Saints Perpetua and Felicity

Perpetua and Felicity died in the amphitheater of Carthage on March 7, 203, under Septimius Severus, together with Saturus, Revocatus, Saturninus and Secundulus. Their story has reached us in a document that on its own is worth the whole day: the Acts of Perpetua and Felicity. Chapters three through ten contain Perpetua’s first-person account, with her visions; the following ones, Saturus’s; the final part is by an eyewitness who wrote shortly after their death. It is one of the very few texts from Christian antiquity in which a woman tells her own story while it is happening to her. The text was rediscovered by Lucas Holstenius and published by Pierre Poussines. In 1890 Rendel Harris found a Greek version of it; scholars argued for a long time over which is the original, and today the most widely accepted view is that the Latin came first and the Greek is a translation. It has often been said that the final author was Tertullian, but this has not been proven. Some have even doubted that they existed — Emilio Bossi, for example — noting that the two names together form the Latin wish perpetua felicitas, “everlasting happiness.” Most scholars disagree, and the Acts remain one of the most solid documents we have on an ancient martyrdom. If your name is Felicity, today is your name day.