A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
I just want to share with you the story of Perpetua and Felicitas. The source is here: Tertullian (Roberts-Donaldson). It is told by Tertullian, and these women were said to be martyred in 203CE. The story has some literary value, and does reflect some general historical accuracies that are interesting.
Things that caught my eye...
1) The education of women is very rare in the ancient world. Usually women who were literate were wealthy, being taught by their fathers or husbands, or perhaps if they could have been tutored at home by a professional teacher who would be brought into the house. Perpetua is said to be wealthy and educated, having written some of this story down herself (not the part about her death, of course).
2) The martyrdom of the women is like the epistle of Pliny in a few respects. First, it is women who were tortured in Pliny's epistles - two of them. Like the story here, Pliny asks the Christians to sacrifice to the emperor or die. The method appears exactly the same.
From Pliny's epistle:
Medieval Sourcebook: Pliny on the Christians
" Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished."
"Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ--none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do--these I thought should be discharged."
" Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses"
From Acts of Perpetua:
"And Hilarianus the procurator, who had just received the power of life and death in the place of the proconsul Minucius Timinianus, who was deceased, said, 'Spare the grey hairs of your father, spare the infancy of your boy, offer sacrifice for the well-being of the emperors.' And I replied, 'I will not do so.' Hilarianus said, 'Are you a Christian?' And I replied, 'I am a Christian.'"
Just some interesting notes, that's all.
Things that caught my eye...
1) The education of women is very rare in the ancient world. Usually women who were literate were wealthy, being taught by their fathers or husbands, or perhaps if they could have been tutored at home by a professional teacher who would be brought into the house. Perpetua is said to be wealthy and educated, having written some of this story down herself (not the part about her death, of course).
2) The martyrdom of the women is like the epistle of Pliny in a few respects. First, it is women who were tortured in Pliny's epistles - two of them. Like the story here, Pliny asks the Christians to sacrifice to the emperor or die. The method appears exactly the same.
From Pliny's epistle:
Medieval Sourcebook: Pliny on the Christians
" Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished."
"Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ--none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do--these I thought should be discharged."
" Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses"
From Acts of Perpetua:
"And Hilarianus the procurator, who had just received the power of life and death in the place of the proconsul Minucius Timinianus, who was deceased, said, 'Spare the grey hairs of your father, spare the infancy of your boy, offer sacrifice for the well-being of the emperors.' And I replied, 'I will not do so.' Hilarianus said, 'Are you a Christian?' And I replied, 'I am a Christian.'"
Just some interesting notes, that's all.