From ‘Passio Perpetuae’ to ‘Acta Perpetuae’: Recontextualizing a Martyr Story in the Literature of the Early Church 3110419424, 9783110419429

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Fortissimi martyres: The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis as a pre-text
1.1 The Passio Perpetuae in the context of the earliest Christian martyr literature
1.2 The structure and composition of the Passio Perpetuae
1.3 The Passio Perpetuae in its historical context: Dating, authorship, text localization, and text variants
1.3.1 Dating
1.3.2 The identity of the editor, authorship, and the authenticity of the text
1.3.3 Surviving versions of the Passio Perpetuae and the issue of the original
1.3.4 The Passio Perpetuae and Montanism
2 Nova documenta fidei: The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis and its innovative features
2.1 The Passio Perpetuae and its context
2.2 The Passio Perpetuae, the emancipation of womanhood, and the subversion of social and gender hierarchies
2.3 The Passio Perpetuae, masculinity, and Christian identity
2.4 The Passio Perpetuae and the power of martyrs
3 From exemplum fidei to admirandum, non imitandum: The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis and its later interpreters
3.1 Mandatum sanctissimae Perpetuae: The editor and his literary staging of the Passio Perpetuae
3.2 Tertullian and his fortissima martyr
3.3 The Passio Perpetuae and the North African passiones of the 3rd century A.D
3.4 Spreading the cult: The Passio Perpetuae from the 4th century onward
3.5 Nec illa sic scripsit: The Passio Perpetuae according to Augustine and the Augustinian tradition
3.5.1 Augustine and the Passio Perpetuae
3.5.2 Augustine and Perpetua’s vision of Dinocrates
3.5.3 Perpetua felicitas: Augustine’s Sermones
3.5.4 Augustine’s successors and the Passio Perpetuae
3.6 The Passio Perpetuae and the Acta Perpetuae: Between tradition and innovation
3.6.1 Acta Perpetuae A, Acta Perpetuae B, and their mutual relationship
3.6.2 Perpetua and the evolving ideal of sainthood: Motivation, aims, and means
Conclusion
A chronological outline of the reception of the Passio Perpetuae until the end of the 5th century
A list of abbreviations of the books, journals and book series used
Bibliography
Cited primary sources and translations
Cited secondary literature
General index
Index locorum
Index of modern names

Citation preview

Petr Kitzler From Passio Perpetuae to Acta Perpetuae

Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte

Founded by Karl Holl † and Hans Lietzmann † Edited by Christian Albrecht and Christoph Markschies

Volume 127

Petr Kitzler

From Passio Perpetuae to Acta Perpetuae

Recontextualizing a Martyr Story in the Literature of the Early Church

Translated by Josef Šrejber and Rachel Thompson

ISBN 978-3-11-041942-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-041867-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-041881-1 ISSN 1861-5996 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

For Jana, with all my love, even though this is not a book on Mayakovsky

Contents Preface

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Acknowledgements

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 Fortissimi martyres: The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis as a pre-text 1 . The Passio Perpetuae in the context of the earliest Christian martyr literature 1 . The structure and composition of the Passio Perpetuae 7 . The Passio Perpetuae in its historical context: Dating, authorship, text 13 localization, and text variants .. Dating 14 .. The identity of the editor, authorship, and the authenticity of the 17 text .. Surviving versions of the Passio Perpetuae and the issue of the 23 original .. The Passio Perpetuae and Montanism 29  . . . . 

Nova documenta fidei: The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis and its in35 novative features The Passio Perpetuae and its context 35 The Passio Perpetuae, the emancipation of womanhood, and the sub37 version of social and gender hierarchies The Passio Perpetuae, masculinity, and Christian identity 47 The Passio Perpetuae and the power of martyrs 51

From exemplum fidei to admirandum, non imitandum: The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis and its later interpreters 56 . Mandatum sanctissimae Perpetuae: The editor and his literary staging 56 of the Passio Perpetuae . Tertullian and his fortissima martyr 62 . The Passio Perpetuae and the North African passiones of the 3rd century A.D. 65 . Spreading the cult: The Passio Perpetuae from the 4th century onward 72 . Nec illa sic scripsit: The Passio Perpetuae according to Augustine and the Augustinian tradition 80 .. Augustine and the Passio Perpetuae 80

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.. .. .. . .. ..

Contents

Augustine and Perpetua’s vision of Dinocrates 82 86 Perpetua felicitas: Augustine’s Sermones Augustine’s successors and the Passio Perpetuae 93 The Passio Perpetuae and the Acta Perpetuae: Between tradition and innovation 98 Acta Perpetuae A, Acta Perpetuae B, and their mutual 101 relationship Perpetua and the evolving ideal of sainthood: Motivation, aims, 105 and means

Conclusion

117

A chronological outline of the reception of the Passio Perpetuae until the end of the 5th century 123 A list of abbreviations of the books, journals and book series used Bibliography 127 Cited primary sources and translations Cited secondary literature 131 General index

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Index locorum

152

Index of modern names

157

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Preface “From this arises the suspicion that literary texts are resistant to the course of time, not because they represent eternal values that are supposedly independent of time, but because their structure continually allows the reader to place himself within the world of fiction.”¹

Amongst the earliest reports on Christian martyrs, one that occupies a central place in the literature is that of the passion and death of Vibia Perpetua, an educated 22-year old woman from Carthage in North Africa, who died in the early third century A.D. together with another young woman, Felicity, and several men during combat against wild beasts in the Carthaginian amphitheatre. The literary representation of these events, the famous Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity (Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis) is a work which resonates to this day with the urgency of the voice of the young Christian wife, mother and martyr with a power that belies the almost two millennia between her times and the present day. It remains a fascinating text against the backdrop of which we can analyse the beginnings and evolution of Christianity in North Africa and the historical background of Christian persecution. Similarly, it enables us to examine the formation of the theology of martyrdom and the efforts of the early Christians to define their identity and to disentangle themselves from the cultural climate of the majority pagan society, even whilst being unable to escape its impact. Most of these aspects are, however, historical or theological, and have been extensively examined in previous research. While paying due attention to these salient points, this book will primarily focus on an area that has so far been somewhat marginalized or even overlooked by modern interpreters: the recontextualizing of the Passio Perpetuae in the subsequent reception of this text in the literature of the early church. This seemingly simple narrative about the death of several martyrs, one that is similar to dozens of other accounts of martyrdom from the early Christian period, has from the time of its creation been held in exceptionally high regard by common believers and Christian intellectuals alike. This had two results. On the one hand, it enabled the Passio Perpetuae to become a sort of model text for further narratives of Christian witnesses. On the other, its popularity contributed substantially to its literary “Nachleben”,

 Wolfgang Iser, “Indeterminacy and the Reader’s Response in Prose Fiction,” in idem, From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (Baltimore – London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989): (3–30) 29.

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which started almost immediately after the text was written, and from the very beginning was marked by efforts towards its reinterpretation. Although the Passio Perpetuae was read at liturgical congregations of the church on the feast day of the martyrs, its reading was in various contexts increasingly accompanied by an interpreter (whether anonymous or named) who would select specific passages from the original text and interpret them in such a way as to bolster his or her own arguments – often without regard to the actual wording and intent of the original work. Over time, the need to explain away certain aspects of the original text would arise with increasing frequency: aspects that had arguably given the work its renown, but which in the new historical and theological context were gradually ceasing to accord with the changing concept of sainthood. It was thus necessary to normalize these uncomfortable aspects through an interpretation that would eliminate their problematic or subversive potential, even at the cost of radical reinterpretation of the original narrative. This development – from the pre-text to its reinterpretations – is also reflected in the structure of this book. In the first part, I examine the Passio Perpetuae from a philological and literary-historical perspective and attempt to investigate the questions that the work raises in these respects. After positioning the narrative in the context of the earliest literature of martyrdom, the subsequent chapters deal with dating issues, authorship, surviving versions of the text, and finally its theological background. These topics have occupied researchers for more than a century, and some have not been definitively answered to this day. The second part of the book, comprising four subsections, looks at the innovative aspects of the Passio Perpetuae that set it apart from other martyr texts and to which its renown may arguably be attributed. Allowing for some simplification, these innovative aspects may be divided into three categories. The first of these is the subversion of the existing social and gender hierarchies that placed women in a position of invariable subordination to men and emphasized the social roles that the standards of antiquity obliged women to fulfil. The second is the attribution to Perpetua of qualities that in antiquity were traditionally the domain of men. The third is the accentuation of the exceptional spiritual power of martyrs – again predominantly of Perpetua – in the community of believers: a power which rivalled the authority of the bishops. The final part examines the impact and life of the Passio Perpetuae from the time of its writing up to the time of Augustine. In its chapters, I aim to demonstrate how the account of the death of Perpetua and her comrades was recontextualized in the subsequent literary tradition of the early church. A special emphasis is placed on the way the initial revolutionary potential of the text came to be gradually weakened or appropriated for the theological purposes of later

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centuries. In chronological order, I analyse all relevant texts in which Perpetua and her comrades are mentioned or that quote or refer to the record of their martyrdom, and attempt to demonstrate the ways in which these texts strive to normalize the innovative aspects of the Passio Perpetuae. These efforts, which started with the contribution of the anonymous editor of the text and continued through Tertullian, the North African passiones of the 3rd century A.D. to Augustine and his successors, culminate in the anonymous Acta Perpetuae, which constitute a radical rewriting of the original account and its substitution with a cleansed version conforming to the social and theological conventions of its time. The aim of this book is therefore to shed light on the origins and subsequent fate of one of the most famous hagiographic texts of the early Christian era and to illuminate the road of reinterpretation that the athletae Christi had to travel in the centuries to come before finding their place in the post-Constantinian society and church. At a more general level, this book may be understood as a case study of the ways in which the concept of sainthood evolved over time alongside the changing historical and religious climate, and of the strategies by which the church authorities responded to these changes.

Acknowledgements This work is a substantially updated and revised version of my book Athletae Christi. Raně křesťanská hagiografie mezi tradicí a inovací (Athletae Christi. Early Christian Hagiography between Imitation and Rewriting), published in Prague in 2012. Even as I was writing the Czech version, I was keenly aware that while the early Christian martyr literature is a rather marginalized subject of research in my country, and the Passio Perpetuae itself is a text receiving very little scholarly interest, this is not the case internationally, where the Passio Perpetuae has continued to receive a remarkable amount of attention from researchers, as is testified by the number of published scholarly studies. Nevertheless, a book that systematically investigates the process of reinterpretation of the Passio Perpetuae that was consummated by the so-called Acta Perpetuae has so far been lacking, a fact which holds true even after the publication of two important works on Perpetua in 2012, T. J. Heffernan’s commented edition of the text, and the proceedings of the Perpetua conference edited by J. Bremmer and M. Formisano. For this reason I hope that the English version of this book may help to fill in some of the blanks left by previous research on the Passio Perpetuae. In this regard, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my translators, Josef Šrejber and Rachel Thompson, for their careful and patient translation. Writing this book was a natural extension of my professional interest in the earliest Christian martyr literature during my work at the Centre for Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Texts of Palacký University in Olomouc, mainly between 2006 and 2011, though my first published Czech translation of selected sections of the Passio Perpetuae dates back to 2002. This interest culminated in the publication of a 2-volume anthology of early Christian martyr texts (a sort of revised and updated Czech “Musurillo”) that I and my colleagues from the Centre jointly published in the Prague publishing house Vyšehrad in 2009 and 2011 under the title Příběhy raně křesťanských mučedníků (Stories of Early Christian Martyrs). To my great delight, these publications attracted the notice of foreign scholars, despite the rather limited reach of the Czech language version. The present work would never have been accomplished without the Mellon Research Fellowship at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London (May to August 2011), where I had the opportunity to introduce the essential themes of the book. In this connection, I would like to give my thanks most of all to Charles Burnett and Peter Mack. In addition, I owe my gratitude to the Grant Agency of Charles University in Prague for its financial support for the English version under grant project No. 501112, and mainly to the Centre for Classical Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in

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Prague, my primary place of work, which provided me with the necessary institutional basis for my research. I am indebted to Pavel Spunar from this Centre for his interest, advice and general support, as well as to Petr Pokorný (Charles University Prague), Jiří Šubrt (Palacký University Olomouc), and especially Martin Bažil (Charles University Prague / Freie Universität Berlin) for their thorough reading of the manuscript and all their critical comments. Needless to say, all remaining errors are mine alone. Further, a number of foreign researchers kindly and selflessly made their studies available to me, which I otherwise would have struggled to access. In this regard I owe my thanks especially to Remo Cacitti (Università degli studi di Milano), Maria Pia Ciccarese (Università di Roma “La Sapienza”), Eliezer Gonzalez (Macquarie University), Vincent Hunink (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen), Jerónimo Leal (Pontificia Università della Santa Croce, Roma), Candida R. Moss (University of Notre Dame, Indiana), François-Xavier Romanacce (Université de Paris–Sorbonne), Teresa Sardella (Università degli Studi di Catania), and Clemens Weidmann (Universität Salzburg). Finally, I owe special thanks to my wife Jana, who patiently read every draft of the text, pointing out its shortcomings, and whose critical comments, coming as they did from the refreshing perspective of someone pursuing a wholly different professional specialization, contributed significantly to the resulting form of this book. Without her patience and understanding this book would not have been written; without her presence my whole life would become taetrum chaos.

1 Fortissimi martyres: The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis as a pre-text 1.1 The Passio Perpetuae in the context of the earliest Christian martyr literature The origins of early Christian Latin literature are closely associated with the environment of Roman North Africa, a province that was to play a crucial role in the further evolution and sophistication of early Christian thought and writing – let us not forget that Africa was home to doctores of the stature of Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, and Augustine. It comes as no surprise that the first literary records from this territory that relate to the Christian religion are accounts of martyrs, the athletae Christi or champions of Christ,¹ who willingly took it upon themselves to “fight the good fight”² on behalf of their celestial Lord, even at the cost of their own lives. Martyrdom, viewed as a second baptism, a baptism in blood, was seen as an instant guarantee of a place in heaven at Christ’s right hand, and of the forgiveness of all sins.³ To a greater extent than in the other parts of the Roman Empire, North African Christianity was marked

 This metaphor, which originates in the Pauline epistles (cf. e. g. 1Cor 9,24– 27; 1Tim 4,7– 10; 2Tim 2,4– 5; cf. in generally Victor C. Pfitzner, Paul and the Agon Motif. Traditional Athletic Imagery in the Pauline Literature [Leiden: Brill, 1967]), appears with various modifications associating it with martyrs in a number of Greek and Latin martyr texts, cf. e. g. Mart. Lugd. V,1,17; Acta Max. 2,4 (athleta Christi); Acta Sebast. 3,9 / PL 17 [1879],1116, and also in the early church writers in their references to martyrs (cf. e. g. Ambrose of Milan, Off. I,36,183 / CCSL 15,68; Aux. [Ep. 75a] 15 / CSEL 82,3,91). For more on this, see also e. g. Timon Binder, Semen est sanguis Christianorum. Literarische Inszenierungen von Macht und Herrschaft in frühchristlicher Literatur (Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2005), 136‒139; Reinhold Merkelbach, “Der griechische Wortschatz und die Christen,” ZPE 18 (1975): 101– 148.  Cf. Tertullian, Mart. 3,3 / CCSL 1,5: Bonum agonem subituri estis […] (“You are about to fight the good fight […]”; with reference to 1Tim 6,12).  At least this is how Tertullian interprets martyrdom, cf. e. g. Petr Kitzler, “Vis divinae gratiae, potentior utique natura. Tertullianovo pojetí Boží milosti” [Vis divinae gratiae, potentior utique natura. Tertullian’s Concept of Divine Grace], in Milost v patristice, eds. Lenka Karfíková and Jan A. Dus (Jihlava: Mlýn, 2011): (77‒105) 95 – 97. For the most extensive review of Tertullian’s theology of martyrdom, see Wiebke Bähnk, Von der Notwendigkeit des Leidens. Die Theologie des Martyriums bei Tertullian (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001). Cf. also e. g. Acta Scill. 15, where the martyr Nartzalus responds to the death sentence being read out: Hodie martyres in caelis sumus. Deo gratias. (“Today we are martyrs in heaven. Thanks be to God!”; translation by Herbert Musurillo)

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by a “protest against the world”⁴ and by the confessors’ uncompromising desire to prove their faith even if they paid the price in their own blood. This desire was further fuelled by the widespread notions of the approaching end of the world and the second coming of Christ, during which all persecuted and martyred Christians would triumph over their torturers.⁵ As William Frend succinctly sums up: the church of North Africa was always a church of the martyrs.⁶ The oldest preserved Christian Latin text is a brief report on the martyrdom of Christians from the village of Scilli, the precise location of which is today unknown. According to the account in the Acta Scillitanorum, the reported events took place on 17 July 180 under proconsul Vigellius Saturninus. The second oldest surviving text is none other than the famous Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity (Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis),⁷ which will be the focus of de-

 Cf. William H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 361.  This triumph of the Christians over their persecutors is evoked “with Dante-esque imagination, Goya-like atrocious realism […] and unsettling sadistic features” in e. g. Tertullian, Spect. 30 / CCSL 1,252– 253. This apt description of the passage from Tertullian is quoted from Jean-Claude Fredouille, Tertullien et la conversion de la culture antique (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1972), 151– 152 (“[…] l’imagination d’un Dante au réalisme atroce d’un Goya, il passe comme un frisson inquiétant de sadisme […]”).  Cf. William H. C. Frend, “The North African Cult of Martyrs. From Apocalyptic to Hero-Worship,” in Jenseitsvorstellungen in Antike und Christentum. Gedenkschrift für Alfred Stuiber, eds. Theodor Klauser, Ernst Dassmann and Klaus Thraede (Münster: Aschendorff, 1982): (154‒167) 154: “Throughout its 500 years existence the Church of North Africa was a Church of the Martyrs.” See also e. g. William H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church. A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 87.  In this book, I will refer to the text as Pass. Perp. (or the Passio Perpetuae; or Passio); all quotations from the Latin and Greek versions as well as quotations from both recensions of the Acta Perpetuae (quoted as Acta Perp.), are from the edition of Cornelius I. M. I. van Beek, ed., Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. Volumen I: Textum Graecum et Latinum ad fidem codicum MSS. edidit C. I. M. I. van Beek. Accedunt Acta brevia SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Noviomagi: Dekker et Van De Vegt, 1936; henceforth referred to as van Beek). As for the second volume, which was to contain, among other things, en essay on the likely author of the text (see 92*; van Beek himself believed it was Tertullian) or on the relationship between the Latin and Greek versions (cf. 84*), van Beek never completed it. Notwithstanding the fact that there are more recent critical editions of the Passio Perpetuae (cf. especially Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, ed., “Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” in Atti e passioni dei martiri, eds. idem et al. [Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla / Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1987]: 108 – 147, with a mirror Italian translation; and also a bilingual French-Latin edition, cf. Jacqueline Amat, ed., Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes, Sources chrétiennes 417 [Paris: Cerf, 1996], which also includes an edition of the Acta Perp. and Greek version of Pass. Perp. – for its criticism cf. especially the review of François Dolbeau, REAug 43 [1997]: 350 – 353), the van Beek work remains the unsurpassed editio maior, and for this reason, in accordance with modern research, I prefer it. The latest critical edition of the

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tailed investigation over the following pages. Before continuing with the analysis of the text itself, at least a highly condensed literary and historical exposition of the earliest martyr texts may be appropriate to facilitate understanding of the position that the Passio Perpetuae occupies among them.⁸ The very titles of the Acta Scillitanorum and Passio Perpetuae reflect the two branches of martyr narratives, which paralleled the tradition of Greek texts on similar themes that started to appear as early as the latter half of the 2nd century A.D. Martyr literature never constituted a homogeneous corpus, and all attempts at its strict categorization are theoretical constructs imposed by later interpreters in the field of early Christian writing. Nevertheless, with some simplification,⁹ we may distinguish two broad groups into which the texts on the early Christian martyrs can be classified. In the first group, we have the so-called acta, usually brief reports imitating the official documents written by Roman officials (acta proconsularia), which were kept in archives accessible to the public. This

Latin and Greek versions of Pass. Perp., including an English translation and a detailed commentary, is Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), though his Latin text does not include any significant changes compared to the van Beek edition (for the critique of Heffernan’s book cf. exhaustively the review of François Dolbeau, REAug 59 [2013]: 382– 385). The English translations of Pass. Perp. that I quote in this book were taken from the translation of Joseph Farrell and Craig Williams, see “The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity,” in Perpetua’s Passions. Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis, eds. Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012): 14– 23 (henceforth quoted as Perpetua’s Passions). All other translations, unless stated otherwise, are my own.  For a basic overview of the earliest martyr narratives, including references to further literature, cf. e. g. Hippolyte Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 19662); also (with an emphasis on texts from North Africa) Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, “Introduzione,” in Atti e passioni dei martiri, eds. idem et al. (Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla / Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1987): IX‒XL; Victor Saxer, “Afrique latine,” in Hagiographies. Histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1550, vol. 1, ed. Guy Philippart (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994): 25‒95; Antonie Wlosok, in Die Literatur des Umbruchs. Von der römischen zur christlichen Literatur 117 – 284 n. Chr., ed. Klaus Sallmann (Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike 4; München: C. H. Beck, 1997): § 472.1–§472.9, 419 – 432 (and § 472.10, 433 – 435 by Peter Lebrecht Schmidt). For the most recent overviews see also Adele Monaci Castagno, L’agiografia cristiana antica. Testi, contesti, pubblico (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2010), and Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom. Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (New Haven – London: Yale University Press, 2012).  In terms of genre, defining one unifying feature common to the surviving martyr narratives seems impossible: we come across both epistolographic types of texts (Martyrium Polycarpi; Martyrium Lugdunensium), and novel-like accounts (Passio Mariani et Iacobi) or even narratives with some aspects of biography (Vita Cypriani).

