Ss Perpetua and Felicity

Vibia Perpetua was a twenty-two-year-old noblewoman of Carthage, a new mother still nursing her infant son; Felicity was a slave, eight months pregnant. Arrested as catechumens under Septimius Severus with several companions, they were baptized in custody and held for the games. The prison diary Perpetua kept — the earliest surviving Christian text written by a woman — records her father's anguished pleas, her worry for her baby, and her visions of a ladder to heaven guarded by a serpent: 'I knew that victory would be mine.' Felicity gave birth in prison days before the games, rejoicing that she could now suffer with the others. In the amphitheatre the two women were thrown to a wild heifer and finally killed by the sword; Perpetua herself guided the wavering gladiator's blade to her throat. Their Passion was read aloud in African churches for centuries, and their names stand in ancient lists of the Church's most honoured martyrs.