perpetua and felicitas - university of minnesota duluthsmatthew/perpetua and felicitas...
TRANSCRIPT
The Martyrdomof
Perpetua and Felicitas
IntroductionOn March 6 of the year 203 six Christians were killed in the Arena at Carthage.This was done in the reign of Emperor Septimus Severus, in honor of the birthday of his son Geta (who would become emperor one day also.)Two of the martyrs were young women: Perpetua, a 23 year-old aristocratic wife and mother of an infant, and Felicitas, her servant, who was pregnant and gave birth in the jail shortly before her death. The early church remembered them as “martyrs” (marturoj, martusin)or “witnesses.” Meaning:They bore witness to the Death of Christ, which was:
selflessconfident (in eternal life and the resurrection)peaceful (bearing no anger or ill-will toward their killers)
They were models of the faith and hope which marked the Christian movement, as the Christians themselves understood it.Questions to ask while reading:
Why was it written? (Note: part of the account is written by Perpetua herself.)What was the reaction of those who saw it to what was done in the Arena?What do you find remarkable about this account? OR Are there any points which need further explanation?
Historical background of the Severan Persecution (in Carthage):
After Marcus Aurelius, there was an extremely peaceful era for Christians and the Church
grew considerably. At the same time, however, Rome as a whole was showing signs of
internal weakness The Emperor Commodus was part of that weakness).
The possibility for widespread persecution of Christians took a new turn under Septimius
Severus.
As with the Aurelian persecutions, there was pressure on Severus to recognize the
declining fate of Roman fortunes as a result of a neglect of the Roman gods and/or
sacrifices to Rome.
Severus took a twofold course of action:
He blended the Roman cult with mystery religions (of which he was also a devotee),
in an attempt to consolidate spiritual power (and loyalties).
He issued a decree (in 202/03) prohibiting conversion to the nonsacrificing cults of
Judaism and Christianity.
In Carthage, the local governor, Hilarianus, was eager to please the Emperor.
He could get double milage out of a single action by holding “games” in honor of the
birthday of Geta, and using new converts to Christianity for the part where people took on
animals.
Therefore catechumens were especially targeted.
Perpetua: identity in Roman Society and Social Expectations
As a young matron of the Roman Aristocracy, Perpetua was expected, above all, to
uphold family honor and fortunes. Thus:
Her marriage would have been arranged. And she might well have had no strong
ties to her husband.
It is entirely reasonable that she would have a son by her husband but still live in
her father’s house: This would be the case if the father had more power/status than
the new son-in-law. The father would have retained control over Perpetua’s fortune
and social status.
When Perpetua upended the whole system by declaring herself a Christian, it was
more than a father’s love which was injured: the whole social position of the family
was thrown into chaos.
In light of Roman Gender expectations, her actions do have a real character of
rebellion -- conversion and martyrdom were choices representing one way a young
Roman woman could exercise her own free will in an otherwise very patriarchal
society.
In handing her infant son over to her (almost certainly) Christian brother (rather
than her pagan father) she was also declaring emphatically where her loyalties were.
Felicitas: identity in Roman Society and Social Expectations
Felicitas, for her part, was a slave. These were the natural targets if Hilarianus did not
want to upset the social order of Carthage.
The execution of slave catechumens would be enough to send a message, in the reasoning
of the governor.
It would be expected for a slave to die in the arena. It is remarkable that a citizen would
die the same way. Beheading would have been more typical.
(When Perpetua joins the others a reversal of the intended message occurs: the
aristocracy are not safe.)
Being pregnant, she was prohibited by Roman Law from execution (at least yet.)
When she gave birth before her companions went into the arena she was thankful that she
would be allowed to join them (There are a number of reasons for this).
(The sense of community is one of the key underlying themes of Christian martyrdom
accounts.)
One key element of Christian martyrdom is that previous socially conditioned identities
are absent. (They were, after all, only temporary.)
Slave and matron are united as equals, following Paul’s words, “There is neither Jew nor
Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
The Arena:The arena at Carthage held about 30,000 spectators.
It was arranged as an ellipse with a gate at each end: the “Gate of Life” (Porta Sanaviviara)
through which the victors exited the arena was at one end, the “Gate of Death” (Porta
Libitinensis) was at the other.
The purpose of the games was multifold:
A religious ceremony: the deaths at the games were dedicated sacrifices to Caesar or
Rome. (Recall the function of contributing to power) They were accompanied by ritual
blessings and processions.
A socially unifying pageant: The “plots” of the various exhibitions were designed to unite
the citizens (of Carthage in this case) around a central social identity, by sharing in the
same experience. The spectators regarded themselves as “participants” in the drama of life
and death they were witnessing.
It served to de-sensitize the population to death, and make their own deaths more
acceptable. Livy, the Roman historian, wrote that there is “no better schooling against pain
and death” than watching the games. The greatness, and fearlessness, of the Roman armies
was attributed to this “schooling.”