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meant that all citizens were able to peruse them, including Christians who could then use them in writing their own accounts of the martyrdom of their fellow confessors.¹⁰ These types of texts are generally characterized by their comparatively fixed structure. The Acta Iustini, dating to approximately 160 A.D. and preserved in Justin’s second Apologia, are generally considered to be the oldest Greek exemplar of this first group, while the Acta Scillitanorum are seen as the Latin prototype of the group. At the start of these texts, the individual accused Christians are introduced by name, as is the Roman magistrate before whom they are tried. The core of the acta is then formed by the interrogation conducted by the magistrate and the answers given by the Christians, culminating in their repeated confession to Christianity (Christianus sum),¹¹ followed by the sentencing and execution of the accused. Though at first glance some of the acts of the martyrs may appear to be mere imitations of official administrative documents,¹² mainly as a result of the formalized language with its lack of rhetorical adornment and little narrative inter-

 Cf. Ryszard Paciorkowski, “L’héroïsme religieux d’après la Passion des saintes Perpétue et Félicité,” REAug 5 (1959): (367– 389) 372– 373.  On this, cf. Jan N. Bremmer, “‘Christianus sum’: The Early Christian Martyrs and Christ,” in Eulogia. Mélanges offerts à Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen à l’occasion de son soixante-cinquième anniversaire, eds. Gerard J. M. Bartelink, Anthony Hilhorst and Corneille H. Kneepkens (Steenbrugge ‒ The Hague: Nijhoff International, 1991): 11‒20. As further noted by Andrew McGowan, “The Ancient Limits of Modern Religion: Perpetua, Augustine and the Construction of the Secular,” Pacifica 23 (2010): 267– 280, this public confession of Christian identity, repeated by Perpetua herself in the Passio Perpetuae, was in sharp contrast to the ancient concept of religio, as this term did not signify religion in the sense we understand it today, but rather the “piety or scrupulosity with which cultic and other duties are carried out” (268). This was one of the reasons why the Christian self-declaration Christianus sum was a revolution of sorts, as the followers of the traditional cults did not have any similarly “exclusive” designation. Christians were then considered not as followers of a new religion but rather members of a sort of third race (tertium genus dicimur; Tertullian, Nat. I,8,1 / CCSL 1,21), alongside the Romans (or Greeks) and Jews (or barbarians). For more, cf. Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race. Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 53, who claims that according to this concept Perpetua and other martyrs can be viewed “not only as exemplars but also as founders of people that is imagined both in terms of kinship/descent and in terms of religious practices”.  To uncover the essential historical core of martyr narratives that could be traced back all the way to the official Roman trial transcripts is often almost impossible, see on this e. g. Gary A. Bisbee, Pre-Decian Acts of Martyrs and Commentarii (Cambridge [Mass.]: Harvard University Press, 1986); Giuliana Lanata, Gli atti dei martiri come documenti processuali (Milano: Giuffrè, 1973); Timothy D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), e. g. 54– 66.

1.1 The Passio Perpetuae in the context of the earliest Christian martyr literature

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vention, the fact is that even with the simplest martyr acts, in our case the Acta Scillitanorum, the apparent lack of style is a premeditated narrative strategy adopted by the Christian editors, designed to imbue the text with authority and significance through a meticulous imitation of the official report.¹³ The second broadly defined group of early Christian martyr texts includes the so-called passiones, sometimes also referred to as martyria, which are distinguished from the acta by their more extensive and elaborate narrative passages. These passages treat in detail areas such as the circumstances of the arrest of the Christians, their martyrdom (passio) itself, and the miraculous events surrounding it. In later texts of this genre, this narrative component often grows into fantastical accounts full of improbable miracles that resemble more than anything the novels of antiquity, to which they often provide a Christian alternative.¹⁴ These passion narratives, which are often not lacking in literary ambition, are frequently styled as accounts written by eyewitnesses or friends of the protagonists and rendered from the perspective of that persona, while still preserving the sections of dialogue that are characteristic of acta: the questions of the magistrate and the responses of the accused. The simplified categorization of martyr accounts into acta and passiones is of course rather formal and does not do justice to the variety of early Christian martyr literature. This is well exemplified by the fact that the first extant martyr text (with the exception of the New Testament account of the death of St Stephen)¹⁵ is the Martyrium Polycarpi from the middle of the 2nd century A.D.,¹⁶ a work that does not easily fit into either category outlined above.¹⁷

 Cf. Hans-Armin Gärtner, “Die Acta Scillitanorum in literarischer Interpretation,” WS 102 (1989): 149‒167; Antonie Wlosok, “Acta (Passio) Scil(l)itanorum,” in Die lateinische Literatur des Umbruchs, ed. Klaus Sallmann, § 472.2, 422– 423.  On structural and compositional parallels between the ancient novel and some late antique martyr narratives, see e. g. David Konstan, “Reunion and Regeneration: Narrative Patterns in Ancient Greek Novels and Christian Acts,” in Fiction on the Fringe. Novelistic Writing in the PostClassical Age, ed. Grammatiki A. Karla (Leiden ‒ Boston: Brill, 2009): 105‒120; on compositional parallels between the ancient novel and the Passio Perpetuae see idem, “Perpetua’s Martyrdom and the Metamorphosis of Narrative,” in Perpetua’s Passions: 291– 299. For a relatively marvelfree character of the earliest martyr stories cf. Candida R. Moss, “Miraculous Events in Early Christian Stories about Martyrs,” in Credible, Incredible. The Miraculous in the Ancient Mediterranean, eds. Tobias Nicklas and Janet E. Spittler (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013): 283 – 301.  On this, cf. Shelly Matthews, Perfect Martyr. The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). There has been a long debate over the context of the early Christian martyrdom, i. e. over the question of possible parallels to or antecedents for early Christian martyrs, including the pagan concept of “noble death” and / or most notably the Jewish Maccabaean martyrs. Most recently, a balanced survey of all these aspects (together with references to further literature) which surpass the topic of this book was offered

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Although the linguistic features and genres employed by the anonymous editors or compilers of the early Christian martyr texts were varied and extensive, the degree of schematization and convention described above was one of the integral and defining aspects of these texts and very likely formed the contemporary readers’ horizon of expectation. This becomes evident in some of the later texts and even in those written after the triumph of Christianity and the end of persecution, where these time-tested formal patterns are utilized in order to impart a stamp of authenticity on the narratives, giving them the flavour of the early centuries, or even, as was the case with certain Donatist accounts,¹⁸ to incorporate them into the tradition of “orthodox” martyr texts. The Passio Perpetuae, however, breaks away from these conventional patterns to a large degree, and right from the beginning of martyr literature establishes a tradition of its own, one that later texts would come to draw upon extensively. e. g. by Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, especially 23 – 48. For possible influence of the Maccabees’ narratives upon the Passio Perpetuae, cf. for the last time Jan Willem van Henten, “The Passio Perpetuae and Jewish Martyrdom: The Motif of Motherly Love,” in Perpetua’s Passions: 113 – 133 (with further references), who concludes that the evidence at hand supports the theory of “analogous but independent trajectories” (133) in the development of Jewish and Christian ideologies of martyrdom. He also concedes that the similarities between Pass. Perp. and the Maccabean martyrdoms “are not sufficient for arguing for interdependence or interaction on the level of texts” (ibidem).  However, it cannot be ruled out that this text is also not authentic in the strictest sense of the word, and that it could have been composed as late as the 3rd or 4th century A.D. For the most recent analysis, see Candida R. Moss, “On the Dating of Polycarp: Rethinking the Place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the History of Christianity,” Early Christianity 1 (2010): 539 – 574.  Generally, on the issue of classification and historical value of the early acts and passiones, see e. g. Boudewijn Dehandschutter, “Hagiographie et histoire. À propos des actes et passions des martyrs,” in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective. Memorial Louis Reekmans, eds. Mathijs Lamberigts and Peter van Deun (Leuven: Peeters, 1995): 295‒301. See also François-Xavier Romanacce, “Construction et fonction du récit dans la littérature martyriale. L’exemple de la Passio Perpetuae,” in Rerum gestarum scriptor. Histoire et historiographie au Moyen Age. Mélanges Michel Sot, eds. Magali Coumert, Marie-Céline Isaïa, Klaus Krönert and Sumi Shimahara (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris-Sorbonne, 2012): (245 – 255) 245 – 248.  On the issue of Donatist martyr accounts (written around the middle of the 4th century A.D.), which in some instances adopted the structure of the earlier “orthodox” acts or passiones as well as their rhetoric and metaphors, aimed not at pagans but at Catholics who are evoked as the new pagans, see for more details Petr Kitzler, ed., Příběhy raně křesťanských mučedníků II. Výbor z latinské a řecké martyrologické literatury 4. a 5. století [Stories of Early Christian Martyrs. An Anthology of the Latin and Greek Martyr Texts of the 4th and 5th Centuries] (Praha: Vyšehrad, 2011), passim (henceforth quoted as Příběhy II). The Donatist martyr texts were also translated into English by Maureen A. Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories. The Church in Conflict in Roman North Africa (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996), but Tilley did not use the most recent critical editions for many of them.

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1.2 The structure and composition of the Passio Perpetuae Modern interpreters of the Passio Perpetuae have repeatedly commented on its originality and exceptionality – and justifiably so. This view is common in particular when Perpetua’s account, which forms the core part of the entire Passio, is perceived as the only surviving autobiographical text from the entire period of antiquity written by a woman.¹⁹ However, the exceptionality of the text must not be overestimated,²⁰ and the modern reader should assess it in the context of other literary works of late antiquity or early Christianity, especially with regard to the characteristics of martyr literature described above. Despite this qualification, the Passio Perpetuae does stand out from other texts of its kind and forms a sort of hybrid genre, combining autobiographical passages narrated in the first person with the anchoring and unifying commentary of the unknown editor, while maintaining the characteristic features of a passion narrative. What we have, then, is not a homogeneous, seamless account of events by an eyewitness as he or she experienced them, but rather a skilfully composed text consisting of three independent yet ultimately integrated voices. The first voice is the narrative line of the editor or compiler of the text, whom we will discuss later in greater detail. In the first chapter (Pass. Perp. 1), which functions as a prologue, the editor’s voice provides a theological rationale for the text that follows, justifying the recording of the story of Perpetua, Felicity and their comrades. It also stresses that the death by martyrdom that the Christians undergo at Carthage is to be seen as a blessing of the Holy Spirit, which in this way demonstrates its continuing presence in the Christian community. According to the editor, not only were the works of the Holy Spirit visible in the martyrs of the past (vetera fidei exempla), but its gifts are continually distributed amongst all people at all times, and the new martyrdoms (nova documenta) are a proof of this incessant divine grace. People tend to venerate old examples of faith more than those of the present time, the editor continues, as they value  See e. g. Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word. Saints’ Stories and the Western Imagination, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Cambridge [Mass.] – London: Belknap Press, 2008), 54; Brent D. Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua,” Past & Present 139 (1993): (3‒45) in particular 12‒20 (also reprinted in Studies in Ancient and Roman Society, ed. Robin Osborne [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004]: 286– 325, with “Postcript 2003”); the high regard in which Pass. Perp. was held by other researchers is summed up by e.g. Émilien Lamirande, “Des femmes aux origines de l’église Nord-Africaine. Le contexte martyrologique (180‒225),” Aug 47 (2007): (41‒83) 53.  A good example of this is provided by e. g. Joseph Farrell, Latin Language and Latin Culture from Ancient to Modern Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 76, who states: “This woman has been hailed with justice as one of the most original voices not only of latinity but of all world literature.” (emphasis mine)

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more that which is ancient. They do not realize that these ancient examples of faith were themselves new in their time, and that the events taking place in the present will in turn grow old. As Rachel Moriarty perceived, this polemical aspect of the prologue may well have been aimed at a specific target audience: namely at newly baptized Christians, who might have found it difficult to divest themselves of the traditional Roman emphasis on mos maiorum and on the power that tradition and antiquitas in general held in ancient Rome.²¹ As some researchers have recently shown, the ambition of the editor was above all to establish and canonize the Passio Perpetuae as a common liturgical text and make it equal in status to the Holy Scriptures. This is apparent in the prologue as well as the epilogue, which echoes some of the themes of the initial chapter.²² Following the introduction, which from a theological point of view exhibits certain Montanistic hallmarks that will be discussed later, the editor plunges in medias res, introducing some essential facts about the group of young catechumens who were arrested and imprisoned for their faith (Pass. Perp. 2). In addition to the three men (Revocatus, Saturninus, and Secundulus), two women are mentioned by name: Felicitas and Vibia Perpetua, an educated, well born (honeste nata)²³ 22-year-old woman who commands most of the focus of the text. At this point the editor lets the voice of Perpetua herself take over. In the core section of the Passio (Pass. Perp. 3 – 10), frequently and inaccurately referred to as Perpetua’s prison diary,²⁴ Perpetua goes on to describe her grim experiences in the prison in which she was incarcerated together with her infant child

 Cf. Rachel Moriarty, “The Claims of the Past. Attitudes to Antiquity in the Introduction to Passio Perpetuae,” StPatr 31 (1997): 307– 313.  Cf. especially Jan den Boeft, “The Editor’s Prime Objective: Haec in Aedificationem Ecclesiae Legere,” in Perpetua’s Passions: 169 – 179. See also Teresa Sardella, “Strutture temporali e modelli di cultura: rapporti tra antitradizionalismo storico e modello martiriale nella Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” Aug 30 (1990): (259‒278) 264; Victor Saxer, Bible et hagiographie. Textes et thèmes bibliques dans les Actes des martyrs authentiques des premiers siècles (Bern – Frankfurt am Main ‒ New York: Peter Lang, 1986), 228 – 229.  Pass. Perp. 2,1– 3. Cf. Walter Ameling, “Femina Liberaliter Instituta – Some Thoughts on a Martyr’s Liberal Education,” in Perpetua’s Passions: 78 – 102.  Thomas J. Heffernan, “Philology and Authorship in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” Traditio 50 (1995): (315 – 325) 320‒321, places Perpetua’s account in a group of texts designated in antiquity as hypomnemata or commentarii, which did not fit in any clearly defined genre. These terms could apply to basically any collection of notes or commentaries. The notes were subsequently edited, stylistically modified or expanded by an anonymous editor. Cf. also Walter Ameling, “Femina Liberaliter Instituta”: 89; Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 4– 5, 66, 74– 77.

1.2 The structure and composition of the Passio Perpetuae

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whom she was still nursing at that time (filium infantem ad ubera).²⁵ Perpetua’s narrative is written in the first person, described by the editor as the ipsissima verba of the martyr-to-be, and it is claimed that she wrote it in her own hand based on her own experiences (conscriptum manu sua et suo sensu).²⁶ It has been justifiably suggested that the text is not, in the strictest sense, autobiographical, or at least that separating autobiography from its literary stylization is nearly impossible.²⁷ It is also almost certain that Perpetua’s narrative was edited by the anonymous editor,²⁸ and yet it is carried by a voice so individually distinct and personal that it has few rivals in the entire literature of antiquity.²⁹ Perpetua’s personal experiences in prison can be read primarily as a description of the painful process of breaking all social bonds with her family and the surrounding world. They document her gradual transformation from the mother worried about her infant child, the “honourably married” wife (matronaliter nupta),³⁰ and the daughter fully subordinated to her father’s authority, to the

 Pass. Perp. 2,2.  Pass. Perp. 2,3.  Cf. Marco Formisano, “Perpetua’s Prisons: Notes on the Margins of Literature,” in Perpetua’s Passions: 329 – 347.  Cf. e. g. Thomas J. Heffernan, “Philology and Authorship”; idem, The Passion of Perpetua, 74– 77; Andreas Merkt, “Gewaltverarbeitung und Konfliktbewältigung im Medium des Visionsberichtes: Die Passio Perpetuae und die Apokalypse des Johannes,” in Ancient Christian Interpretations of “Violent Texts” in the Apocalypse, eds. Joseph Verheyden, Tobias Nicklas and Andreas Merkt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011): (63 – 93) especially 81 and 84; see also Jan N. Bremmer, “The Motivation of Martyrs. Perpetua and the Palestinians,” in Religion im kulturellen Diskurs. Festschrift für Hans G. Kippenberg zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, eds. Brigitte Luchesi and Kocku von Stuckrad (Berlin – New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004): (535 – 554) 540; cf. also Heidi Vierow, “Feminine and Masculine Voices in the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas,” Latomus 58 (1999): 600 – 619; on the questioning of the authenticity of the text or parts thereof, see also Eric Robertson Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, reprint 1991), 47– 53, especially 49; Ross S. Kraemer and Shira L. Lander, “Perpetua and Felicitas,” in The Early Christian World, vol. 2, ed. Philip F. Esler (London ‒ New York: Routledge, 2000): 1048‒1068; Ross S. Kraemer, Unreliable Witnesses. Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 244; Judith Perkins, “The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body in the Passion of Perpetua,” in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, eds. Todd C. Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele (Leiden ‒ Boston: Brill, 2007): 313‒332 (reprinted also in eadem, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era [London – New York: Routledge, 2009], 159 – 171); Erin A. Ronsse, “Rhetoric of Martyrs: Listening to Saints Perpetua and Felicitas,” JECS 14 (2006): 283 – 327. Cf. also below, note 94 on p. 22.  Cf. Joseph Farrell, Latin Language and Latin Culture, 74– 79.  Pass. Perp. 2,1.

