and suffering after death, and the devil is the opponent met as dragon, serpent, Egyptian, and cow. The work cites the last days promise of the Spirit in the form found in Acts, given here as Joel 2:28-29 and Acts 2:17-18, with ancient book and divine names in modern form such as Jesus Christ, Felicity, Revocatus, Ceres, Saturn, and Geta Caesar.

Printed text used

Translated from Oscar von Gebhardt, Acta martyrum selecta (Berlin: A. Duncker, 1902) (Latin)

This work has passed our source check. We made this study translation with AI help. No scholar has yet certified it as faithful and complete. Open Latin on any section, or the Latin source link, to see the source text. It is not a critical edition.

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