The Christians executed there were not the main event, but a distraction while the “noon break”
occurred (the ludi meridiani, or “mid-day games.”)
In context, the idea was that if they would not sacrifice to Caesar (or Rome) they would be
sacrifices to Caesar, increasing the “greatness of Rome” either way.
What’s left of the Arena at
Carthage.
A smaller, but more intact, arena at El
Djem, Tunisia (Thysdrus)
Ludi MeridianiThe day would have begun with the “hunting games” (ludum venatorium) of animals fighting
animals, and animals fighting armed hunters.
This could involve the deaths of hundreds of animals before noon (the sand of the arena was
usually saturated with blood.)
After the noon break for executions the afternoon would feature the gladiatorial games, which
were often regarded as the main attraction.
In order to make the executions more interesting the victims would often be dressed up to play
parts. This allowed the spectators to imagine that they were seeing something with a bit more plot
than merely watching beasts maul people. Tertullian wrote of his experiences:
We once saw Attis, that god from Pessinus, castrated, and a man who was being burned
alive played the role of Hercules... we laughed at Mercury testing the dead with a red hot
iron.
The beasts were not always interested in killing their victims, or making much sport of it. There
were ways around this.
Prisoners would often be bound to the beasts themselves in order to enrage the animals.
In other instances the “beast handlers” would whip and taunt the beasts into attacking the
bound prisoners.
Very few were actually killed by the beasts. The gladiators were on hand to finish off the
prisoners.
Zliten Mosaic,
North Africa, (Current
Libya)Depicting the Arena
Games
DamnatusBestiarius
Mosaics from Roman Africa, Museum of El
Djem, in modern Tunisia
Dreams in the Ancient World The descriptions of the dreams in the text are among the strangest parts of the narrative to us, but
this would not have fazed anyone in the Ancient world. Not only the idea of dreams themselves,
but the symbolism, were part of the standard cultural expectation of the time.
This fit well with the Jewish/Christian Scriptures in which such phenomena figured prominently.
(This phenomenon would not have meant that the Christians involved were necessarily
“Montanists.” They may have been, but dreams and visions were universal at the time.)
Dreams and visions were always tested according to commonly accepted standards to determine
their value and meaning.
The Roman poet Virgil, in the Aenid, described two sources of dreams: the gate of “dazzling
ivory” which allows false messages from the spiritual side of the world through it, and the “gate of
horn” which allows true glimpses of spiritual truth.
In order to tell the difference, and learn from the “true” dreams, manuals of dream interpretation
circulated widely in the ancient world.
In Jewish/Christian interpretations, the dream world was “where the holy and the secular came
together” (Joyce Salisbury), or, alternately, where the line between the “visible” and the
“invisible” or spiritual, was often breached.
Tertullian described three sources of dreams: God, the Devil, and the self. Any of these, however,
could be understood to cross the boundary between the spiritual and visible worlds. How they did
it was key.
There would have been nothing unusual to any early readers about the dream sequences here,
especially since this was a “gift” often given to martyrs before their deaths.
Martyrdom and Memory:The early church, and certainly the martyrs themselves, saw martyrs as
suffering right along with Christ on the cross. It was an anamnesis -- their
suffering was Christ’s suffering, and Christ was suffering in them.
This is taken from passages throughout the Scriptures, such as: Matthew
20:22–23 and Acts 9:4, as well as Galatians 3:28 and 6:17, Philippians
1:20, etc.
In the memory of the Church, the martyrs were people in whom Christ’s
triumph over death was visibly repeated before witnesses.
The example of the martyrs was something to which Greco-Roman values
could relate: they died unafraid, and even defiant. They died on their own
terms.
For this reason the example of the martyrs led to the opposite of what
Hilarianus and other officials hoped -- it caused people (such as Justin
Martyr) to look into Christianity as a serious option.
Thus Tertullian wrote: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
Church.” For with the persecutions the Christian movement grew rather
than dwindled.
Martyrdom and Memory, part 2:The special union which the martyrs had with Christ made their deaths something to
celebrate, for those who remained, and it also made their bodies, their tombs, and
their places of death into holy sites.
This was especially true since there is always a connection between the spiritual and
the material in Christianity. The holy ones, the “sanctes” or “saints,” remained tied
to their physical time and place even after death.
From very early on, the bodies, or “relics” of the martyrs were regarded as holy
things, which sanctified the places where they were found. (This was the real reason
for gathering in the catacombs.)
Although Protestants at the time of the Reformation asserted that this “cult of the
saints” or of “relics,” was a medieval invention, it can be found well established by
the middle of the second century, and is tied to the insistence that Soul and Body
both share in the Resurrection.
(Thus Eusebius records in his Church History that during the persecutions under
Vespasian in the second century the ashes of the martyrs were swept into the river to
prevent them from being kept and venerated.)