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fearless and confident wife of Christ and God’s beloved (matrona Christi; Dei delicata).³¹ The account is complemented by the four visions perpetua was granted in prison (Perpetua’s ascent of the ladder into an unearthly garden evoking paradise; two visions of her brother Dinocrates; her fight with an Egyptian symbolizing the Devil): visions that not only foreshadow her glorious death by martyrdom, but also remarkably fuse elements of Christianity and paganism.³² Even though the degree of authenticity of Perpetua’s account is debated to this day, most interpreters consider it authentic.³³ At this point the second narrator is replaced again by the editor, but only to introduce a third narrative voice: that of Saturus. Saturus is the catechist of the group of arrested Christians, who chose of his own accord to give himself up to the authorities after the arrest of his comrades (qui postea se propter nos ultro tradiderat).³⁴ According to the text, he also wrote out his account in his own hand (visionem suam edidit, quam ipse conscripsit).³⁵ Saturus’ account, in chapters 11– 13, describes a vision in which he and Perpetua, following their martyrdom, are carried by angels to paradise where they meet the Lord. Finally, the editor takes over for the last time. Perpetua’s own narrative finishes with the proposal “as for an account of the games themselves: someone

 Pass. Perp. 18,2. On the connotations of the word delicata in this context, cf. also Hanne Sigismund-Nielsen, “Vibia Perpetua – An Indecent Woman,” in Perpetua’s Passions: (103 – 117) 114– 116.  For a detailed analysis of possible biblical references and quotes across the entire Pass. Perp. text, see Rex D. Butler, “Perpetua’s Use of Sacred Writings,” a lecture delivered at the National Evangelical Theological Society Conference, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in 2005 [on-line, quoted 5 November 2014]. Available at: http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/papers/ ets/2003/ButlerPerpetuas%20Use%20of%20Sacred%20Writings/ButlerPerpetuas%20Use%20of %20Sacred%20Writings.html. Cf. also most recently, Walter Ameling, “Femina Liberaliter Instituta”: 95 – 98, who, however, states that “there is no direct quotation of either Old or New Testament, and not all of the cited parallels are convincing” (98) in Perpetua’s account.  Cf. especially Jan N. Bremmer, “Perpetua and Her Diary: Authenticity, Family and Visions,” in Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten, ed. Walter Ameling (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2002): 79 to 120; Jacqueline Amat, “L’authenticité des songes de la Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité,”Aug 29 (1989): 177– 191; Marco Formisano, “Introduzione,” in Marco Formisano, ed., La Passione di Perpetua e Felicita (Milano: BUR, 2008), (7– 61) 19 – 21; Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter oder Bilder des Bösen im frühen afrikanischen Christentum. Ein Versuch zur Passio sanctarum Perpetua [sic] et Felicitatis (Berlin – New York: Walter De Gruyter, 20042), 267– 275; Vincent Hunink, “Did Perpetua Write Her Prison Account?,” LF 133 (2010): 147‒155.  Pass. Perp. 4,5.  Pass. Perp. 11,1.

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else may want to write that up”.³⁶ After providing an account of Felicity’s giving birth in prison (Pass. Perp. 14– 15), the editor takes Perpetua up on her suggestion and goes on to describe, in chapters 16 – 21, the fate met by the martyrs during their contest against the wild beasts in the amphitheatre. The editor’s recounting of the contest and the deaths of the individual protagonists is detailed and graphic: in his evocation they are transformed into superhuman heroes who not only feel no fear, but even wish for as complicated and painful a death as possible. The last section of the narrative (Pass. Perp. 21,11) repeats some of the themes of the prologue, and the Passio ends with a final doxology that testifies to the intended liturgical use of the text, which was read in church communities on the feast day of the martyrs.³⁷ The reading of the text as part of the liturgy was intended to honour God and particularly to encourage believers to imitate the acts described. The text was thus to be understood as one inspired by the Holy Spirit, which in this way demonstrates its constant presence in the church community. Following this brief recapitulation of the contents of the text, let us now sum up the three chief aspects that make the Passio Perpetuae stand out from other martyr texts in terms of its composition and structure. These aspects, as we will

 Cf. Pass. Perp. 10,15: […] ipsius autem muneris actum, si quis voluerit, scribat (“As for the account of the games themselves: someone else may want to write that up.”).  On the liturgical use of hagiographic texts, see e. g. Baudouin de Gaiffier, “La lecture des actes des martyrs dans la prière liturgique en Occident. A propos du Passionaire hispanique,”AnBoll 72 (1954): 134– 166, as for the practice in Africa, see especially 143‒145. The readings of martyr accounts in the church of North Africa during the liturgy on the anniversary of their deaths (which most likely took place between readings from the Scripture and homilies) was first officially approved by the Synod of Hippo of 8 October 393 (Omnibus placet ut scripturae canonicae quae lectae sunt, sed et passiones martyrum, sui cuiusque locis, in ecclesiis praedicentur [“It is permitted that passiones of martyrs be read in the church in appropriate places, as the canonical Scriptures are read.”], see CCSL 249,21). This approval was reiterated by the 36th Canon of the 3rd Council of Carthage in 397: Liceat etiam legi passiones martyrum, cum anniversarii dies eorum celebrantur (“Let it also be permitted that the Passions of Martyrs be read when their festivals are kept.”), see CCSL 249,46. The reading of Pass. Perp. on the martyrs’ feast day (dies natalis) is also attested by Augustine, Serm. 280,1 / PL 38,1280: Exhortationes earum [sc. Perpetuae et Felicitatis] […] triumphosque passionum, cum legerentur, audivimus […] (“We heard of the encouragement they [i. e. Perpetua and Felicity] received […], and of their triumph in their sufferings, as it was all being read […]”; translation by Edmund Hill); see also Victor Saxer, Morts, martyrs, reliques en Afrique Chrétienne aux premiers siècles (Paris: Beauchesne, 1980), 77– 79. For the broader context, see also Lucy Grig, Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity (London: Duckworth, 2004), 35 – 53.

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see later, appear with increasing frequency in later martyr narratives, as fixed building blocks. 1) In the prologue, the Passio is explicitly treated as a valuable continuation of the tradition of previous well known examples of faith. No less explicit is the justification for its composition: the events that the text recounts, particularly the visions granted to the martyrs, are the works of God, or, more precisely, of the Holy Spirit. The entire account thus on the one hand glorifies God (deus honoretur),³⁸ and on the other serves for the edification of the church and believers (in aedificationem ecclesiae),³⁹ who are to imitate this exemplum in order to attain communion (communionem) with the martyrs, and through them with God.⁴⁰ The Passio thus has a clear exemplary function.⁴¹ 2) The core sections of the text consist of the first-person narratives of the martyrs themselves. As ipssisima verba these have a special status and authority, and the editor merely appends his own commentary to them. 3) Furthermore, the words of the martyrs describe visions that were granted to them through the works of the Holy Spirit and that revealed their future fate.⁴² The very fact that the visions are seen as a blessing from the Holy Spirit, which demonstrates in this way its presence in the Christian community, imbues them with additional significance.⁴³ In this respect the Passio Perpetuae follows the established tradition⁴⁴ of Judaeo-Christian apocalyptic liter-

 Pass. Perp. 1,1.  Pass. Perp. 1,1; 21,11.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 1,6.  Cf. James W. Halporn, “Literary History and Generic Expectations in the Passio and Acta Perpetuae,” VC 45 (1991): (223‒241) 232; on the pneumatological accents in the prologue, see also Sabine van den Eynde, “A Testimony to the Non-Believers, A Blessing to the Believers. The Passio Perpetuae and the Construction of a Christian Identity,” in More Than a Memory. The Discourse of Martyrdom and the Construction of Christian Identity in the History of Christianity, eds. Johan Leemans and Jürgen Mettepenningen (Leuven ‒ Paris ‒ Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2005): (23‒44) 29‒32. Cf. also Eugenio Corsini, “Proposte per una lettura della ‘Passio Perpetuae’,” in Forma futuri. Studi in onore del card. M. Pellegrino (Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1975): (481‒541) 487– 489.  As noted by Andreas Merkt, “Gewaltverarbeitung”: especially 64– 67, the visions in Pass. Perp. have an additional function: to justify and provide theological grounding (or: “Deskandalisierung” in Merkt’s words) for the physical suffering of the martyrs, including all the brutal details of their martyrdom described in Pass. Perp. The visions are to be understood as the fulfilment of God’s promise to the faithful that they will be received in heaven immediately after their death.  Cf. Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 63.  Katharina Waldner, “Visions, Prophecy, and Authority in the Passio Perpetuae,” in Perpetua’s Passions: 201– 219, traced early Christian links between “genuine visions” and martyrdom

1.3 The Passio Perpetuae in its historical context

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ature from the visions in Hermas’ The Shepherd to those granted to martyrs in earlier martyr texts such as the Martyrium Lugdunensium or Martyrium Polycarpi. ⁴⁵ However, the role and significance that the visions in the Passio play are unprecedented, as is the detailed nature of their description. While the visions allude to real-life experiences of the martyrs, they nevertheless retain a “dream-like” immediacy, which lends them authenticity, as some interpreters have noted.⁴⁶

1.3 The Passio Perpetuae in its historical context: Dating, authorship, text localization, and text variants As with the majority of other martyr narratives, establishing the exact historical localization of the Passio Perpetuae presents major challenges. These challenges involve not only the issue of precise dating, but also questions of probable authorship, the surviving versions of the Passio, its historicity and its theological background. In the following pages I attempt to outline briefly all of these aspects and to summarize the position of current research on these questions.

from the time of the New Testament (Stephen the First Martyr) through Polycarp to Justin and Clement of Alexandria. In this context, she views the Passio Perpetuae as a “variation on the theme of prophecy and persecution known since the first century” (218). Cf. also the overview by Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven. A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK, 1982), on Pass. Perp. 396 – 402. Cf. also e. g. Cecil M. Robeck, Prophecy in Carthage. Perpetua, Tertullian, and Cyprian (Cleveland, Ohio: The Pilgrim Press, 1992).  Cf. Mart. Polyc. 5,2. For an overview of visions in the earlier literary tradition from the 2nd century A.D. see Jacqueline Amat, Songes et visions. L’au-delà dans la littérature latine tardive (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985).  Cf. e. g. the condensing of time which is typical of dreams, in the first vision of Perpetua: instead of milk, the shepherd draws the cheese that Perpetua eats directly from the sheep. Perpetua’s transformation into a man is also considered a typical element of a dream. For more on this, cf. Eric Robertson Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, 51. For an exhaustive overview of research related to visions and their interpretation in Pass. Perp., cf. e. g. Burkhard von Dörnberg, Traum und Traumdeutung in der alten Kirche. Die westliche Tradition bis Augustin (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2008), 68 – 151.

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1 Fortissimi martyres: The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis as a pre-text

1.3.1 Dating⁴⁷ The first guidance towards the dating of the events described in the Passio Perpetuae is the information provided by the text itself. In Pass. Perp. 7,9 we read: […] munere enim castrensi eramus pugnaturi: natale tunc Getae Caesaris,⁴⁸ which means that Perpetua and her comrades were to be subjected to a contest with wild beasts as part of the celebrations commemorating the birthday of Caesar Geta, the younger son of emperor Septimius Severus. Geta was murdered by his brother Caracalla in December 211 and subsequently declared a public enemy, his person consigned to damnatio memoriae. Not only were all images of Geta and inscriptions commemorating him removed and erased, but the very act of speaking or writing his name was considered a crime.⁴⁹ As T. D. Barnes noted, the Passio Perpetuae thus stands as the only surviving text which explicitly refers to Geta’s birthday.⁵⁰ To determine the date more accurately, we can avail ourselves of supporting evidence in the relevant chronicles and martyrologies: the Chronography of 354 states in the Depositio martyrum that the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity took place on the nones of March (nonas Martias),⁵¹ that is, on March 7. The same date can be found in both Jerome’s and Bede’s martyrologies.⁵² We know that the title of caesar was granted to Geta in 198,⁵³ and the Fasti Vindobonenses priores date the martyrdom of Perpetua and her comrades to the time of the consulate of Plautianus and Geta,⁵⁴ which corresponds to the year

 For the most recent overview of research related to the dating of the text, cf. Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 60 – 78.  Cf. also Pass. Perp. 16,3: […] nobis […] noxiis nobilissimis, Caesaris scilicet, et natali eiusdem pugnaturis? (“[…], since we are especially designed wrongdoers, against Caesar not less, and are to fight on his very birthday?”); Timothy D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 69, proposed that the wording be amended to nobis noxiis nobilissimi Caesaris in view of the fact that nobilissimus Caesar was the standard designation for Geta between 198 and 209 (for a sceptical view of this, see François Dolbeau, REAug 57 [2011]: 405).  Cf. Eric R. Varner, Mutilation and Transformation. Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture (Leiden ‒ Boston: Brill, 2004), 168; see also Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano, “Perpetua’s Passions: A Brief Introduction,” in Perpetua’s Passions: (1– 13) 2.  Cf. Timothy D. Barnes, “Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum,” JTS NS 19 (1968): (509 – 531) 522; cf. also idem, Early Christian Hagiography, 67.  Cf. MGH Auct. ant. IX, Chronica Minora 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1892), 71: non. Martias. Perpetuae et Felicitatis, Africae. (“On the Nones of March [Martyrdom] of Perpetua and Felicity in Africa.”)  For a summary see van Beek, 162*‒163*.  Cf. Eric R. Varner, Mutilation and Transformation, 168.  Cf. van Beek, 163*.

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203 A.D.⁵⁵ This date is currently almost universally accepted as communis opinio, with most researchers allowing for a variation of one year (202– 204).⁵⁶ The historical and religious situation in North Africa at that time was seen by researchers as another piece of supporting evidence in favour of dating the text to the beginning of the 3rd century. The Severan persecution of Christians that claimed many lives at the turn of the 3rd century A.D. seemed to be a promising lead.⁵⁷ The fact remains, however, that the anti-Christian edict allegedly issued by Septimius Severus in 202, in which the emperor banned, under the strictest sanctions, conversion to Judaism and Christianity,⁵⁸ has been demonstrated by modern research to be an ahistorical fiction.⁵⁹ The specific attitudes the authorities adopted towards Christians during the time of Septimius Severus were almost entirely at the discretion of the individual province governors. By the turn of the 3rd century, Christians in Carth Cf. Anthony R. Birley, Septimius Severus. The African Emperor (London ‒ New York: Routledge, 19993), 151.  Cf. e. g. Gerhard Uhlhorn, Fundamenta chronologiae Tertullianeae (Gottingae: G. F. Kaestner, 1852), 6‒14 (including an overview of the earliest research and the dating of the text to the period of 203‒205/206); Adolf von Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius, part 2, Die Chronologie, vol. 2, Die Chronologie der Litteratur von Irenaeus bis Eusebius (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1904), 323‒324; Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction,” in eadem, ed., Passion de Perpétue: 19 to 22; Antonie Wlosok, “Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” in Die lateinische Literatur des Umbruchs, ed. Klaus Sallmann: § 472.3, 423 – 426; Anthony R. Birley, Septimius Severus, 153; Timothy D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 66 and 306‒307 (who favours the year 204); Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano, “Perpetua’s Passions: A Brief Introduction”: 2.  E.g. Tertullian’s tracts Ad martyras and Ad Scapulam give evidence of the persecutions at Carthage; in Eusebius’ report in Hist. eccl. VI,1,1 / GCS 9,2,518 we read about “numerous famous martyrdoms”, especially in Alexandria. One of the victims was also Origen’s father Leonidas.  This reference can be found in the collection of biographies of the Roman Emperors Historia Augusta, cf. Spartianus, Sept. Sev. 17,1: In itinere Palaestinis plurima iura fundavit. Iudaeos fieri sub gravi poena vetuit. Idem de christianis sanxit (“[…] he conferred numerous rights upon the communities of Palestine. He forbade conversion to Judaism under heavy penalties and enacted a similar law in regard to the Christians.”; translation by David Magie). The Historia Augusta is the sole surviving ancient source to mention this edict of Septimius’.  The literature arguing for as well as against the authenticity of Septimius’ edict is extensive, though current majority consensus seems to confirm that the edict is fictional. Cf. Timothy D. Barnes, “Legislation against the Christians,” JRS 58 (1968): 32– 50, especially 40 – 41; William Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments. Ecclesiastical and Imperial Reactions to Montanism (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2007), 182– 188 (including a detailed analysis of the topic); Rudolf Freudenberger, “Das angebliche Christenedikt des Septimius Severus,” WS 81 (1968): 206 – 217; Karl-Heinz Schwarte, “Das angebliche Christengesetz des Septimius Severus,” Historia 12 (1963): 185 – 208. In contrast, Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 20 – 22, accepts the historicity of Septimius’ edict without referring to any of the above studies and leans toward the opinion that the martyrdom of Perpetua and her comrades was closely linked to it.

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age no longer came exclusively from the lowest social classes and may have numbered as many as several thousand⁶⁰ out of a population of over 100,000.⁶¹ It was up to the governors themselves whether or not to listen to the aversion felt by the pagan majority towards Christians and make them the protagonists of popular spectacles, gladiatorial games or contests with wild beasts.⁶² This was also the case for Perpetua and her comrades, who were arrested and ultimately executed as a consequence of a local flare-up of anti-Christian sentiment, and not due to any centralized, state-organized persecution. Furthermore, in the Passio Perpetuae, the figure of the procurator Hilarianus appears in his capacity as the judge of the martyrs. Hilarianus is familiar to us from Tertullian’s tract Ad Scapulam,⁶³ where he is evoked as a persecutor of Christians. The Passio Perpetuae mentions the fact that Hilarianus replaced his predecessor Minicius Opimianus.⁶⁴ Finally, when we come to the question of establishing the date not of the martyrdom itself but of the writing of the Passio as a record, we again find supporting evidence in several facts. First, if we accept the year 203 as the date of the event, this also provides us with a fixed terminus post quem for the writing of the Passio. Second, we also know that the first author who mentions Perpetua by name and also paraphrases part of her visions (see below) was Perpetua’s

 Cf. Georg Schöllgen, Ecclesia sordida? Zur Frage der sozialen Schichtung frühchristlicher Gemeinden am Beispiel Karthagos zur Zeit Tertullians (Münster: Aschendorff, 1984), 298. Other estimates state the total population at up to 700,000, out of which the number of Christians could have been approximately 0.35 %, see Geoffrey D. Dunn, Tertullian (London ‒ New York: Routledge, 2004), 5.  Cf. e. g. Timothy D. Barnes, Tertullian. A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19852), 143 – 163 and 331; William Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments, 185 – 188.  Cf. e. g. Timothy D. Barnes, “Legislation against the Christians”: 32– 50; Petr Kitzler, “Tertullianus. Mezi Romanitas a Christianitas” [Tertullian. Between Romanitas and Christianitas], in Dějiny politického myšlení, vol. 2/1, Politické myšlení raného křesťanství a středověku, eds. Vilém Herold, Ivan Müller and Aleš Havlíček (Praha: OIKOYMENH, 2011): (50 – 73) 50 – 55.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 6,3; Tertullian mentions Hilarianus in Scap. 3,1 / CCSL 2,1129.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 6,3: Et Hilarianus procurator, qui tunc loco proconsulis Minuci Timiniani defuncti ius gladii acceperat […] (“The imperial agent Hilarianus had just been given authority to try capital offences as successor of the late proconsul Minucius Timinianus […]”; modified translation). The Greek version here gives the name of Minucius Oppianus (Μινουκίου Ὀππιανοῦ) – both forms are corruptions of the original name of the African proconsul in 202– 203 or 203 – 204 A.D. Minicius Opimianus, cf. Timothy D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 304 to 305; Jan N. Bremmer, “Perpetua and Her Diary”: 91– 92; James Rives, “The Piety of a Persecutor,” JECS 4 (1996): (1– 25, for details on Hilarianus) 3, note 5; Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 50 – 52.

