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“Holy martyrs, Perpetua and Felicity, pray for us.” Many times in my life, I have heard Perpetua and Felicity mentioned in litanies of saints and prayers of the Church.
Until recently, though, I never gave them much thought. I did have a vague sense that these two women—martyrs of the early church—must have been important to be singled out. But they seemed so distant and exalted, so far removed from my ordinary life as a wife and a mother of four young children. How could I possibly relate?
Then I came across the description of their martyrdom and the events that led up to it. Dating from the early third century, this Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity contains Perpetua’s prison diary, followed by an eyewitness account of how she and her companions were executed. A quick perusal of their heroic story left me shaking my head. These women hardly seemed real!
Heroines of the Faith. Perpetua and Felicity lived in the late second and early third centuries AD,…
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