Gender, status and identity in a North African martyrdom,
203 CE[1]
The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis,
the account of the martyrdom of Perpetua and five companions in the neighbourhood
of Carthage[2] in 203 CE, was the work of three writers.[3]
A narrator-editor incorporated Perpetua's prison journal (3-10) and Saturus'
account of a dream (11-13), keeping both in the first person, and flanking
them with an introduction (1-2) and conclusion, describing the martyrdom
(14-21). The narrator linked the documents by, for example, connecting Saturus
being first to die in the arena (21.8) with Perpetua's dream in which Saturus
climbed the ladder ahead of her (4.5). He left it to Perpetua to add Saturus
to the list of martyrs rather than intruding his explanation into her section
of the narrative. As a result, the whole work has a feeling of unity.
Five of the martyrs were young, certainly under the age of thirty. Revocatus,
Felicitas, Saturninus and Secundulus were adolescentes and Perpetua
was about 22 (2.1 and 3).[4] Saturus, their instructor
in the faith, was certainly older than the catechumens he was preparing
for baptism. Revocatus and Felicitas were slaves, while Perpetua was from
a high social stratum, honeste nata, liberaliter instituta, matronaliter
nupta (2. 2). There were additional complications for the women related
to their gender: Perpetua had an infant son at the breast and Felicitas
was pregnant when arrested and delivered while in prison. Among the six
martyrs, then, were slave and free, male and female, learners and teacher
and they or some of them interacted with church officials (deacons Tertius
and Pomponius, bishop Optatus and presbyter Aspasius), sundry state and
prison officers, and members of Perpetua's family.[5]
Because of the composition of the martyrdom band and the three witnesses,
the Passio offers a unique insight into gender, status and identity
in an early third century North African Christian church. In particular
because Perpetua's journal is that rare piece of evidence from the ancient
world, a document by a woman[6], we are able to follow
the transformation of Perpetua from a well-born young woman whose sphere
of activity and influence was home and family into a Christian martyr in
the public arena.
For all her life to the point of her imprisonment, Perpetua had occupied
a private space; like all women of her class in the ancient world, her proper
sphere was the interior of the house and the duties and privileges connected
with it.[7] This did not mean that she was secluded,
simply that she found her identity through relationships to family and household.
We learn nothing from the Passio about her marriage, but it is safe
to conclude from the narrator's phrase matronaliter nupta (2.1) that
when she married, she had become mistress of her own household as well as
wife to her husband.[8 ] By the time of her arrest she
had become the mother of a son.
Perpetua's youth and close relationship with her birth family made them
very important to her. When she was worried about her baby and not allowed
to keep him with her in prison, she talked to her mother about him and she
entrusted him to the care of her mother and brother (3.8). She was prompted
by her brother, even though he was younger, to ask for a vision to learn
the outcome of her imprisonment and trial (4.1-2) and she went to him first
to recount her first dream and its meaning (5.10). Her brother, like her
father at a later point in the journal, calls her domina, certainly
a mark of respect, perhaps an acknowledgement that she was independent of
them by virtue of her marriage.[9]
But her conversion and even more her persistence at the time of her arrest
and during her imprisonment marked a move away from her birth family, especially
from her father who, unlike the rest of the family, was not a Christian
sympathizer (5.6). Her conversion has been seen as a rebellion against her
family and upbringing and a rejection of family authority, but there are
many signs that it was not easy for her to defy her father. At their first
meeting, she acknowledged that he was acting out of love for her even while
she refused to be persuaded (pro affectione sua, 3.1). In a later
conversation he used his preferential treatment of her as grounds for asking
her to change her mind and she tacitly accepted his analysis that he had
favoured her above her brothers (si te praeposui omnibus fratribus tuis,
5.2). Like her brother, her father referred to her as mistress (domina).[10]
Her expression of thanks to God at being separated from her father and her
relief at his absence (refrigeraui absentia illius. 3.4) which followed
their first conversation should be seen in the context of the pain she felt
in disagreeing with the person to whom she owed much.[11]
Perpetua's imprisonment displaced her from her private sphere, not only
by removing her physically from her home but by separating her from family
members. When she was not able to have her nursing infant with her, she
was denied her identity as a mother.[12] Her husband
is never mentioned in her journal or any other part of the Passio.[13]
As a result of his absence from the record, Perpetua's identity as wife
is made irrelevant.