1.3 The Passio Perpetuae in its historical context

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countryman Tertullian. The Passio must therefore have existed by the time Tertullian was writing. Tertullian’s brief note, which we will look at in greater detail in the second part of the book, can be found in his De anima, written, according to most scholars, between 203 and 209/210.⁶⁵ The Passio Perpetuae must therefore have been written very soon after the event itself, probably between 203/ 205 and 209/210. If the record did come into existence only a few years after the martyrdom of the protagonists, then when we consider the detailed nature of the evocation of the martyrs’ contest with the beasts in the amphitheatre in particular, we have a case for believing that the compiler of the text was probably an eyewitness to the events.⁶⁶

1.3.2 The identity of the editor, authorship, and the authenticity of the text The Passio Perpetuae was composed only a few years after the martyrdom of Perpetua, Felicity and their comrades in the Carthaginian amphitheatre and is likely to have been written by a Christian eyewitness to the events described. Scholars have frequently hypothesized that the compiler of the entire Passio may have been Perpetua’s contemporary Tertullian. Evidence in favour of this conclusion includes the geographic and temporal location itself – Carthage at the beginning of the 3rd century – coupled with the emphasis on the Holy Spirit, particularly in the prologue of the work, and on the visions of the martyrs. Similar accents can also be found in Tertullian’s Montanist works. This hypothesis was first expounded as early as the 17th century by Thierry Ruinart, who was the third editor (after Holstein and Bolland) of the Latin version of the Passio Perpetuae. ⁶⁷ The identification of the editor with Tertullian seemed to be further confirmed by the lexical parallels between the text of the Passio Perpetuae and some of Tertullian’s preserved works. Scholars also found a similarity between the two at a stylistic level. Furthermore, Tertullian was the first author to mention Perpetua; and some of the quotations from the New Testament in the prologue and epilogue do not

 Cf. Timothy D. Barnes, Tertullian, 44– 48 and 55 (dates the tract to 206/207); the dating to between 210 and 213 was established by Jan H. Waszink, ed., Tertulliani De anima (Amsterdam: J. M. Meulenhoff, 1947), 5*–6*; Hermann Tränkle, “Quintus Septimius Tertullianus Florens,” in Die lateinische Literatur des Umbruchs, ed. Klaus Sallmann: § 474, 474– 475, points out, however, that Tertullian’s tract De anima could not have been written too long after Adversus Hermogenem, and proposed its dating to the period immediately after the year 203.  Cf. Timothy D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 71; see also Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 55. For a sceptical view see Andreas Merkt, “Gewaltverarbeitung”: 81.  Cf. van Beek, (92*‒96*) 92*.

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match the Vulgate version, but correspond verbatim to the wording quoted by Tertullian in his works.⁶⁸ The combined strength of these arguments led a number of interpreters to point their finger at Tertullian as the editor of the Passio Perpetuae, and this claim is one that we come across in academic literature from time to time even today.⁶⁹ However, the theory that Tertullian may have been the editor of the text gained at least as many objectors as it did followers after it was first put forward. In the 1970s, several researchers presented compelling counterarguments in which they clearly ruled out that the opening and closing sections could have been penned by Tertullian.⁷⁰ Their detailed lexical and syntactical analysis revealed obvious discrepancies with Tertullian’s usage patterns and a much more “colloquial” style than anything seen in works known to be his.⁷¹ In addition, the stylistic level was shown to be considerably lower than that of any of his surviving works.⁷² The metrical clausulae employed by the author of the prologue and epilogue are demonstrably different from those favoured by Tertullian in his writing.⁷³ And finally, it seems possible that Tertullian, in his allusion to the Passio Perpetuae in the De anima, attributes to Perpetua the vision that according to the Passio itself was in fact granted to Saturus.⁷⁴ The real compiler of the text would hardly have made such an oversight.⁷⁵

 The quote in question is from Acts 2,17‒18 (which repeats Joel 3,1‒2) in Pass. Perp. 1,4, which Tertullian also quotes, with the same wording as in Pass. Perp., in his Marc. V,8,6 / CCSL 1,687 and in Res. 63,7 / CCSL 2,1012; furthermore, the quote from John 16,24 in Pass. Perp. 19,1 appears in the same wording in Tertullian’s Or. 10,3 / CCSL 1,263 and in Praescr. 8,11 / CCSL 1,194; cf. on this Victor Saxer, Bible et hagiographie, 89‒90; see also Renzo Petraglio, Lingua latina e mentalità biblica nella Passio sanctae Perpetuae. Analisi di caro, carnalis e corpus (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1976), 18‒29.  For an overview of earlier research, see van Beek, 92*‒96*.  For an overview of more recent research, see Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 67‒70.  For a compelling analysis, see especially René Braun, “Tertullien est-il le rédacteur de la Passio Perpetuae?,” REL 33 (1955): 79 – 81; idem, “Nouvelles observations linguistiques sur le rédacteur de la ‘Passio Perpetuae’,” VC 33 (1979): 105 – 117 (reprinted also in idem, Approches de Tertullien. Vingt-six études sur l’auteur et sur l’oeuvre [1955‒1990] [Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1992], 287‒299).  Cf. Jacques Fontaine, Aspects et problèmes de la prose d’art latine au IIIe siècle. La genèse des styles latins chrétiens (Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1968), 68‒97, who labels the author of the prologue of Pass. Perp. as “semiliterate” (“demi-lettré”, 73).  Cf. Åke Fridh, Le problème de la Passion des saintes Perpétue et Félicité (Göteborg: Elanders boktryckeri aktiebolag, 1968).  Cf. Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, “Tertullian’s Reference to the ‘Passio Perpetuae’ in ‘De Anima’ 55,4,” StPatr 17/2 (1982): 790‒795.

1.3 The Passio Perpetuae in its historical context

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The combination of all these findings makes the rejection of the idea of Tertullian’s authorship inevitable.⁷⁶ Though there are indeed some similarities between the Passio Perpetuae and Tertullian’s writings, just as there are passages for which parallels are found nowhere else than in his works,⁷⁷ the combined arguments against Tertullian’s authorship are far more convincing than those in its favour. To conclude, the only thing we can claim with any certainty is that the author of the prologue and the closing passages of the text was a contemporary of Tertullian’s, perhaps a friend or disciple, who was well acquainted with Tertullian’s work. And this is of course not surprising, as T. D. Barnes succinctly summarizes: “No Christian who wrote in Africa shortly after 200 could have escaped the enormous influence of his powerful rhetoric.”⁷⁸

 A further argument against Tertullian’s authorship might also be found in certain theological accents apparent in the Passio Perpetuae, e. g. the explicitly formulated theology of martyrdom according to which it is Christ himself who suffers in the body of the martyr. This concept, which was rather widespread in the early Christian martyr literature, is not one that Tertullian subscribes to in his extant works. For more, see e. g. Petr Kitzler, “Vis divinae gratiae”: 97, and Wiebke Bähnk, Von der Notwendigkeit des Leidens, 243. For further theological and conceptual differences between Pass. Perp. and Tertullian’s theories (especially in Pass. Perp. 16) see also Luigi Franco Pizzolato, “Note alla Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” VC 34 (1980): (105 – 119) 105 – 108; and also Jan den Boeft and Jan N. Bremmer, “Notiunculae martyrologicae VI. Passio Perpetuae 2, 16 and 17,” in Martyrdom and Persecution in Late Antique Christianity. Festschrift Boudewijn Dehandschutter, ed. Johan Leemans (Leuven – Paris – Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2010): (47– 63) 59.  Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of modern literature on the subject considers the refutation of Tertullian’s authorship a fact not requiring further confirmation (cf. Antonie Wlosok, “Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis”: 425), the opposite hypothesis was recently, and unsuccessfully, revived and defended by Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”: Evidence of Montanism in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006). For all the polemical contributions against his book, see Petr Kitzler, “Passio Perpetuae a montanismus. Staré otázky, nové odpovědi? Poznámky ke knize Rexe D. Butlera” [Passio Perpetuae and Montanism. Old Questions, New Answers? Some Notes on the Book by Rex D. Butler], LF 130 (2007): 360 – 372. The possible identification of the compiler of Pass. Perp. with Tertullian is also, unconvincingly, argued by Burkhard von Dörnberg, Traum und Traumdeutung, e. g. 149 – 151.  Cf. most recently Jan den Boeft, “The Editor’s Prime Objective”.  Timothy D. Barnes, “Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum”: 522; cf. idem, Early Christian Hagiography, 69. Using a computer-assisted quantitative analysis, J. Leal and G. Maspero recently proposed the hypothesis that the prologue of Pass. Perp. might be attributed to Tertullian, but their analyses cannot be considered conclusive, cf. Jerónimo Leal and Giulio Maspero, “Revisiting Tertullian’s Authorship of the Passio Perpetuae through Quantitative Analysis,” in Text and Language. Structures, Functions, Interrelations, Quantitative Perspectives, eds. Peter Grzybek, Emmerich Kelih and Ján Mačutek (Wien: Praesens Verlag, 2010): 99 – 108, with a critical appraisal of their meth-

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1 Fortissimi martyres: The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis as a pre-text

In view of two similar cases that appeared in later martyr narratives – the first part of the Passio Montani et Lucii was written by an eyewitness, the deacon Flavianus;⁷⁹ while the author of the Vita Cypriani was the deacon Pontius, also an eyewitness to the events, who remained with Cyprian until his death by martyrdom⁸⁰ – there may be some justification for the supposition that the Passio Perpetuae might have been written by the deacon Pomponius.⁸¹ Pomponius is mentioned several times by Perpetua and also features in her vision.⁸² This is of course a hypothesis which is not supported by any direct evidence, and as such it cannot be definitively proved or refuted. As I have noted earlier, the editor’s narrative line is only one of multiple voices that play out in the Passio Perpetuae. And it was the compiler of the text himself who explicitly claims that Perpetua’s account was written in the martyr’s own hand (manu sua),⁸³ and that Saturus also wrote his vision himself (ipse conscripsit).⁸⁴ An analysis of the metrical clausulae used in the individual parts of the Passio did reveal differences between each of the three parts.⁸⁵ This, together with the differences in style, lexicon and allusions, seems to confirm the theory of the three different authors (the editor, Perpetua, and Saturus).⁸⁶

od by Philippe Verkerk, “Critique d’attribution et analyse quantitative,” REAug 57 (2011): 371 to 374.  Cf. Pass. Montan. 21,1.  Vita Cypriani has survived as an anonymous text; Pontius’ name is disclosed by Jerome, Vir. ill. 68; on Vita Cypriani cf. most recently Mario Ziegler, “Die Vita et passio Cypriani: Aussageabsicht und historischer Hintergrund,” Klio 91 (2009): 458 – 471.  The suggestion was first made by René Braun, “Tertullien est-il le rédacteur”: 79‒81; idem, “Nouvelles observations linguistiques”: 117, and Julio Campos, “El autor de la ‘Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis’,” Helmantica 10 (1959): (357‒381) 381.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 3,7: […] Tertius et Pomponius, benedicti diaconi qui nobis ministrabant […] (“[…] Tertius and Pomponius, those saintly deacons who were ministering to our needs […]”); 6,7: […] statim mitto ad patrem Pomponium diaconum, postulans infantem […] (“[…] I sent the deacon Pomponius to Father as soon as I could […]”); cf. also Pass. Perp. 10,1.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 2,3.  Cf. ibidem 11,1.  The first to arrive at this conclusion was Walter H. Shewring, “Prose Rhythm in the Passio Perpetuae,” JTS 30 (1929): 56‒57, and idem, “En marge de la Passion des Saintes Perpétue et Félicité,” RBén 43 (1931): (15‒22) especially 19‒22. According to Shewring, the editor uses usual clausulae; Perpetua’s sections of the text also employ metrical clausulae but different from the editor’s sections; and as for Saturus’ section, he terms it “prose amétrique.” Shewring’s conclusions were later confirmed and elaborated on by Åke Fridh, Le problème de la Passion.  For a summary including references to relevant literature, see Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 268 – 275; for a detailed semantic analysis of selected terms across Pass. Perp. see also Renzo Petraglio, Lingua latina.

1.3 The Passio Perpetuae in its historical context

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The objection that Perpetua could hardly have written down her experiences whilst in prison does not stand up in the light of other similar examples of early Christian and martyr literature which testify to the existence of letters written by Christians awaiting death by martyrdom. The best known examples are arguably the letters of Ignatius of Antioch that the bishop wrote after his arrest while being escorted to Rome.⁸⁷ As for the related issue of Perpetua’s education, it is expressly mentioned by the editor as being “common in free citizens” (liberaliter instituta),⁸⁸ and is evident in the rhythmic prose in which Perpetua wrote her account. This, together with the echoes of classical and early Christian literature that can be traced in her visions,⁸⁹ indicate that Perpetua was certainly capable of keeping such records.⁹⁰ The same could be claimed for Saturus, who was the catechist of the Christian group (ipse nos aedificaverat).⁹¹ Although some researchers believe that the authenticity of Perpetua’s account was questioned by Augustine as early as the second decade of the 5th century, the comment by Augustine that they refer to, in which he mentions Perpe-

 Cf. e. g. Allen Brent, Ignatius of Antioch. A Martyr Bishop and the Origin of Episcopacy (London ‒ New York: T&T Clark, 2007), 10‒13. The mention that St Paul wrote in the prison can be found in the New Testament (cf. Phil 1,13; Phlm 1), and this practice is attested elsewhere as well: we know, for example, that Pionios composed a “tract” (σύγγραμμα) in the prison whose parts were later incorporated into the account of his martyrdom, in which they appear in the first person (cf. Mart. Pion. 1,2; 10,5; 18,13); in Pass. Montan. we come across a mention that the first part of the passio was written by all the incarcerated martyrs (cf. Pass. Montan. 12,1: haec omnes de carcere simul scripserant). In the 3rd century, Cyprian also states that confessors were allowed to write in prison (see e. g. Cyprian, Ep. 28,2,1 / CCSL 3B,134), which is attested by the number of letters that he received from them. Cf. Jeffrey A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 77.  Cf. especially Walter Ameling, “Femina liberaliter instituta” (with scepticism as to the thoroughness and scope of this education, which is probably justified); Paul McKechnie, “St. Perpetua and Roman Education in AD 200,” L’antiquité classique 63 (1994): 279 – 291, who documents that Perpetua must have received not merely elementary but further education as well, administered by a grammaticus. See also Johannes Hofmann, “Vibia Perpetua, liberaliter instituta. Zum Bildungsstand einer karthagischen Christin an der Wende des zweiten Jahrhunderts,” in Früh-Christentum und Kultur, ed. Ferdinand R. Prostmeier (Freiburg – Basel – Wien: Herder, 2007): 75 – 94.  Cf. e. g. Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages. A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua († 203) to Marguerite Porete († 1310) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 6‒16; Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 62‒76; Jan N. Bremmer, “Perpetua and Her Diary”.  For a detailed overview, cf. Jan N. Bremmer, “Perpetua and Her Diary”: 83‒86.  Pass. Perp. 4,5.

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tua “or whoever did write it”⁹² was made in an entirely different polemical context that we will analyse in detail later, and can therefore hardly be attributed any major significance. It is, however, likely that the editor did edit Perpetua’s account and must have modified it⁹³ in terms of language and style to a certain extent, but apart from the spurious comment by Augustine we do not have any record that would suggest that the Passio Perpetuae was a literary fiction.⁹⁴ On the other hand, I can put forward several arguments that in my opinion support the theory of the text’s authenticity, a view that most current researchers share.⁹⁵ 1) The Christian editor had no reason to create a double pseudepigraphical fiction, particularly one with such a complicated structure. And even were he to have had such an inclination, he would most likely have tried to eliminate all non-standard or innovative aspects which could have drawn attention to themselves and thus raised suspicion.⁹⁶ Yet the Passio abounds in such innovative elements (see below). 2) It is unlikely that the editor would have put so much effort into inventing three linguistically and stylistically different texts with different allusions in each, even going to the trouble of using different metrical clausulae. 3) The martyrdom of Perpetua and her comrades at Carthage must have been witnessed by a great number of spectators, including Christians. Would a potential falsifier have dared fake an account of events that must have still been within the living memory of his contemporaries?⁹⁷

 Augustine, Nat. orig. I,10,12 / CSEL 60,312: […] nec illa sic scripsit vel quicumque illud scripsit […] (“[…] whoever it was who wrote it this way, it was not Perpetua […]”). For the whole quotation and its context related to Perpetua’s brother Dinocrates, see below, p. 84– 85.  Cf. especially Thomas J. Heffernan, “Philology and Authorship”.  For references to the literature questioning the authenticity of the text, see above, note 28 on p. 9. The most detailed explication of literary forgeries and pseudepigraphy in the literature of antiquity (including Christian) is given by Wolfgang Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum. Ein Versuch ihrer Deutung (München: C. H. Beck, 1971), in this context e. g. 50‒57, 65‒67. Cf. also most recently Bart D. Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery. The Use of the Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 502– 504, who considers Pass. Perp. to be a possible forgery.  For an overview cf. also Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 267‒275 (with reservations about his psychological arguments); Marco Formisano, “Introduzione”: 19‒21.  This argument was formulated by Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 270 – 271.  Cf. Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 272. The sensitivity of early Christian authors to this issue and the readiness with which they were able to detect frauds is attested by e. g. the following note by Tertullian in his tract Bapt. 17,5 / CCSL 1,291– 292 (written at the turn of the 2nd and 3rd centuries), to the effect that Acta Pauli et Theclae (probably from the latter half of the 2nd century) was a forgery committed by some priest from Asia Minor: Quodsi quae Acta Pauli quae perperam scripta sunt [exemplum Theclae] ad licentiam mulierum docendi tinguendique de-

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4) That the martyrs did in reality exist has been proven by archaeological and epigraphical finds,⁹⁸ and the very report of their martyrdom was subsequently commented on and modified in the later literary tradition of the church. Furthermore, the text of the Passio Perpetuae was known to Tertullian only a few years after the event itself, and was read out as part of the church liturgy on the martyrs’ feast day.

