Essay Questions

What crime did Perpetua, Felicitas and their companions commit which mandated their inevitable transformation into Christian martyrs?

Christianity was only really just beginning to make inroads into the mainstream—and barely at that—two centuries after the Crucifixion of Jesus. When Septimus Severus ascended to Emperor, he continued his predecessor’s policy of punishing those who converted to Christianity, but not actively seeking them out for such punishment. It was a kind of “don’t ask/don’t tell” approach to the situation. After ten years, however, things had changed significantly and his edict which began cracking down on Christian conversion was a direct response to the increasing popularity of the new religion among the empire’s marginalized majority. Technically, the crime that was committed which turned the women into martyrs was the refusal to appropriately worship Rome’s pagan gods. The real trespass, however, was contributing to an increasingly greater tension and threat to the stability of the Roman government: practicing a religious which denied that the emperor was invested with divine power granted by the gods.

Exactly what is the nature of the relationship between Perpetua and Felicitas?

Although not densely written, the narrative is also not particularly modern in structure or composition. This is due to being based on first-person accounts written down by those involved before their death lacking the editorial connectivity that modern writers would use to fill for the purpose of filling in gaps or making things clearer. Only once in the text is the relationship between its two titular figures mentioned and it is easy to overlook since it comes at the beginning before the reader has any chance to get some kind of bearing on the characters or their story. Even more to the point: while it is explicitly stated that Felicitas is a slave, it is not made clear at all that she is a slave in service to Perpetua. This particularly significant point about the relationship between the two martyrs requires a bit of working out on the part of the reader. As for the point of knowing this relationship, the answer only rises only in response to the absence of the question ever being asked. In other words, it is one thing for Perpetua to freely convert to Christianity and set upon a course leading to martyrdom, but was this choice also freely made by her slave? Could it be freely made by her slave—who gave birth just before her martyrdom? The issue becomes significant mainly because it is never once addressed.