Two male church leaders, Tertius and Pomponius, negotiated a temporary transfer
of the prisoners to a better part of the prison, but for Perpetua more significant
than the brief respite from heat and crowding was the permission to keep
her baby in prison with her. The prison suddenly became her praetorium
because she could again function as a mother: factus est mihi carcer
subito praetorium, ut ibi mallem esse quam alicubi. "The prison
suddenly became my praetorium with the result that I preferred to
be there rather than elsewhere" (3.9).
The choice of the term praetorium is interesting. The term had its
roots in the army camp, in the general's headquarters. It became the term
for the official residence of the provincial governor and, by extension,
a large country house. One of the connotations of praetorium was
certainly size and opulence.[14] But the prison did
not become larger or better appointed because Perpetua had her baby with
her; rather, the prison was now her residence or her headquarters. The use
of praetorium is a signal that Perpetua, reunited with her baby and
again able to function as a mother, now considers the prison her home.
But Perpetua could keep her baby with her only for a short time. It was
taken for granted that her family would take him and in spite of the difference
of opinion with her father, she did not make other arrangements. In contrast,
her fellow martyr Felicitas gave birth in prison and gave her newborn to
"a sister", i.e. a Christian woman in the community, to raise
as her daughter (15.7 ita enixa est puellam, quam sibi quaedam soror
in filiam educauit). Felicitas as a slave had no blood relatives to
whom she could entrust her baby and she relied on her Christian family.
We are not told the identity of the baby's father who is, in this respect,
like Perpetua's absent husband - outside the story. Felicitas' owner, in
law the owner of her baby too, was apparently willing to give up claim to
the baby, perhaps because he or she did not wish the responsibility of finding
a wet-nurse and investing several years of care in an infant.[15]
Perpetua did not depend only on male relatives; there were church leaders
to intervene with the prison officials when they were first arrested (3.7).
Saturus voluntarily surrendered himself to be in prison and to suffer martyrdom
with those who had studied with him (4.5). Perpetua's reliance on him is
illustrated in her first dream, when he went up the ladder ahead of her
and called back both encouragement and caution.[16]
Her father in their second meeting tried to contain her identity within
her birth family by appealing to her family relationships: think of your
parents, your brothers, your baby (5.3). He took the position of a suppliant
or a child in this appeal to her, kissing her hands, lying down at her feet
and crying (5.5). Perpetua whom he addressed as domina became a comforting
parent, telling him "know that we are not established in our own power
but in God's" (scito enim nos non in nostra esse potestate constitutos,
sed in Dei). Instead of being a daughter under her father's authority
(patria potestas), Perpetua and the others were "under God's
authority" (in potestate Dei), not "independent" (in
nostra potestate)[17] With her loss of freedom,
her independence had been surrendered but she and the others had placed
themselves under God's power as children under a father, confident that
state officials could not go further than God allowed.
After the hearing at which her father appealed to her for the third time,
Perpetua separated herself further from her family and effectively ended
her maternal relationship. Her father's third appeal to her to pity him
in his old age and to pity her infant son (6.3) resulted in his public humiliation
and a beating which she observed with internal pain, feeling as if she herself
was being beaten (6.5), but apparently without direct address to him. After
sentence of death had been passed, her father refused to bring the baby
back into prison; to her relief, weaning was accomplished without discomfort
to her or unhappiness to the baby.
Her final interview with her father records no conversation between them,
only that his words which would move any creature (dicere tanta uerba
quae mouerent uniuersam creaturam, 9.2) did not change her mind. She
is still more distanced and more an observer than in the previous scenes
with him.
After two dreams in which she saw her brother Dinocrates who had died, she
had a fourth and final dream (10), in which she passed through the prison
doors, walking with the deacon Pomponius through rough and winding places,
and finally reached the amphitheatre. There an Egyptian opponent waited
for her, accompanied by his seconds, young men came forward to be her seconds
and attendants, her clothing was removed and she realized that she was to
fight with this formidable foe. It was the moment when her clothing was
removed[18] that she realized that she had become a
man: expoliata sum et facta sum masculus, 10.7).