1.3.3 Surviving versions of the Passio Perpetuae and the issue of the original Around the middle of the 17th century, the Vatican librarian, scholar and book collector Lucas Holstenius (1595 – 1661) discovered a manuscript at the library of the Benedictine Monte Cassino⁹⁹ monastery. This manuscript contained, in addition to the works of Cyprian, also an account of the martyrdom of Perpetua, Felicity and their comrades.¹⁰⁰ The text was published in Rome in 1663, after Hol-

fendunt, sciant in Asia presbyterum qui eam scripturam construxit quasi titulo Pauli de suo cumulans convictum atque confessum id se amore Pauli fecisse loco decessisse. (“But if certain Acts of Paul, which are falsely so named, claim the example of Thecla for allowing women to teach and to baptize, let men know that in Asia the presbyter who compiled that document, thinking to add of his own to Paul’s reputation, was found out, and though he professed he had done it for love of Paul, was deposed from his position.”; translation by Ernest Evans) For more, see Wolfgang Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung, 210 – 213.  For an iconographical material connected to the early cult of Perpetua and Felicity see also below, p. 73 – 76. For a detailed overview of the inscriptions, see Yvette Duval, Loca Sanctorum Africae. Le culte des martyres en Afrique du IVe au VIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Roma: École française de Rome, 1982), vol. 1, 7‒20; vol. 2, 682‒683. See also William Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia. Epigraphic Sources Illustrating the History of Montanism (Macon [Georgia]: Mercer University Press, 1997), 105 – 117. According to the note by Victor of Vita (end of 5th century), Hist. pers. I,3,9 / CSEL 7,5, the bodies of Perpetua and Felicity were buried in the Basilica maiorum at Carthage ([…] basilicam maiorem, ubi corpora sanctarum martyrum Perpetuae atque Felicitatis sepulta sunt, Celerinae vel Scillitanorum […]; “[…] Basilica maiorum, where the bodies of Perpetua and Felicity, Celerina or the Scillitans were buried […]”), which was indeed uncovered by the archaeological digs at Mçidfa, north of Carthage, Tunisia, at the beginning of the 20th century; see also Brent D. Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua”: 42; for a sceptical view see Johannes Divjak and Wolfgang Wischmeyer, “Perpetua felicitate oder Perpetua und Felicitas? Zu ICKarth 2,1,” WS 114 (2001): 613 – 627. Cf. also Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biographies. Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages (New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 193.  Cf. Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano, “Perpetua’s Passions: A Brief Introduction”: 2– 3.  On the extant manuscripts, their description and interdependency, see van Beek, 17*‒65*; Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 84‒90; Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 369 to 430.

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stenius’s death.¹⁰¹ In the following year, a second edition of the same text¹⁰² was published in Paris, to which the publisher of the book Henricus Valesius added a second, shorter version of the narrative, a version he claimed was “ex manuscripto codice bibliothecae sancti Victoris”. Owing to its protocol-like style, this variant was later to become known as the Acta Perpetuae. In 1889, however, J. R. Harris discovered at the monastery library in Jerusalem a manuscript containing a Greek version of the same Passio, which he published a year later in collaboration with S. K. Gifford.¹⁰³ Both editors declared the Greek text to be the original, proclaiming as much in the very title of their edition, while the Latin version was said to be a translation written approximately fifty years later.¹⁰⁴ The issue of the primacy of the Greek versus the Latin version thus came into existence, and kept researchers busy for almost another hundred years.¹⁰⁵ Although it is not my intention to enumerate all the contributions to this debate or the conclusions arrived at, let me take a look at some arguments whose rationale may be considered especially plausible. One of the first commentators to provide a compelling confirmation of the primacy of the Latin version was L. Duchesne, whose comments came out not long after the publication of the Greek version.¹⁰⁶ His arguments are predominantly philological and content-re-

 See Passio sanctarum martyrum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. Prodit nunc primum e MS. Codice Sacri Casinensis Monasterii. Opera et studio Lucae Holstenii Vaticanae Basil. Canon. et Bibliothecae Praefecti. Notis eius Posthumis adiunctis (Romae: Apud P. Poussinum, 1663).  See Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis, cum notis Lucae Holstenii, Vaticanae Bibliothecae Praefecti. Item Passio Bonifacii Romani Martyris. Eiusdem Lucae Holstenii Animadversa ad Matyrologium Romanum Baronii. His accedunt Acta Sanctorum Martyrum Tarachi, Probi & Andronici. Ex codice MS. S. Victoris Parisiensis (Parisiis: Apud Carolum Savreux, 1664).  Cf. J. Rendel Harris and Seth K. Gifford, eds., The Acts of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas. The Original Greek Text Now First Edited from a MS. in the Library of the Convent of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem (London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1890).  Cf. ibidem, 25. In the “Postscript 2003” appended to the reprint of his study of Pass. Perp., B. D. Shaw states that he was able to examine the copy of the Greek manuscript that R. Harris, its discoverer, was working with. Harris’s notes on the margins indicate that he ultimately changed his mind about the Greek version being the original; see Brent D. Shaw, “Postscript 2003,” in Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society, ed. Robin Osborne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): (322– 325) 322.  For a summary of past research, see again van Beek, 84*‒91*; for a recent detailed analysis, see Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 51‒66; also Marco Formisano, “Introduzione”: 17‒18; Antonie Wlosok, “Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis”: 425 – 426; and Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 79 – 99.  Cf. Louis Duchesne, “En quelle langue ont été écrits les actes des saintes Perpétue et Félicité?,” CRAI 35 (1891): 39‒54.

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lated in nature: he strove to show that the Greek text bears a number of traits typical of a translation, namely the lack of comprehension of some termini technici, manifested by attempted circumlocutions of these terms, and the use of neutral, stylistically unmarked words in places where the Latin uses distinctively marked words. Furthermore, the author of the Greek version either did not comprehend or failed to translate adequately some of the verbal puns that appear in the Latin text, which is again a sign that generally gives away a translation.¹⁰⁷ Duchesne also pointed out a passage in Pass. Perp. 13,4 in which Perpetua, in Saturus’ vision, begins to talk to the church dignitaries in Greek (Et coepit Perpetua cum illis graece loqui […]). This passage is understandable in the Latin version, but struggles to make sense in the Greek (Καὶ ἤρξατο ἡ Περπετούα Ἑλληνιστὶ μετ’ αὐτῶν ὁμιλεῖν …). Over the following years, Duchesne’s arguments concerning the priority of the Latin version were corroborated and further elaborated by J. A. Robinson, who also produced a critical edition of the Passio Perpetuae,¹⁰⁸ and even more so by Pio Franchi de’Cavalieri, who also compiled a new edition – even though Franchi did not rule out that Perpetua’s account may have been originally composed in Greek.¹⁰⁹ In the 1930s, it was W. H. Shewring who was the first to point out that whereas the Latin text contained sections written in a rhythmic prose whose metrical clausulae differed in each section from author to author, the Greek text was uniform in terms of metre, which may be seen as another sign pointing to a translation.¹¹⁰ In the 1970s, the Shewring’s analysis was further elaborated by Å. Fridh, who demonstrated that the Greek version of the vision of Saturus employed a different rhythm to the rest of the text. Based on this finding, he put forward the hy-

 Cf. also Ernst Rupprecht, “Bemerkungen zur Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” Rheinisches Museum, NF 90 (1941): 177‒192.  Cf. Joseph Armitage Robinson, ed., The Passion of S. Perpetua Newly Edited from the MSS. with an Introduction and Notes. Together with an Appendix Containing the Original Latin Text of the Scillitan Martyrdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891), especially 2‒9.  Cf. Pio Franchi de’Cavalieri, “La Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” in idem, Scritti agiografici, vol. 1, Studi i testi 221 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1961): (41 to 154) 102 (originally published in RQ, Supplementheft 5, Roma 1896).  See above, p. 20, note 85. The opposite conclusion was arrived at by Aarne Henrik Salonius, Passio S. Perpetuae. Kritische Bemerkungen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der griechisch-lateinischen Überlieferung des Textes (Helsingfors: Helsingfors centraltryckeri och bokbinderi aktiebolag, 1921), who defended the primacy of the Greek version and thought the Latin one to be a translation thereof ‒ in his view, three distinct sections can be discerned also in the Greek text, the parts differing in the lexicon and styles used (74).

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pothesis that the original language of the vision of Saturus was Greek.¹¹¹ This hypothesis was later refuted, in my opinion justifiably.¹¹² Further confirmation of the priority of the Latin version came in the 1980s, paradoxically from L. Robert, who in his study defended the claim that the Greek version was the original one.¹¹³ Robert convincingly demonstrates that Perpetua’s fourth vision, in which she fights a hideous Egyptian, reveals contemporary realities of the Pythian Games held at Carthage in 202– 203, which, he concludes, Perpetua must have seen in person.¹¹⁴ He goes on to state that the priority of the Greek version is supported by the correct usage of appropriate termini technici associated with the games, while the Latin version lacks this accuracy as far as these terms are concerned. However, this finding lends itself to exactly the opposite conclusion from that which Roberts reaches. It is much more probable that Perpetua, as a young woman and recent convert to Christianity, would not have known or used the highly technical sports terminology and would not have been an “expert on the Pythian games”.¹¹⁵ There is also another fact that seems to confirm that the Greek version is a later translation. Though the story of Perpetua and her comrades existed in both Latin and Greek, its echoes in the later literature can be seen much more frequently in texts written in Latin, as is revealed by the reception and reinterpretations of the Passio Perpetuae that I will discuss in the third part of this book. In contrast, in the literary texts produced in Greek in the the first five centuries, the Passio Perpetuae is mentioned or alluded to only twice, in the Passio Procopii and Passio Polyeucti. We should, however, bear in mind that the entries in Greek martyr calendars suggest that the cult of Perpetua and Felicity (which

 Cf. Åke Fridh, Le problème de la Passion, 12‒83.  Cf. Jan N. Bremmer, “The Vision of Saturus in the Passio Perpetuae,” in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome: Studies in Ancient Cultural Interaction in Honour of A. Hilhorst, eds. Florentino García Martínez and Gerard P. Luttikhuizen (Leiden: Brill, 2003): (55‒73) 57‒58. Andreas Merkt, “Gewaltverarbeitung”: 80 – 84, sees Saturus’ vision as an isolated entity which was incorporated into Pass. Perp. much later by the editor. His opinion is based on the fact that in the later reception of Pass. Perp. Felicity is put above Saturus, despite his higher social standing.  Cf. Louis Robert, “Une vision de Perpétue martyre à Carthage en 203,” CRAI 126 (1982): 228 – 276 (reprinted also in idem, Opera minora selecta, vol. 5 [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1989], 791– 839).  But cf. also Jakko Aronen, “Pythia Carthaginis o immagini cristiane nella visione di Perpetua?,” in L’Africa romana: atti del 6. Convegno di studio, vol. V/2, ed. Attilio Mastino (Sassari: Edizioni Gallizzi, 1989): 643 – 648, who similarly finds aspects of a shared Christian tradition in this vision (one that e. g. Tertullian invokes in his tracts).  Thus Jan N. Bremmer, “Perpetua and Her Diary”: 77– 79.

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probably went hand in hand with the knowledge of their passio) spread to the East relatively early.¹¹⁶ However, the fact that the Greek version is apparently a (loose) translation of the Latin original does not detract from its value. J. N. Bremmer and other researchers have noted that the Greek text may not have been translated from the same Latin version of the Passio Perpetuae that is available to us today, as in some instances we can restore some disputed passages in the extant Latin text with the help of the Greek version.¹¹⁷ Bremmer also concludes that the translation may have been produced around the year 260.¹¹⁸ Although the Greek translation represents another instance of the reception of the original Latin Passio, in this book we will leave this issue aside.¹¹⁹ Firstly, a reasonably detailed comparison of the Latin and Greek versions, in both lexical as well as syntactical and

 For more details cf. below, p. 77– 79.  Cf. Jan N. Bremmer, “The Vision of Saturus”: 57– 58; for more passages where the Greek version offers a better reading than the Latin manuscripts, see Clementina Mazzucco and her review of the edition of Pass. Perp. by Jacqueline Amat (see Clementina Mazzucco, RSLR 36 [2000]: [157‒167] especially 159‒160).  Cf. Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano, “Perpetua’s Passions: A Brief Introduction”: 4. This definite claim, which is also repeated by Candida R. Moss, “Blood Ties. Martyrdom, Motherhood, and Family in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity,” in Women and Gender in Ancient Religions: Interdisciplinary Approaches, eds. Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll, James A. Kelhoffer and Paul A. Holloway (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010): (183‒202) 184, note 2 (including the not quite clear explanation that “[…] the Greek version appeared early, perhaps by 260 C. E., since it becomes the basis for the Martyrdom of Marian and James and the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius”), is not sufficiently backed up by evidence, and this hypothesis draws exclusively on the information in the text itself. From this information, however, all that can be inferred is that the Greek text could have been written at any time after 260, as it dates the passion of the Christians to the time of the persecution under emperors Valerian and Gallienus, i. e., between 257 and 260. The existence of the cult of Perpetua and Felicity in the East from ca. mid-fourth century, however, suggests that the Greek passio must have been indeed composed not too long after the Latin original. Cf. below, p. 77– 79.  Let me note at the outset that the Passio Perpetuae is not the only martyr narrative that is extant both in Greek and Latin versions. Of the earliest martyr accounts which are generally deemed to be authentic (or at least having a discernible historical core), there is a Greek version of the Acta Scillitanorum, which is believed today to be a 3rd century translation. Both Greek and Latin versions can also be found for Martyrium Carpi, Papyli et Agathonicae and the Passio Eupli. The mutual relationship of these recensions is still debated to this day, much like the recensions of the Passio Perpetuae itself. For a general overview of Greek translations of Latin patristic and hagiographic texts, see e. g. Rémi Gounelle, “Traductions de textes hagiographiques et apocryphes latins en grec,” Apocrypha 16 (2005): 35 – 74; see also Eligius Dekkers, “Les traductions grecques des écrits patristiques latins,” SacEr 5 (1953): 193 – 233.

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stylistic terms, has been available for some time,¹²⁰ and secondly, and more importantly for the purpose of this book, the discrepancies between the Greek and Latin versions cannot be interpreted as a concerted effort on the part of the Greek translator to manipulate and reinterpret the Latin original. Even though the Greek translator failed to avoid a number of errors and misinterpretations in his rendering of the Latin source text, the discrepancies between the two versions were most likely due to the limitations of the translator’s skills and were not motivated by ideological reasons or an attempt to polish or smooth over certain aspects of the text. (Reichmann, nevertheless, notes that the translation is literal in a positive sense, meaning that it is understandable even without comparing it to the original.)¹²¹ This also holds true for the theologically debatable prologue and epilogue in which the Greek translation omits certain phrases referring to the Montanist aspects of the text.¹²² Their absence or distortion may, however, possibly be attributed to the complicated structure of the original Latin sentences which the Greek translator seems not to have fully understood. Some of the simplification that we encounter in the translation may also have been caused by the fact that the Greek translator simply did not understand these theological allusions. Hence the end result cannot be characterized as an intentional suppression of the Montanist tendencies of the Latin original¹²³

 Cf. especially Pio Franchi de’Cavalieri, “La Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis”: 41– 106; Victor Reichmann, Römische Literatur in griechischer Übersetzung (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1943), 101 to 130; Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 83 – 99.  Cf. Victor Reichmann, Römische Literatur in griechischer Übersetzung, 131.  In the prologue of Pass. Perp. (1,5), the Greek translator omits the Latin phrase pariter repromissas which concerns the new visions and prophecies promised by God, and also slightly modifies the subsequent wording, as in his translation the Holy Spirit “serves the holy church” (χορηγεῖ τῇ ἁγίᾳ ἐκκλησίᾳ) by these specific gifts, but the Latin closing phrase instrumentum ecclesiae deputamus is omitted. A more pronounced shift in meaning in the Greek translation, however, can be detected at the end of Pass. Perp. (21,11), where the Greek translator omits the whole final purpose clause of the Latin text: Quam qui magnificat et honorificat et adorat, utique et haec non minora veteribus exempla in aedeficationem ecclesiae legere debet, ut novae quoque virtutes unum et eundem semper Spiritum Sanctum usque adhuc operari testificentur […] (“And he who magnifies and honours and adores that glory should also read these testimonies, which are no less important than ancient ones for the edification of the church, so that new acts of bravery as well may testify to the continuing work, even down to the present moment, of the Holy Spirit […]”). However, as Victor Reichmann, Römische Literatur in griechischer Übersetzung, 123, notes, the Greek translator either did not understand the final clause in its entirety, or it cannot be ruled out that the omitted purpose clause may not have been present in the Latin copy from which he was translating.  Cf. Victor Reichmann, Römische Literatur in griechischer Übersetzung, 122– 123; Pio Franchi de’Cavalieri, “La Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis”: 70. In contrast, attempts at suppression of

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– in particular in view of the fact that other key phrases that are generally considered hallmarks of Montanism were translated almost literally. At the end of this chapter, let us sum up the basic facts: the Passio Perpetuae survived in both Latin (BHL 6633) and Greek versions (BHG 1482). Of these, the Latin recension is the original and the Greek the translation (perhaps comparatively early), although the Greek text may not necessarily have been translated from the surviving Latin text that is available to us today. In addition to these two versions, two shorter accounts have been preserved in Latin only, commonly designated as Acta Perpetuae A (BHL 6634) and Acta Perpetuae B (BHL 6636B). The relationship of these two versions to one another has not yet been satisfactorily elucidated; this and related issues will be addressed later in this book.

1.3.4 The Passio Perpetuae and Montanism The last major issue associated with the text of the Passio Perpetuae deserving of attention is that of the theological intent and background of the narrative, or, to phrase it in the terminology of older denominationally framed research, whether the text is “orthodox” or “heterodox / heretical” because of the Montanist influence it contains. This question has been as actively discussed by researchers as those of the identity of the author and the interdependency of the Latin and Greek versions. However, as I have demonstrated elsewhere, and as has been independently emphasized by a number of other researchers as well,¹²⁴ the very framing of the question in this way, perhaps not inconceivable in the 17th or 18th centuries, is anachronistic and misleading from the present perspective, as the boundaries between orthodoxy and heresy were rather permeable and the categories themselves barely nascent at the beginning of the 3rd century.¹²⁵

the Montanist tendencies of the original in the Greek translations are seen by Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, 98 – 99.  For more details, cf. Petr Kitzler, “Montanismus a Passio Perpetuae”; see also e. g. François Dolbeau, “rf. R. D. Butler, The New Prophecy & ‘New Visions’, Washington D. C. 2006,” REAug 53 (2007): 348 – 349 (review), and most recently Christoph Markschies, “The Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis and Montanism?,” in Perpetua’s Passions: 277– 290.  For a tidy overview, cf. e. g. Maurice Wiles, “Orthodoxy and Heresy,” in Early Christianity. Origins and Evolution to AD 600, ed. Ian Hazlett (London: SPCK, 1991): 198 – 207; see also Josef Blank, “Zum Problem ‘Härasie’ und ‘Orthodoxie’ im Urchristentum,” in Zur Geschichte des Urchristentums, eds. Gerhard Dautzenberg, Helmut Merklein and Karlheinz Müller (Freiburg – Basel – Wien: Herder, 1979): 142– 160; Mark Edwards, Catholicity and Heresy in the Early Church (Farnham – Burlington: Ashgate, 2009).

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Another consideration that complicates framing the issue in this way is the fact that the enthusiastic Christian Montanist movement, or the “New Prophecy”, as its members called themselves,¹²⁶ was not, at the time, heretical in the present sense of the word. This label was only later applied to Montanists by the heresiologists of the 4th and 5th centuries, and in Carthage at least, and also in Rome for a time, the movement was considered one of the standard movements of thought of the contemporary church.¹²⁷ Montanism was founded in Phrygia in Asia Minor around the 60s of the 2nd century, after Montanus and his two prophetesses Prisca and Maximilla declared that the Holy Spirit (“Paraclete” or “Comforter”; Παράκλητος) had descended upon them and would henceforth speak through their voices. Montanism began to spread with unprecedented speed, reaching North Africa around the year 200, where it found its most famous advocate in the figure of Tertullian.¹²⁸ Montanists emphasized several (non-doctrinal) aspects by which they differentiated themselves from the “Catholics”: first, they stressed the active workings of the Holy Spirit, which is constantly present in its church and speaks through the voice of Montanus and his prophetesses. These prophecies, which frequently took on ecstatic forms, often announced the coming end of the world. Second, they subscribed to a rigorous church discipline which included e. g. an unwillingness to absolve grave sins, a ban on second marriages, longer and stricter fasting, etc. The claim that the editor of the Passio Perpetuae was a follower of Montanus (with the remarkable comment that “[…] quamvis haec Acta collecta sint ab homine haeretico, non idcirco tamen minor apud nos esse debet eorum auctoritas”)¹²⁹ appeared as early as in Valesius’s preface to the second edition of the text

 For a basic overview of Montanism, see e. g. Christine Trevett, Montanism. Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For more recent works on Montanism cf. e. g. Vera-Elisabeth Hirschmann, Horrenda Secta. Untersuchungen zum frühchristlichen Montanismus und seinen Verbindungen zur paganen Religion Phrygiens (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005); Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”; and William Tabbernee and Peter Lampe, Pepouza and Tymion. The Discovery and Archaeological Exploration of a Lost Ancient City and an Imperial Estate (Berlin – New York: Walter De Gruyter, 2008) which documents the discovery of Montanist holy places in modern Turkey, where, its followers believed, the New Jerusalem was to descend.  Cf. Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, 29 and 43; Christine Trevett, Montanism, passim.  From which it does not follow that Tertullian was a schismatic, as has been proved by modern scholarship, see especially David Rankin, Tertullian and the Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).  “[…] although the Acta was written by a heretic, this does not mean we should accord it less authority.”

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(1664).¹³⁰ This opening salvo was followed by a quick succession of opinions, all the way up to the 20th century. Some of these argued in favour of the demonstrably Montanist character of the Passio Perpetuae, exemplified by its emphasis on the works of the Holy Spirit, including the explicitly mentioned “new prophecies”; the visions granted to the martyrs; the respect that the women are accorded in the narrative; Perpetua’s “ecstasy” in fighting the beasts in the amphitheatre, etc., while others denied that the text had any Montanist tendencies whatsoever. Both stances were frequently adopted based on the corresponding religious denomination of the particular scholar who was advocating the position.¹³¹ The temptation to declare the Passio Perpetuae a Montanist work was increased by the incorrect presumption that it was edited by Tertullian, whose writing, after around the year 207, reflects clear Montanist tendencies.¹³² However, on thorough analysis of the text, several facts come to light. Most importantly, Montanist accents are apparent in the prologue of the work only. It is in this section where we come across mentions of the “new prophecies and visions” (prohetias ita et visiones novas),¹³³ and their attribution to the incessant workings of the Holy Spirit.¹³⁴ These visions were accorded special significance due to the coming end of the world,¹³⁵ a sense which the quotation from Acts

 Cf. Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis, cum notis Lucae Holstenii, Vaticanae Bibliothecae Praefecti, praefatio, [6].  For a brief overview, see Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, 2– 6; see also the analysis by Christine Trevett, Montanism, 176‒184. An extensive Catholic defence of the orthodox character of Pass. Perp. was written as early as the middle of the 18th century, see Dissertatio apologetica pro sanctarum Perpetuae, Felicitatis et sociorum martyrum orthodoxia adversus Samuelem Basnagium Auctore R. P. Josepho Augustino Orsi O. P. […] accedit Francisci Castilionensis Martyrium Antoninianum, seu Beati Antonii de Ripolis ordin. praedicat. ab eodem Ursio notis illustratum (Florentiae: Typis Bernardi Paperini, 1728), which strove to refute the conclusions regarding the Montanist nature of Pass. Perp. published by Samuel Basnagius in the third volume of his (blacklisted) Annales politico-ecclesiastici, annorum DCXLV a Caesare Augusto ad Phocam usque, in quibus res imperii ecclesiastici observatu digniores subiiciuntur oculis, erroresque evelluntur Baronio (Rotterdam 1706; the reference to the Basnagius work is taken from Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler, A Text-Book of Church History, trans. Samuel Davidson, vol. 1 [New York: Harper, 1857], 195). Cf. also Christoph Markschies, “The Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis and Montanism?”: 280.  Cf. Timothy D. Barnes, Tertullian, 42‒48.  Pass. Perp. 1,5.  On the other hand, the emphasis on the workings of the Holy Spirit, which links ancient examples of faith with new ones across eras, can be detected in the evidently non-Montanist Pass. Montan. 3,4 and 23,7. Cf. also below, p. 69.  Pass. Perp. 1,3: […] maiora reputanda sunt novitiora quaeque, ut novissimiora, secundum exuperationem gratiae in ultima saeculi spatial decretam (“[…] though all more recent events ought

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2,17– 18 emphasizes even further.¹³⁶ As J. W. Halporn aptly noted, were it not for the prologue, readers and scholars would have been unlikely to even consider the question of whether the visions in the Passio Perpetuae or indeed the text as a whole showed any Montanist tendencies.¹³⁷ There are few aspects in the remainder of the text that would not be found in other contemporary martyr texts, or whose interpretation would necessarily call any Montanist practices to mind.¹³⁸ Owing to the central part that visions play in the Passio Perpetuae, this aspect in itself has sometimes been associated with Montanism. As I noted earlier, however, visions granted to martyrs also appear in earlier martyr accounts and are thus by no means exclusive to the Passio Perpetuae. They cannot therefore be interpreted as telling signs of Montanism. Visions are given through the agency of the divine grace (dignatio) granted to all martyrs (not just to Montanists), because through their martyrdom they gain a share in the passion of Christ¹³⁹ which their own martyrdom imitates,¹⁴⁰ and for which they are accorded a privileged standing by their fellow believers. This perspective also allows us to explain Perpetua’s confident assurance that she will receive a vision from God once she has asked for it. Perpetua, like all early Christian martyrs, was blessed with great grace (iam in magna dignatione es),¹⁴¹ for is determined to suffer for Christ, who himself will ultimate-

for that very reason to be perceived as greater, according to the superabundance of grace that has been decreed for the final stages of earthly time”).  “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”  Cf. James W. Halporn, “Literary History”: 232 with note 26. But cf. also Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 10 – 15, who sees a “New Prophecy agenda against those who do not share his [sc. redactor’s] belief in the primacy of ecstatic prophecy” in the prologue (14), and goes on to label the redactor as “an advocate of New Prophecy” (16), while adding, however, that “there is no hint of heterodoxy in his remarks” (136).  On the untenability of the arguments put forth by Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, who, in contrast, sees Montanist elements across the whole of Pass. Perp. (95), see the sources cited above in note 124 on p. 29.  Cf. Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 39‒40.  On the central theme of all martyr narratives, that is, imitatio Christi, which also entails the physical imitation of the passion of Jesus, whereby the martyr becomes “another Christ” (alter Christus) cf. most recently Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs. Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).  Pass. Perp. 4,1.

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ly suffer through the bodies of his martyrs.¹⁴² The relation of martyrs to Christ is therefore quite specific and intimate: let us bear in mind that in the first vision Perpetua is called tegnon, i. e. “my child”¹⁴³ by Christ evoked as the shepherd, a clear sign of the close contact between the martyrs and Christ. It is in this sense, which already appears in the Martyrium Polycarpi,¹⁴⁴ that we should understand Perpetua’s words me sciebam fabulari cum Domino,¹⁴⁵ rather than linking them to the accounts of Montanist women who allegedly spoke to the angels or directly to Christ.¹⁴⁶ Similarly, the cheese that Perpetua receives from the shepherd symbolising Christ and eats from her cupped hands¹⁴⁷ in her first vision most likely echoes the established Eucharistic practice of the general church at Carthage in Tertullian’s times, during which newly baptized converts were given a mixture of milk and honey.¹⁴⁸ This is far more probable than the sometimes suggested allusion to  Pass. Perp. 15,6: […] illic autem alius erit in me qui patietur pro me, quia et ego pro illo passura sum (“[…] but then another inside me will suffer, since I will also be suffering for him”); see also Mart. Polyc. 2,2; Mart. Lugd. V,1,23.27.41; Mart. Carp. B 3,5 – 6. See also Pass. Is. Max. 5.  Cf. Jan N. Bremmer, “Perpetua and Her Diary”: 103, who emphasizes the emotional connotations of this address; see also Judith Perkins, “The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body”: 327.  Cf. Mart. Polyc. 2,2. To indicate the close contact with God, the Greek verb ὁμιλέω is employed, which, in the same sense, also appears in Mart. Lugd. V,1,51.56, and the same expression is also used by the Greek translator of Pass. Perp. Cf. Clara Burini, “‘Me sciebam fabulari cum Domino’ (pass. Perp. Fel. 4,2),” in Curiositas. Studi di cultura classica e medievale in onore di Ubaldo Pizzani, eds. Antonio Isola, Enrico Menestò and Alessandra di Pilla (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2002): 219 – 229. See also below, note 198 on p. 44. Cf. also Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity. Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 151, who points to the “imaginative story-telling” connotations of the word. Cf. also Katharina Waldner, “Visions, Prophecy, and Authority”: 213 – 214.  Pass. Perp. 4,2.  Cf. James W. Halporn, “Literary History”: 239 – 240, note 26.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 4,9 – 10: Et clamavit me et de caseo quod mulgebat dedit mihi quasi bucellam; et ego accepi iunctis manibus et manducavi; et universi circumstantes dixerunt: “Amen”. Et ad sonum vocis experrecta sum, commanducans adhuc dulce nescio quid. (“And he called me over and gave me a mouthful or so of the cheese that he was milking out. I cupped my hands and took and ate it. And the people standing around all said, ‘Amen.’ Then I woke up with the sound of their voice in my ears, I and was still chewing on something sweet.”)  See Tertullian, Cor. 3,3 / CCSL 2,1042– 1043: Inde suscepti lactis et mellis concordiam praegustamus […] (“When we step out of [i. e. baptismal water], we swallow a mixture of milk and honey […]”). For a detailed exposition of the context of this Eucharistic practice, see Teresa Berger, Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical History. Lifting a Veil on Liturgy’s Past (Farnham – Burlington: Ashgate, 2011), 80 – 88; Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists. Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 100 – 107. Cf. also Alvyn Pettersen, “Perpetua: Prisoner of Conscience,” VC 41 (1987): (139 – 153) 148; Jan N. Bremmer, “Perpetua and Her Diary”: 104; see also the overview by Elena Zocca, “Un passo controverso

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the obscure sect of “bread-and-cheesers” (᾿Aρτοτυρῖται), who in a single isolated mention by Epiphanius were labelled as Montanists using cheese at the Eucharist.¹⁴⁹ Without needing to comment on and analyse further examples, we can put this issue to rest by stating what again appears to be the current communis opinio: ¹⁵⁰ as a whole, the Passio Perpetuae is not a Montanist document. The prologue does contain some aspects that were also emphasized by Montanists, but this may reflect the common religious and cultural substrate of the 3rd-century Christian North Africa and does not justify labelling the Passio as a heterodox text. Notwithstanding the fact that the polarity of “orthodox” versus “heretical” is an anachronism bearing little resemblance to the realities of the early Christian world of the time, and that the Montanists of those times were at the same time “Catholics”,¹⁵¹ there are a number of external proofs which place the text in the tradition of the church as a whole. These include the reception of the text by later church authors; the fact that a “catholic” basilica was built in honour of the two martyrs over the tomb in which they were buried;¹⁵² and last but not least also the fact that both heroines were included in the Canon of the Mass of the Catholic church where they have remained ever since.¹⁵³

della Passio Perpetuae IV,9: ‘De caseo quod mulgebat dedit mihi quasi bucellam’,” SMSR 50 (1984): 147‒154, which also rules out a Montanist interpretation of the passage.  Cf. Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, 69 and 94– 95. Also Christine Trevett, Montanism, 177, argues for caution when interpreting this mention by Epiphanius.  For a resolute refutation of the Montanist character of Pass. Perp., see most recently Christoph Markschies, “The Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis and Montanism?”  Cf. Christine Trevett, Montanism, 69, on Tertullian: “Tertullian the Montanist was Tertullian the Montanist catholic.” Cf. also the cautious evaluation by William Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 62– 66.  See above, note 98 on p. 23.  On this aspect, see especially Joseph Farrell, “The Canonization of Perpetua,” in Perpetua’s Passions: 300 – 320. On the suggestion that the Roman Canon originally referred to a Roman matron by the name of Felicitas (see Passio sanctae Felicitatis et septem filiorum eius, in Acta martyrum, ed. Thierry Ruinart [Ratisbonae: Sumtibus G. Josephi Manz, 1859; reprint]: 72‒74) and not the co-martyr of Perpetua, see Francis Crawford Burkitt, “St Felicity in the Roman Mass,” JTS 32 [127] (1931): 279‒287; cf. also Theofried Baumeister, “Nordafrikanische Märtyrer in der frühen römischen Heiligenverehrung,” in idem, Martyrium, Hagiographie und Heiligenverehrung im christlichen Altertum (Roma – Freiburg – Wien: Herder, 2009): (293 – 304) 297.

2 Nova documenta fidei: The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis and its innovative features 2.1 The Passio Perpetuae and its context The Passio Perpetuae began to attract widespread interest almost immediately after its discovery and the publication of the Latin version in the third quarter of the 17th century, and its popularity also spread to wider European intellectual circles.¹⁵⁴ The text, however, did not become the focus of intense attention until the latter half of the 20th century, especially the past 30 or 40 years,¹⁵⁵ when aspects of the narrative other than the strictly philological and theological came to be investigated.¹⁵⁶ Perpetua’s visions and her diary began to be viewed through

 Perpetua’s account enthralled e. g. Leibniz, who read the Holstenius edition of Pass. Perp. in 1696, as attested by his letter to Andre Morel of 10 December 1696, see Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, Reihe I, vol. 13, Allgemeiner politischer und historischer Briefwechsel. August 1696 ‒ April 1697 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1987), 397: “J’ay lû avec plaisir et avec respect les pretieux lambeaux des Actes des ma[r]tyrs de la primitive Eglise. Ces Acta sanctarum Felicita[ti]s et Perpetuae, que feu M. Holstenius publia le premier, et dont quelques uns ont meme crû que Tertullien estoit l’auteur me charmerent quand je les vis la premiere fois.”  The exceptional interest that Pass. Perp. has evoked is attested by the hundreds of works of secondary literature it has engendered. Arguably the most up-to-date bibliography of Pass. Perp. can be found in the 2nd edition of Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter; cf. most recently also Marco Formisano, “Introduzione”: 63 – 72. Another indispensable tool for keeping track of the bibliography on the topic is the reviewed bibliographical compilations appearing from the mid-1970s in Chronica Tertullianea et Cyprianea, which is part of the Revue des études augustiniennes (et patristiques), see René Braun et al., eds., Chronica Tertullianea et Cyprianea 1975 – 1994 (Paris: Institut des Études Augustiniennes, 1999), and further revue instalments. For a list of editions and translations of Pass. Perp. into major languages in the period between 1650 and 2006, see Erin A. Ronsse, Rhetoric of Martyrs. Transmission and Reception History of the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity (University of Victoria: Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 2007), 22 to 31 (listing 91 items until 2007), and Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 431– 442 (annotated list of editions and translations). The interest in Pass. Perp. is further illustrated by the fact that this comparatively short text became the sole subject of an international conference entitled “Perpetua’s Passions. Pluridisciplinary Appproaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis. 3rd Century AD”, held in Berlin from 9 – 11 July 2007. The papers delivered at the conference (together with several others not presented there) were published as Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano, eds., Perpetua’s Passions.  For an overview of traditionally studied aspects of the text, see e. g. Maurice Testard, “La Passion des saintes Perpétue et Félicité. Témoignages sur le monde antique et le christianisme,” BAGB 1 (1991): 56‒75; cf. also e. g. Ryszard Paciorkowski, “L’héroïsme religieux”: 367– 389 (including a summary of past research).

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the perspective of gender studies and psychoanalysis.¹⁵⁷ The literary ambitions of the Passio Perpetuae and its position in terms of genre classification in relation to the intent of the anonymous editors also came under scrutiny. Researchers further examined the theological orientation of the text and its significance for understanding the religious climate of the early church in Tertullian’s times and the position of Perpetua in the contemporary social structures. The shift in research focus is particularly apparent in the way the Passio Perpetuae gradually ceased to be seen primarily as a historical document, a source of historically relevant facts, although these too can be gleaned from the text. The Perpetua of the Passio also ceased to be fully identified with the historical Perpetua of the 3rd century, and her figure came increasingly to be explored as a literary representation.¹⁵⁸ This shift in perspective also brought about a re-evaluation of the function of martyr narratives in general. Accounts of martyrdom were written above all for the internal purposes of the church, as documents intended to establish a Christian identity through self-definition in opposition to the pagan element on the outside, as well as in opposition to those inside the Christian community who were not quite able to live up to its requirements (e. g. Christians who of their own accord reported themselves to the authorities and later renounced their faith under torture).¹⁵⁹ These formative literary texts hence fulfilled the role of

 The first scholar to apply the methods of psychoanalysis in interpreting Pass. Perp. was Marie-Louise von Franz as early as the 1950s in “Die Passio Perpetuae. Versuch einer psychologischen Deutung,” in Aion. Untersuchungen zur Symbolgeschichte, ed. Carl Gustav Jung (Zürich: Rascher, 1951): 389 – 496.  This approach was also informed by the new movements in literary theory that began to thrive in the 1960s (e. g. the reception aesthetics of the “Konstanz School”, the “Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School”, intertextuality, and others). Cf. e. g. the cautionary explication by Jurij M. Lotman and Boris A. Uspenskij, “On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture,” New Literary History 9 (1978): (211– 232) 216: “The conversion of a chain of facts into a text is invariably accompanied by selection; that is, by fixing certain events which are translatable into elements of the text and forgetting others, marked as nonessential. In this sense every text furthers not only the remembering process, but forgetting as well. Yet since the selection of memorizable facts is realized every time according to particular semiotic norms of the given culture, one should beware of identifying the events of life with any text, no matter how ‘truthful’ or ‘artless’ or firsthand the text may appear. The text is not reality, but the material for its reconstruction.”  Cf. the case of the Christian Quintus of Mart. Polyc. 4, who is ultimately persuaded by the proconsul to offer a pagan sacrifice. On the application of the social anthropology identity theory to early Christian writing, see David E. Wilhite, Tertullian the African. An Anthropological Reading of Tertullian’s Context and Identities (Berlin ‒ New York: Walter De Gruyter, 2007), including a detailed theoretical explication, and L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men. Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

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educational narratives, fixed in written form and intended to be imitated by fellow believers.¹⁶⁰ However, as I discuss later, some accounts of martyrdom may have been perceived as threats against the new order that was being established as the early church gradually moved towards a rigid hierarchical structure, a process that also entailed a change in theological emphasis. This unquestionably holds true for the Passio Perpetuae as well, as the narrative did contain a number of aspects which could not have failed to be viewed as revolutionary when set against the contemporary social stereotypes handed down by pagan antiquity, as well as against the backdrop of the religious mainstream of the contemporary church. In the last part of this book, I discuss in greater detail the various ways in which the Passio came to be reinterpreted in later literary tradition in ways that allowed its innovative aspects to be integrated into the new value hierarchies and thus normalized. At this point I will just briefly introduce these aspects.