There were several reasons for her to see herself as a man in her dream.
Her cycle of pregnancy and lactation was completed and with the cessation
of milk must have come a reduced awareness of her breasts; this change in
sensation was translated in her dream into a change of body and a loss of
breasts. But it is also true that she was moving into a man's world. She
was to fight with a gladiator in hand to hand combat in public. Her transformation
to a man was appropriate, one might say necessary, for a public space and
a male role.
Her transformation into a man was temporary; she reverted to being female
by the end of the dream and never really lost her female identity, as indicated
by references to her in the feminine (haec, hanc, illam, sublata sum,
10.9 and 11). After the fight, the trainer (lanista) awarded
her the victor's branch, pronouncing judgment as a God figure, and called
her filia (10.13). As the use of the address domina had established
her independence from her birth family, the use of the address filia
here is significant in identifying Perpetua as a daughter of God. Similarly
the shepherd of her first dream, a figure of God like the lanista,
addressed her as teknon "child" (4.9).
Through her journal entries we have traced how Perpetua separated herself
from her family and prepared herself for the arena. Her journal is followed
by a shorter entry from Saturus describing his dream (12-13). As the martyrs
were carried to heaven by four angels, Perpetua was at his side. After their
arrival in heaven and a joyous reunion with other martyrs, Saturus and Perpetua
went outside the walled city and found the still living bishop Optatus and
presbyter Aspasius in front of the gates. That their church was wracked
by controversy and the two officials had taken opposite sides seems indicated
by their request that the two martyrs "settle things between us"
(componite inter nos, 13.2) and the fact that Optatus stands on the
right and Aspasius on the left "apart and sad" (separatos et
tristes, 13.1).
Saturus and Perpetua went with them into a garden and talked with them,
Perpetua speaking to them in Greek and evidently taking a lead role. Perpetua
is a liminal figure in Saturus' dream, as she emerges from the private space
defined by her social position and her position as a catechumen to hold
public discussion with these leaders and to instruct them. As a pupil of
Saturus, she had learned from him her attitudes to the church controversy
and would therefore carry the message which Saturus would like to say to
the church leaders. She stands on the threshold between her former identity
as a learner and this mediating and teaching stance between Optatus and
Aspasius.
The Montanist controversy almost certainly lay behind this disagreement
in the church. We know that women were prominent and influential in Montanism
and functioned as prophets[19] while the martyrs' church
apparently did not have any women church officials; at least all who are
named were male. In putting forward Perpetua as mediator in the dream dispute,
Saturus was arguing self-consciously for a greater role for women. But his
own influence would also be enhanced by Perpetua's influence because of
his identity as her catechist. Given that Perpetua is to be put to death
in a few days and will not mediate in the flesh between these leaders, Saturus
must be putting the case for a position with which he and his catechumens
were already identified.
The ending contributed by the narrator takes the martyrs to the arena and
their death and Perpetua from the private space she has claimed in prison
to the public space of the arena (14-21). Perpetua's self-assurance which
we observed in her journal continued to be displayed in the concluding narrative
as she protested to the military tribune that the martyrs had not been well-treated
in prison and argued that it was in his own interests to have them pinguiores
"better nourished" for the emperor's birthday celebrations (16.3).
As a result, the tribune permitted visits and treated them more humanely.
Perpetua also argued successfully against the proposed procession of the
martyrs into the amphitheatre in pagan priestly robes, appealing to an agreement
which she said was made between prison officials and martyrs: we agreed
to come voluntarily and you agreed not to take away our freedom (18.4-6).
Perpetua's self-appointment in these incidents as spokesperson for the martyrs
should be contrasted with her initial need of others to speak for them (3.7).
In the march from prison to amphitheatre, the narrator singled out the two
women for comment: Perpetua was matrona Christi .. Dei delicata (18.2)
"the wife of Christ and the favourite of God" and Felicitas went
from blood to blood, from midwife to gladiator (retiarius). As the
narrator matches the description of Felicitas to her recent childbirth,
so he matches the description of Perpetua to her status as a matron and
much loved daughter.[20] Perpetua's earthly marriage
had been exchanged for marriage to Christ and her earthly privileged status
for the love of God.