2.2 The Passio Perpetuae, the emancipation of womanhood, and the subversion of social and gender hierarchies In the surviving literature of antiquity there are few examples of texts written by women.¹⁶¹ This is in part closely associated with the contemporary social and cultural context in which an unmediated female literary voice would have been viewed as a sign of “inappropriately masculine nature”,¹⁶² and in part a consequence of the social standing of women in the society of that time in gen-

 Cf. e. g. Elisabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory. Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men; Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self. Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (London – New York: Routledge, 1995). See also Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano, “Perpetua’s Passions: A Brief Introduction”: 7– 13.  Of all commonly available anthologies that comprise these texts in translation, let me mention e. g. Ian Michael Plant, ed., Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome: An Anthology (London: Equinox Publishing, 2004); Patricia Wilson-Kastner, ed., A Lost Tradition: Women Writers of the Early Church (Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1981).  Cf. Joseph Farrell, Latin Language and Latin Culture, 75: “Throughout most of antiquity the woman who speaks or writes in Latin is suspected of harboring an inappropriately masculine nature, and this suspicion itself becomes grounds for disapproving of and suppressing her voice.” Cf. also Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 32– 35.

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eral, one which would hardly be acceptable by today’s standards.¹⁶³ Christianity introduced an apparently sweeping change in this area, as in many others: it accorded the women in the Gospels a surprisingly honourable status amongst the figures closely associated with the divine founder of the new religion (that is, in the context of the ancient social order). This change was, however, only an outward one. In that patriarchal society, women’s absolute subordination to men was, in keeping with the traditional attitude of the pagan majority, codified in a declaratory fashion in the New Testament epistles, i. e. in the very same canon of texts that simultaneously foreshadowed at least a partial reprieve of their situation. In the early centuries, the consolidated church hierarchy was just being formed, in a painful process that frequently clashed with the enthusiastic movements emphasizing an authentic, living faith. In this environment, women, though allowed some influence in the functioning of the church community, could often attain social prestige and esteem only posthumously.¹⁶⁴ If they did not flinch in the face of persecution, and sacrificed their life in the name of Christ, they would be accorded the deserved esteem of the whole Christian community in return for their martyrdom. Yet even so, however, the female martyrs were transformed into symbols, representations of the proof that even individuals of the purportedly weaker and more fragile sex, the sex that brought about the fall of Adam, could be blessed by divine grace to such an extent that they were able to, with superhuman strength, heroically overcome their inborn imper-

 The role of women in antiquity and early Christian societies became a very popular subject around the 1970s, particularly in connection with the rise in popularity of feminism and gender studies. Of all the extensive literature on the topic, see e. g. Eva Cantarella, Pandora’s Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987); Elizabeth Ann Clark, ed., Women in the Early Church (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1983); Gillian Clark, Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Lifestyles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Jean Laporte, The Role of Women in Early Christianity (Lewsiton, N. Y.: Mellen, 1982); Clementina Mazzucco, “E fui fatta maschio”. La donna nel Cristianesimo primitivo (Firenze ‒ Torino: La Lettere, 1989); Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), and many others.  Cf. Karen Jo Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper, 1995). Women held special authority in the community in some Christian movements, which were later declared heterodox; this holds true e. g. for Montanism. See on this e. g. Christine Trevett, Montanism; Vera-Elisabeth Hirschmann, Horrenda Secta, 99 – 119. See also Johannes Hofmann, “Christliche Frauen im Dienst kleinasiatischer Gemeinden des ersten und zweiten Jahrhunderts. Eine prosopographische Studie,” VC 54 (2000): 283 – 308; Frederick C. Klawiter, “The Role of Martyrdom and Persecution in Developing the Priestly Authority of Women in Early Christianity: A Case Study of Montanism,” CH 49 (1980): 251‒261.

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fection, their femininity, die a courageous death like men, and hence become an example to be venerated.¹⁶⁵ The Passio Perpetuae, at least as far as its protagonists are concerned, deviates strikingly from this stereotypical image of heroism evoked by many early Christian martyr narratives. Whereas in most other similar texts the martyrs often come across as rather anaemic abstractions, our Passio offers readers a radically different concept of heroines from that to which they would have been accustomed. In contrast with Felicity, to whom only limited attention is devoted in the Passio,¹⁶⁶ Perpetua is the undisputed central character of the work, despite the presence of the group’s catechist Saturus, who could logically be expected to carry the greatest authority in the text. Yet it is Perpetua who becomes the implicit leader of the arrested and jailed Christians, commanding the greatest respect amongst them.¹⁶⁷ It is apparent from the content of his vision that Saturus himself also recognizes Perpetua’s extraordinary authority. In the vision, after having been martyred, Saturus and Perpetua meet the Lord in a sort of paradisiacal garden at the gate of which are standing the bishop Optatus (papa noster) and the priest Aspasius, separated from the others, in dispute with one another, and feeling rather dejected as a result. These two high-ranking representatives of the contemporary church hierarchy then fall at the feet of the two martyrs, pleading for peace¹⁶⁸ to be restored between them. Tellingly, it is Perpetua, not Saturus, who begins to speak to the two men, in Greek,¹⁶⁹ the language of the educated.¹⁷⁰

 This model interpretation of the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity is offered by Augustine, Serm. 280 – 282auct. / PL 38,1280 – 1286; editio princeps of Serm. 282auct. in WS 121 (2008): 260‒264. For more details, see below p. 86 ff.  On the character of Felicity, cf. Jan N. Bremmer, “Felicitas: The Martyrdom of a Young African Woman,” in Perpetua’s Passions: 35 – 53.  Cf. e. g. Clementina Mazzucco, “E fui fatta maschio”, 134‒136.  For a detailed analysis of this aspect, including the hypothetical reasons for the dispute between the two dignitaries, see Andreas Merkt, “Gewaltverarbeitung”: 73 – 76.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 13,1‒5.  On the knowledge of Greek, which was greatly valued in Africa, as attested by the mentions by, among others, Apuleius, see Tadeusz Kotula, “Utraque lingua eruditi: Une page relative à l’histoire de l’éducation dans l’Afrique romaine,” in Hommages à Marcel Renard, vol. 2, ed. Jacqueline Bibauw (Bruxelles: Collection Latomus, 1969): 386 – 392. Cf. also Brent D. Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua”: 12; Jan den Boeft and Jan N. Bremmer, “Notiunculae martyrologicae II,” VC 36 (1982): (383 – 402) 391– 392 (the fact that Perpetua’s family must have had some ties to the Greek-speaking cultural milieu is attested also by the Greek name of Perpetua’s brother – Dinocrates; see also Jeffrey A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead, 78). On the social stratification of the other characters featuring in Pass. Perp., see Jan den Boeft and Jan N. Bremmer, “Notiunculae martyrologicae VI”: 51– 55 (who do not rule out that Saturus had a command of Greek),

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Perpetua is also accorded a similarly central position by the anonymous editor. It is she who (in a rather ironic tone) speaks to the tribune on behalf of the other Christians after he has started to treat the prisoners with increased harshness (castigatius eos castigaret), and manages to ensure that they are treated more decently. The tribune’s reaction to Perpetua’s scathing words is depicted as one of shame and horror (horruit et erubuit tribunus).¹⁷¹ When the martyrs enter the amphitheatre, it is again Perpetua who meets the gaze of the crowd with her own¹⁷² and who on behalf of the group refuses to accept the imposition of priestly costumes of pagan deities – as was the custom often used¹⁷³ in mythological stagings of executions.¹⁷⁴ The central role accorded to this young, educated woman (liberaliter instituta) from a good family (honeste nata), who has only recently been baptized and is also a nursing mother for the first time, is undoubtedly an innovative feature, particularly when combined with the autonomous and independent nature of her actions. This is no less true despite the fact that a female protagonist is not unknown in earlier works, such as in the apocryphal Acta Pauli et Theclae. ¹⁷⁵

and also Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, passim. See also below, note 502 on p. 110.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 16,2‒4.  As noted by Judith Perkins, “The Passion of Perpetua: A Narrative of Empowerment,” Latomus 53 (1994): (837‒847) 844‒845, by refusing to be a passive object of the spectators’ gaze, Perpetua subverts the traditional gender hierarchies, for looking at a woman is a privilege limited to men; e. g. in Greek novels dating roughly to the time of Perpetua, women are “represented as essentially passive, existing for the male gaze” (845). Jan N. Bremmer, “The Motivation of Martyrs”: 543, also notes that in Perpetua’s times women from the higher classes would usually lower their eyes when meeting a man.  For a detailed analysis, see Kathleen M. Coleman, “Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments,” JRS 80 (1990): 44– 73. See also Jan N. Bremmer, “The Motivation of Martyrs”: 544– 545.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 18,4– 7.  In relation to Acta P. et Th., written most likely in the second half of the 2nd century, it is of interest to note the negative attitude of Tertullian, who attacks the acta rather vigorously in his Bapt. 17,5 / CCSL 1,291– 292, due to the authority Thecla is accorded in it (she instructs in Christian doctrine and even baptizes); see Stephen J. Davies, The Cult of St Thecla. A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 7– 8 and 12– 14, and Jan N. Bremmer, “Magic, Martyrdom and Women’s Liberation in the Acts of Paul and Thecla,” in The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, ed. Jan N. Bremmer (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996): 36 – 59. For a possible dependance of Pass. Perp. upon the traditions relating to Thecla and for similarities between Perpetua and Thecla cf. Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 141– 143. There are aslo detectable similarities between Perpetua and Blandina, not only in the special status they hold among other martyrs, but also in other aspects of their martyrdom (e. g. in relation to the “masculine” behaviour the heroines manifest). For the story of Blandina,

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Another aspect, arguably the most striking and elaborately realized, that underscores the unusual character of the figure of Perpetua and the Passio Perpetuae as a whole, is the manner in which Perpetua and Felicity, with seeming ease, reject “all the normal constraints imposed by husbands, fathers and others”.¹⁷⁶ Perpetua is “honourably married” and Felicity eight months pregnant; yet not a single mention is made of their respective husbands in the entire Passio. Since Perpetua’s own account is wholly geared towards the future, with little room for the past,¹⁷⁷ the absence in her own writings of her husband, whom Perpetua had in all probability abandoned for being a pagan¹⁷⁸ so that she could become the “wife of Christ” (matrona Christi),¹⁷⁹ is understandable. What is more striking is that the husband is also not mentioned by the editor in his section of the text, and neither is his absence explained. The absence of the husband is, however, amply offset by the evocation of Perpetua’s other familial bonds, in particular the bond she has with her infant child, who initially stays with her in the prison, and her father, who repeatedly comes to visit her. Apart from the evocations of her visions, the descriptions of

see Mart. Lugd. V,1,18.41 and particularly V,1,53‒56, see also William H. C. Frend, “Blandina and Perpetua: Two Early Christian Heroines,” in Les Martyrs de Lyon (177), eds. Jean Rougé and Robert Turcan (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1978): 167‒177 (reprinted also in David M. Scholer, ed., Women in Early Christianity [New York: Garland, 1993], 87‒97). Blandina of course does not play as large a role in the text as Perpetua does in the Passio Perpetuae.  Brent D. Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua”: 36: “The troubling matter is the way in which these particular women feel free to move away from the normal constraints imposed by husbands, fathers and others”.  Cf. Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 60.  This interpretation, which I personally consider to be the most compelling, was put forth by Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 61‒63 (including analogous cases documented across the early Christian literature). The fact that the martyrs’ dissolution of familial ties was not limited to female martyrs and that we can find a number of examples of men disowning their earthly families in martyr narratives was noted by Candida R. Moss, “Blood Ties. Martyrdom, Motherhood, and Family in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity”: 183‒202. The reasons for the absence of Perpetua’s husband have been extensively debated by scholars, see e. g. Peter Dronke, Women Writers, 281‒283; Carolyn Osiek, “Perpetua’s Husband,” JECS 10 (2002): 287‒290; Danny Praet, “‘Meliore cupiditate detentus’: Christian Self-definition and the Rejection of Marriage in the Early Acts of the Martyrs,” Euphrosyne 31 (2003): (457– 473) 465 – 468; Eva Cantarella, “Prefazione,” in La Passione di Perpetua e Felicita, ed. Marco Formisano: VIII–X. Cf. most recently also Kate Cooper, “A Father, a Daughter and a Procurator: Authority and Resistance in the Prison Memoir of Perpetua of Carthage,” Gender & History 23 (2011): 685‒702 (reprinted also in Lin Foxhall and Gabriele Neher, eds., Gender and the City before Modernity [Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012]: 195‒212), who puts forward the suggestion (688‒690) that Perpetua was not married to the father of her child in the first place.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 18,2.

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these visits account for the greatest part of Perpetua’s own narrative. Reading Perpetua’s notes, we may be struck by her unusually matter-of-fact, down-toearth insights, the likes of which are rather rare in the literature of antiquity, and which contrast rather sharply with the typical depiction of Christian joy in suffering and tribulations of all kinds. Perpetua finds the conditions in the prison shocking,¹⁸⁰ and openly and in unambiguous terms describes the harshness of incarceration, her harrowing worries about her child, including references to nursing and inflammation of the breasts – something, as P. Dronke notes, that would have been unthinkable in ancient literature save “in a key of vulgarity or comedy”.¹⁸¹ It is this very emphasis on the physical aspects of the “birth-giving” and “nursing” body apparent in Perpetua’s narrative (and also in the editor’s references to Felicity)¹⁸² that J. Perkins recently correlated with the doctrinal debates of the time about Christ’s human flesh and his physical birth from his mother’s body. These are reflected in particular in Tertullian’s polemic with Marcion, which includes references to the minutest anatomical and physiological details. Unlike Perkins, I believe that these parallels cannot be perceived as evidence that Perpetua and Felicity were merely fictional literary constructs whose function was to “valorize the maternal body featured in these debates”.¹⁸³ What these parallels seem to confirm is merely the generally perceived significance of these issues in the contemporary debates in North Africa; and given the renown of the Passio, we cannot rule out that these polemics may have in turn drawn on certain aspects of the Passio Perpetuae itself for some of their argumentative weaponry.¹⁸⁴ The references to Perpetua’s child, whose initial absence in the prison is very hard on Perpetua,¹⁸⁵ eventually disappear from her account, but it would be erroneous to interpret Perpetua’s relationship with the child as wholly negative, as

 Cf. Pass. Perp. 3,5 – 6.  Peter Dronke, Women Writers, 10: “[…] she [sc. Perpetua] articulates movingly and with dignity details such as could scarcely have found a place in ancient literature, except in a key of vulgarity or comedy”.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 15, and 18,3.  Cf. Judith Perkins, “The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body”: (313‒332) 330: “This correlation raises suspicions that the representation of one or both of the women has been constructed in order to valorize the maternal body featured in these debates.”  As Perkins herself admits (“The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body”: 322), those of Tertullian’s tracts that treat of the nature of Christ’s birth to the greatest degree (e. g. De carne Christi), can be dated to the later phase of the Carthaginian’s oeuvre, i. e. between 208 and 212.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 3,7‒9.

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if the child were from the very beginning a hindrance to overcome.¹⁸⁶ Her child, it is worth noting, ceases to feature in her narrative only after Perpetua has publicly confessed the Christian faith and been sentenced to death by martyrdom:¹⁸⁷ it is only after she becomes part of her new transcendental family that her existing bonds lose their hold and significance. This acquiescence to the divine will ([…] nos non in nostra potestate constitutos, sed in Dei)¹⁸⁸ is, however, preceded by a painful process of letting go of the outside world and extricating herself from all its bonds.¹⁸⁹ The outside world and its impositions find their most tangible representation in the figure of Perpetua’s pagan father,¹⁹⁰ who comes to visit his daughter in prison, pleading with her to renounce her faith and save her own life, and who later attends her trial. The projection of the father can ultimately be sensed in Perpetua’s visions too.¹⁹¹ It is the father who at first lunges at his daughter “as if to pluck out [her] eyes”,¹⁹² after Perpetua has implacably confessed her Christian faith in his presence. After his unsuccessful attempt to persuade Perpetua to make a sacrifice to the pagan gods, Perpetua thanks the Lord for her father’s absence and is relieved that he was not there.¹⁹³

 This is how Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 60 (“The child is a duty and burden.”) misinterprets the following telling passage in Pass. Perp. 3,9: […] et usurpavi ut mecum infans in carcere maneret; et statim convalui et relevata sum a labore et sollicitudine infantis […] (“[…] But then I was able to arrange for the baby to be with me in prison, which instantly made me feel better – no more pain and anxiety for the baby’s sake […]”) Kleinberg chose to read this passage to mean that it was the presence of Perpetua’s child that was the source of her worries, and not, as was the case, his absence.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 6,7‒8.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 5,6.  See Elisabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 85‒92.  In view of the significance the father has in Perpetua’s story, a number of scholars have concluded that Perpetua’s marriage must have been entered into sine manu, that is, a kind of union in which the wife legally remained under the control (potestas) of the father; see Joyce E. Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion. The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman (New York ‒ London: Routledge, 1997), 8; Eva Cantarella, “Prefazione”: VIII–X; Maureen A. Tilley, “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity,” in Searching the Scriptures, vol. 2, A Feminist Commentary, ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (New York: Crossroad, 1994): (829‒858) 837; Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 27– 28 and 31. For a thorough study of a full range of patria potestas in late antiquity, cf. e. g. Antti Arjava, “Paternal Power in Late Antiquity,” JRS 88 (1998): 147– 165.  Cf. Peter Dronke, Women Writers, 1– 17; Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 72.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 3,3: […] mittit se in me, ut mihi oculos erueret […] (“[…] lunged at me, as if to pluck out my eyes […]”).  Pass. Perp. 3,4: Tunc paucis diebus quod caruissem patre, Domino gratias egi et refrigeravi absentia illius. (“Over the next few days I thanked the Lord for Father’s absence and I was relieved that he was not there.”)