Once in the arena, Perpetua and Felicitas were stripped of their clothing,
dispoliatae, the same word which Perpetua used of her dream experience
(20.2). The crowd in the amphitheatre was horrified when they realized that
one was puellam delicatam, and the other had just given birth (a
partu recentem stillantibus mammis) and they were given loose tunics
to cover their nakedness. Delicatam echoed Dei delicata. used
earlier by the narrator; puellam emphasized her youth and virtually
negated her status as a married woman and a mother.[21]
Together they evoked Perpetua's vulnerability and need for protection. The
concern of the crowd was hollow; these women whose nakedness they protested
were nonetheless to be killed before their eyes. As Dei delicata;
Perpetua would receive genuine tenderness.
The narrator describes the way Perpetua tried to cover her thigh in the
amphitheatre when her clothing was torn (thinking more of pudor than
dolor, 20.4) and how she asked for a pin to fasten up her hair, because
it was not right for a martyr to have her hair in disorder at the moment
of her triumph (20.5). This Perpetua with her concern for appropriate female
behaviour may seem inconsistent with the Perpetua of the journal who wrote
about discomfort in her breasts and nursed her baby in a crowded prison
with little privacy. But there was a difference between the modesty required
indoors in one's home and that required in a public space. Perpetua's adoption
of the prison as her praetorium allowed her to do in prison what
she would do in her own home. But the amphitheatre was a different matter;
it was a public space. Women of Perpetua's class did not leave their home
with clothes and hair in disarray. Even offering her hand to Felicitas to
help her stand up was consonant with Perpetua's upbringing and status and
a wish to be standing up and in control, not lying down as a woman would
do only in the privacy of her home. Perpetua apparently did not realize
what had happened in the amphitheatre, a circumstance which the narrator
attributed to ecstacy (20.8-9) and it is all the more interesting and instructive
that these actions of hers were automatic responses of her upbringing.
Before the martyrs reached the amphitheatre, the men had had frequent discussions
about which wild beast each wished to be killed by and competed with one
another in their desire for glory and gore (19.1-6). No such talk was attributed
by the narrator to the two women. Instead, he distinguished the way the
men faced danger from the way the women faced it, men being far more vocal
and showing more bravado than women (19.1-5). Perpetua's determination for
martyrdom was expressed through her dreams, especially the first and fourth,
when she saw the ladder of martyrdom fixed with sharp implements or dreamed
of being transformed into a man in order to defeat her opponent. Felicitas
too had her moment of courage in the drama. She suffered a good deal in
her labour because, as the narrator says, it was a premature birth, widely
believed to be more painful than a full-term delivery. One of the prison
guards taunted her: You are suffering so much now. What will you do when
you are thrown to the wild animals? (15.5). Felicitas replied that her labour
was borne alone but in the amphitheatre "another will be in me who
will suffer for me because I also will suffer for him": illic autem
alius erit in me qui patietur pro me, quia et ego pro illo passura sum (15.6)
The pronouns are significant. The narrator attributed Felicitas' courage
to the support of Christ who will be in her and suffer for her. The male
martyrs expected to be brave and withstand physical pain because they were
men, while this was not the expectation for women who were aware of their
vulnerability and their need for divine help.
Though the Passio we have explored tensions between the expectations
of society and the new values and relationships introduced by Christianity
especially as they were reflected in Perpetua's experience. The identity
as daughter, sister, wife and mother which was hers through her male relatives
was renounced in favour of her relationship to Christ and God, though actualization
came only gradually. She rejected her father's claims, having already apparently
achieved independence through marriage and having further achieved independence
from her husband by his absence. Members of her family who were Christian
sympathizers maintained their relationship with her because of that sympathy
and for her child's sake, she did not cut herself off entirely from her
family nor they from her. She clung longest to her identity as a mother.
Only after breaking that last tie and weaning her baby could she fight the
forces of evil manfully.
Perpetua's early dependence on male relatives and male church leaders was
replaced by greater confidence in her own abilities as shown by her championing
of her fellow prisoners. In this, I have argued that she behaved as if the
prison were her headquarters and her home. But she maintained a distinction
between behaviour appropriate to private space and standards of public behaviour,
her dazed responses in the amphitheatre reflecting the public behaviour
expected of a woman of her class.
It is easy to forget the other five who provide a kind of setting for the
shining jewel who was Perpetua.[22] But it is the fact
that there were male and female, slave and free, learners and a teacher
among the martyrs that allows us to appreciate the nuances of Perpetua's
behaviour with respect to gender, status and identity and to see how a well-born
woman changed on conversion and how she remained a product of her upbringing.
Her own words which provide a window into her mind can be tested by the
pride of Saturus in his pupil and details supplied by the narrator.[23]
M. Eleanor Irwin (irwin@macpost.scar.utoronto.ca)
University of Toronto (Scarborough Campus)
Tuesday, May 28, 1996
[1]References to secondary material
in the footnotes have the author's name and a page reference only. The full
bibliographical reference can be found in the bibliography.
[2]The Passio exists in a Latin and a Greek version.
This paper deals only with the Latin version. The Greek version (2.1) and
Acta (1.1) make the martyrs native of the city of Tuburbitanorum,
present-day Tebourba, 34 km from Tunis to the west, van Beek (1938)
3-4.
[3]Fridh concludes that the difference in prose rhythm
of the various parts of the Passio is consonant with its being the
work of three different writers.
[4]Secundulus died in prison, 14.2.
[5]Perpetua met with her father (3.1-3, 5.1-6, 6.2, 9.2),
her mother (3.8), and a brother who was also a catechumen(3.8, 4.1 and 10).
We learn of a brother who had died (7 and 8) and an aunt (5.3). The reference
to "all your brothers" (omnibus fratribus, 5.2) implies
that she had more than two brothers.
[6]Rader viii; Alexandre 509-13.
[7]For the activities which went on in a large household,
Wallace-Hadrill 191-227.
[8]Matronaliter distinguishes her marriage from
irregular unions and implies high social standing, Lewis and Short s.v.
matronalis.
[9]For a discussion of the authority of a father even
over his married children, cf. Lacey 121-144.
[10]Domina implies that the speaker is of lower
status or has less authority than the addressee, but one should not take
this too literally. Cf. the playful use of the term by the Latin love elegists,
Tibullus 1.1.46; Propertius 1.4.2, Ovid Trist. 4.3.9. Cf. Horace
Rumpole's code for his wife, "She who must be obeyed."
[11]Hallett 3-34 explores the complex relationship of
Roman women to their fathers. She does not comment specifically on Perpetua.
[12]Perpetua could have found a wet-nurse for her baby
as many women of her social class did, cf. Bradley 201.
[13]In Acta 6 her husband is present at the trial.
[14]E.g., ampla et operosa praetoria, Suet. Aug.
72.
[15]On the status of children born to slaves, cf. Dixon
53-55.
[16]On Perpetua's dream search for a father substitute,
cf. Dronke 5-6. Lefkowitz (1976) 417 argues that Perpetua wanted relief
from an intense relationship with her father.
[17]Corbier 49 describes the situation by which a married
woman could remain under patria potestas and become independent (sui
iuris) after the death of her paternal ascendants. Perpetua was speaking
less of a legal relationship than a spiritual one.
[18]Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. despolio
"strip (for flogging)", cf. Seneca Ep. 63.11 despoliatus
amissa unica tunica. For the connotations of such a state of undress,
cf. despoliata = meretrix "prostitute", Seneca Con.
9.2.21.
[19]On Montanism, cf. Witherington 192-199, esp. Perpetua
"andronized" 198; Klawiter 251-61.
[20]Lewis and Short s.v. delicatus/a for the use
in inscriptions of both masculine and feminine forms for a favourite slave.
[21]Puella can be used of married women, Horace
Odes 3.14.10 and of women in labour, Horace Odes 3.22.2.
[22]Shaw 45.
[23]I am grateful to Heidi Vierow of Duke University
who kindly made work-in-progress available to me; to Prof. Deborah James
of Scarborough College with whom I have had stimulating discussions about
women's speech; and to Peter Irwin who transformed the Latin text and this
paper into HTML files.