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Their second meeting is even more dramatic: Perpetua’s father implores her to renounce her faith not only for her own sake but for the sake of her relatives, as her sentence would bring down the suspicion of the authorities on the entire family. The scene culminates in his falling at Perpetua’s feet, kissing her hands, and addressing her not as a daughter but as “my lady” (non filiam nominabat, sed dominam).¹⁹⁴ The father’s last visit takes place before the contest with the wild beasts, his grief reaching its crescendo: he prostrates himself on the ground before his daughter, plucks his beard and whiskers, “saying the kinds of things that would move the whole of creation”.¹⁹⁵ The more desperate Perpetua’s father becomes, the more effeminate his actions become by ancient standards, as we will see later. His attempt to pluck out his daughter’s eyes, his pulling out of his beard in grief, his prostrating himself before her, only serve to increase Perpetua’s confidence, and she extricates herself all the more resolutely from the familial and social bonds, subverting the gender hierarchy and gaining a dominant position.¹⁹⁶ And even though she initially comments on her father’s behaviour with understanding and compassion, this compassion is gradually overcome by her resolve to remain steadfast in her faith (she is baptized while under home arrest), even at the cost of her own life. The sense of belonging to her new celestial family overrides her bonds to the earthly one. Her only comment on her father’s final, most emotionally fraught scene is a laconic “I pitied his unhappy old age”.¹⁹⁷ Perpetua’s growing religious confidence is also reflected in her visions. When her brother prompts her to ask for a vision in order to find out whether martyrdom or freedom awaits her, Perpetua answers with remarkable assurance that she will report back to him the next day to tell him what the Lord has shown her. For someone who has only recently been baptized, her comment comes across as strikingly confident: “Since I knew I could talk with the Lord, who had done such great things for me, I was able to give my brother a confident promise in return: ‘I will report back to you tomorrow.’”¹⁹⁸ Similarly, in her sec Cf. Pass. Perp. 5,5 – 6.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 9,2: […] dicere tanta verba quae moverent universam creaturam.  Cf. Danny Praet, “‘Meliore cupiditate detentus’”: 463 – 464.  Pass. Perp. 9,3: Ego dolebam pro infelici senecta eius. See also Danny Praet, “‘Meliore cupiditate detentus’”: 463 – 464.  Pass. Perp. 4,2: Et ego quae me sciebam fabulari cum Domino, cuius beneficia tanta experta eram, fidenter repromisi ei dicens: “Crastina die tibi renuntiabo”. Of interest is the use of the very familiar-sounding verb fabulari, the primary sense of which is “chat with someone”, “chatter” (cf. TLL VI/1,35), which is, to say the least, rather unusual with reference to God (cf. Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, “Commento alla ‘Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis’,” in Atti e passioni dei martiri, eds. idem et al.: [412– 452] 419). However, as noted by Clara Burini, “‘Me sciebam fabulari

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ond vision her dead younger brother Dinocrates appears, dirty and with an ugly wound on his face, thirsty, even though there is water in a nearby basin which he cannot reach, as its rim is too tall. Perpetua realizes her brother is suffering, but “is confident that [she] would be able to help him in his difficulty”.¹⁹⁹ And indeed, following her prayers and entreaties to God, her brother’s situation is speedily rectified: in her next vision Dinocrates appears again, this time decently dressed, his wound healed into a scar, the rim of the basin that was previously too high for the boy to reach has now been lowered; and there is also a golden goblet of water that never runs out, so Dinocrates can refresh himself to his fill. Perpetua is positive that Dinocrates’ punishment has been lifted because of her intervention.²⁰⁰ To reach this state, Perpetua undergoes a total transformation from the daughter wholly dependent on her father’s authority (potestas), torn between her duty of obedience to her parents and the requirements of her new faith; from the mother who cannot picture a single day without her child and finds the prison has become “a palace, so that [she] didn’t want to be anywhere else,”²⁰¹ once she has it with her. This transformation is completed in the final vision she is granted the day before her fight in the arena. This is the vision that has prompted the greatest number of often radically opposing interpretations. In it, Perpetua, having “become a man”,²⁰² fights a hideous Egyptian in a sort of pancratium. She defeats her enemy and steps on his head as a mark of victory. In accordance with Christian typology, Perpetua herself perceives the Egyptian as the Devil,²⁰³ whom she is to fight and defeat on the next

cum Domino’,” this verb here “significa anzitutto l’intima unione con Dio”, and should therefore be understood rather as “verbo di ‘comunione’ prima ancora che ‘conversazione’” (quotes from 229). See also above, note 144 on p. 33.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 7,9: […] et cognovi fratrem meum laborare, sed fidebam me profuturam labori eius.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 8,1– 4, especially Pass. Perp. 8,4: Tunc intellexi translatum eum esse de poena. (“And I realized he had been released from his toils.”)  Cf. Pass. Perp. 3,9: […] et usurpavi ut mecum infans in carcere maneret; et statim convalui et relevata sum a labore et sollicitudine infantis, et factus est mihi carcer subito praetorium, ut ibi mallem esse quam alicubi. On the theological implications of this passage and its view of the prison as “an abode of rest and of a refreshment on […] pilgrimage towards martyrdom”, see Thomas J. Heffernan and James E. Shelton, “Paradisus in carcere: The Vocabulary of Imprisonment and the Theology of Martyrdom in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” JECS 14 (2006): (217– 223) 221.  Pass. Perp. 10,7: Et expoliata sum, et facta sum masculus. (“And I was stripped down and became a man.”)  Cf. e. g. Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 145 – 160; Gay L. Byron, Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature (London – New York: Routledge, 2002), 45.

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day.²⁰⁴ Her gradual divesting of all typical social roles associated with her womanhood (those of daughter, wife and mother) ultimately results in her physical de-feminization – thus Perpetua steps into the arena for the victorious fight against the Egyptian as a man.²⁰⁵ All these revolutionary features flew in the face of the contemporary stereotypes and contained a subversive charge which could not fail to attract the vigilant eye of subsequent church commentators. Perpetua’s liberation from the traditional social roles that were considered natural and inviolable in the contemporary context, her refusal to bow to the impositions of society, which gained her the reputation of an “unruly woman”,²⁰⁶ entailed fatal consequences for herself and her family. Yet beyond these consequences, by modern sensibilities and standards, her actions can be read as an expression of revolt against the existing political and social order,²⁰⁷ and as an effort to regain personal freedom and autonomy.²⁰⁸

 Cf. Pass. Perp. 10,14: Et intellexi me non ad bestias, sed contra diabolum esse pugnaturam; sed sciebam mihi esse victoriam (“[…] And I realized that I was going to be fighting not with animals but with Satan. But I also knew that victory was mine.”). On the widespread concept of martyrdom as a fight against the Devil cf. Franz Joseph Dölger, “Der Kampf mit dem Ägypter in der Perpetua-Vision. Das Martyrium als Kampf mit dem Teufel,” Antike und Christentum 3 (1932): 177– 188.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 10,7. See the succinct summary of the transformation by Elisabeth Castelli, “‘I Will Make Mary Male’: Pieties of the Body and Gender Transformation of Christian Women in Late Antiquity,” in Body Guard. The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, eds. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (New York: Routledge, 1991): (29 – 49) 35: “As Perpetua moves closer to the arena, she strips off the cultural attributions of the female body – first figuratively in leaving behind her child and in drying up of her breast milk, and then finally and ‘literally’ in her last vision, in the transformation of her body into that of a man […] Perpetua’s spiritual progress is marked by the social movement from a female to a male body […]” For a host of other interpretations of Perpetua’s transformation into a male, including references to relevant literature, see e. g. the summary by Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 122 – 144. See also Craig Williams, “Perpetua’s Gender. A Latinist Reads the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” in Perpetua’s Passions: (54– 77) 64– 66.  Cf. Judith Perkins, “The Passion of Perpetua”: 838 (“unruly woman”); eadem, The Suffering Self, especially 104– 114.  Cf. e. g. Rosemary Rader, “The Martyrdom of Perpetua: A Protest Account of Third-Century Christianity,” in A Lost Tradition, ed. Patricia Wilson-Kastner: 1‒17; Lisa M. Sullivan, “I responded ‘I will not’…: Christianity as Catalyst for Resistance in the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” Semeia 79 (1997): 63 – 73.  Cf. Eugenio Corsini, “Proposte per una lettura della ‘Passio Perpetuae’”: 536. See also e. g. Mary R. Lefkowitz, “The Motivations for St. Perpetua’s Martyrdom,” JAAR 44 (1976): 417‒421; M. Eleanor Irwin, “Gender, Status and Identity in a North African Martyrdom 203 CE,” in Gli

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2.3 The Passio Perpetuae, masculinity, and Christian identity Another feature of the Passio Perpetuae to which much of its revolutionary character may be ascribed is closely related to the subversion of social and gender roles mentioned above. The Passio Perpetuae not only calls these standard roles into question, but also defines them anew by virtue of the characteristics that it assigns to the martyrs and to Perpetua in particular. In her recent book, L. S. Cobb, using a wealth of sources, demonstrates that one of the significant facets in establishing the early Christian identity was masculinity. Christianity, the American scholar claims, sought to appropriate values and qualities which in classical antiquity were associated almost exclusively with masculinity. In the surviving martyr accounts, these values and qualities were then applied not only to male martyrs but to female heroines too.²⁰⁹ Although these aspects can be observed across the whole corpus of martyr literature, the Passio Perpetuae is once again an exemplary specimen in this respect.²¹⁰ The masculinization of heroes, and in particular of heroines, is effected by the constant attribution, either directly or obliquely by alluding to their actions and behaviour in selected situations, of virtutes to which, according to the generally accepted social and cultural standards of Graeco-Roman antiquity, all people should aspire. These virtues, it was generally believed, could be found in men, while women, by the same token, were generally endowed with qualities which ran counter to these desired virtues. The reversal of this model, that is, the “masculine” behaviour of women in contrast to traditional expectations, is observable at several levels in the Passio Perpetuae. The subversion of traditional patterns is all the more apparent because this masculine behaviour is in several instances explicitly contrasted with “effeminate” male behaviour.²¹¹

imperatori Severi. Storia, archeologia, religione, eds. Enrico dal Covolo and Giancarlo Rinaldi (Roma: LAS, 1999): 251– 260; Clementina Mazzucco, “E fui fatta maschio”, 119‒137.  Cf. L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men.  The topic of masculinity perceived as the ultimate goal of a virtuous (i. e. literally “manly”) woman on her way to holiness recurs in many later patristic and hagiographical texts (including the variants of a motif “facta sum masculus”); cf. on this at least Gillian Cloke, This Female Man of God. Women and Spiritual Power in the Patristic Age, AD 350 – 450 (London – New York: Routledge, 1995); Nathalie Delierneux, “Virilité physique et sainteté féminine dans l’hagiographie orientale du IVe au VIIe siècle,” Byzantion 67 (1997): 179 – 243; Verna E. F. Harrison, “Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology,” JTS 41 (1990): 441– 471.  On the masculinization of Perpetua, cf. L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 97‒107. See also most recently Craig Williams, “Perpetua’s Gender”; for a general overview, see also Antti Marjanen, “Male Women Martyrs: The Function of Gender-Transformation Language in Early Christian Martyrdom Accounts,” in Metamorphoses. Resurrection, Body and Transformative Prac-

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In her book, L. S. Cobb investigates a number of virtues that according to a representative sample of ancient sources²¹² constitute a manly character. The central concepts she lists include the ability to control one’s emotions, the ability to control and direct one’s own life (“volition”), justice, and the ability not to be influenced by persuasion but rather to persuade others. All these characteristics indeed appear in the Passio Perpetuae, and most often they apply to Perpetua herself. The most evident example of the multi-faceted masculinization of Perpetua is her conflict with her father discussed in the preceding chapter. In this respect, it should be borne in mind that what we refer to as Perpetua’s masculinity is not a fixed quality, present from the very beginning: her masculinity evolves gradually as she divests herself of the traditional feminine roles. At the beginning of her account, Perpetua’s response to the conditions in the prison appears naturally “feminine” – she expresses fear and horror, accompanied by explicitly articulated concerns about her child.²¹³ Over the course of her father’s three visits to the prison, Perpetua’s behaviour gradually changes. During the first visit, it is the father, supposedly the bearer of supreme authority over his daughter, who fails to control his emotion, and having failed to talk Perpetua out of her decision, hurls himself at her to pluck out her eyes (ut oculos mihi erueret).²¹⁴ In contrast, Perpetua is steadfast in her resolve to remain who she is, to remain loyal to

tices in Early Christianity, eds. Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland (Berlin – New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009): 231– 247; Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “Gender-bending in Early Jewish and Christian Martyr Texts,” in Contextualising Early Christian Martyrdom, eds. Jakob Engberg, Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen and Anders Klostergaard Petersen (Frankfurt am Main etc.: Peter Lang, 2011): 225 – 256 (on Pass. Perp. cf. 250 – 255). Cf. also Anna Rebecca Solevåg, Birthing Salvation. Gender and Class in Early Christian Childbearing Discourse (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2013), 199 to 248.  Basically, I draw on her classification, see L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men, especially 60‒91, and I also draw on her analysis of ancient sources where it concerns the realm of GraecoRoman antiquity; see also Antti Marjanen, “Male Women Martyrs”: 232– 237; Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “Gender-bending”: 229 – 236; Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, e. g. 26 – 29.  Cf. L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 97; see Pass. Perp. 3,6‒9, in which the following key phrases, repeated throughout the text, illustrate my point: macerabar sollicitudine (3,6; “I was tormented by anxiety”); sollicita pro eo (3,8; “anxious for him”); tabescebam (ibidem; “I was devastated”); tales sollicitudines multis diebus passa sum (3,9; “this was the kind of anxiety I had to live with for quite a few days”); relevata sum a labore et sollicitudine infantis (ibidem; “no more pain and anxiety for the baby’s sake”).  Pass. Perp. 3,3.

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the self-definition she voluntarily chose (sic et ego aliud me dicere non possum nisi quod sum).²¹⁵ During the second and third meetings, Perpetua’s growing masculinization is in turn offset by her father’s feminization: his initial anger gives way to despair, to which he gives vent through his emotionally charged appeal, imploring Perpetua’s compassion. Not only does he start calling Perpetua “lady” (domina), thus calling into question his paternal role and authority (si dignus sum a te pater vocari), but in his implorations goes on to use such words and phrases that would be expected in prayers of supplication to pagan gods,²¹⁶ as he falls to his knees and kisses Perpetua’s hand in a gesture of humble entreaty.²¹⁷ Perpetua, however, remains unmoved, showing no signs of being upset or ashamed:²¹⁸ though she feels pity for her father (dolebam casum patris mei), she remains loyal to her resolve to commit herself to the hands of the Lord, refusing her father’s lamentations and asserting her “masculine” stance by attempting to comfort him (confortavi eum). The inverted model of “masculinity” and “femininity” culminates in the final meeting between the father and the daughter, which Perpetua records as if from the outside, through impersonal indirect speech, in a single paragraph: But then, as the day for which the games were scheduled came closer, my father came in to see me. He was worn out with grief. He started plucking out his beard and flinging the whiskers on the ground, prostrating himself before me, cursing his old age, and saying the kinds of things that would move the whole of creation.²¹⁹

 Pass. Perp. 3,2 (“I can’t call myself anything other than what I am […]”).  Cf. Pass. Perp. 5, and Jan den Boeft and Jan N. Bremmer, “Notiunculae martyrologicae II”: 387‒390, who point out particularly to the anaphoric miserere, filia […] miserere patri […] (Pass. Perp. 5,2: “My daughter, have pity […] have pity on me – I am your father”) and aspice fratres tuos, aspice matrem tuam […], aspice filium tuum […] (Pass. Perp. 5,3: “Think of your brothers, think of your mother […], think of your own son […]”).  Cf. Jan den Boeft and Jan N. Bremmer, “Notiunculae martyrologicae II”: 389, with reference to an analogous gesture with which Priam beseeches Achilles (Homer, Il. XXIV,477– 479), as well as references to other textual evidence in the literature of antiquity.  Paradoxically, some modern researchers in contrast attribute to Perpetua feelings of guilt at the realisation of her attitude (“she was uncomfortably aware that her contrariness was both improper and unseemly”), claiming that she was reluctant to act in the way she did (“she disliked defying her father”) and emphasizing her strong attachment to her father ‒ in much the same manipulative manner that Augustine would later interpret Perpetua’s relationship with her father; see Geoffrey Nathan, The Family in Late Antiquity. The Rise of Christianity and the Endurance of Tradition (London ‒ New York: Routledge, 2000), 50.  Pass. Perp. 9,2: Ut autem proximavit dies muneris, intrat ad me patr meus consumptus taedio, et coepit barbam suam evellere et in terram mittere, et prosternere se in faciem, et inproperare annis suis, et dicere tanta verba quae moverent universam creaturam.

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The father’s emotion goes far beyond what was considered masculine behaviour; he in fact literally divests himself of his masculinity by plucking out his beard, which in antiquity was believed to be a symbol of manliness.²²⁰ Perpetua’s response, on the other hand, echoes that of a Stoic sage who has attained the ideal of ἀπαθεία: Ego dolebam pro infelici senecta eius. ²²¹ The “masculine” traits that are attributed to Perpetua can, however, be found across the whole of the text of the Passio and appear explicitly in her visions as well. In her fourth vision, she fights as a man (masculus) against the hideous Egyptian, defeats him and leaves the amphitheatre through the Gate of Life for victorious gladiators.²²² It was in gladiators, recruited for the most part from free citizens, that ancient society, despite some ambivalence, saw the embodiment of masculinity:²²³ these fighters were a symbol of autonomous and free resolve to display the utmost bravery (virtus), to face death voluntarily as a result of that choice, and thus attain honour (honor).²²⁴ The emphasis on Perpetua’s control over her own life, which she steers with her own force of will in the desired direction, can also be found in the narration of the anonymous editor. In her ability not to be swayed by the persuasion of others but rather to achieve success in persuading them, she is exhibiting truly “masculine” behaviour. It is Perpetua who, before the fight in the arena, persuades the tribune to treat the prisoners somewhat less harshly, which the editor views as documentum de ipsius constantia et animi sublimitate. ²²⁵ On being forced (cogerentur) to don the costumes of pagan deities, it is again Perpetua who refuses, on behalf of the others, and points out to the tribune the volitional, self-imposed aspect of the prisoners’ chosen martyrdom, which arises from their free resolve.²²⁶ Her powers of persuasion, which were tested in her fight for a just

 Cf. L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 102.  Pass. Perp. 9,3 (“What an unhappy old man.”).  Cf. Pass. Perp. 10.  For an overview, see e. g. Georges Ville, La gladiature en Occident des origines à la mort de Domitien (Roma: École française de Rome, 1981); see also Carlin A. Barton, “The Scandal of the Arena,” Representations 27 (1989): 1‒36.  For details, cf. L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 33‒59. See also Clementina Mazzucco, “Il significato cristiano della ‘libertas’ proclamata dai martiri della ‘Passio Perpetuae’,” in Forma futuri. Studi in onore del card. M. Pellegrino: (542‒565) 553‒554; Michael P. Jensen, Martyrdom and Identity. The Self on Trial (London ‒ New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 138‒140; Maurice Testard, “La Passion des saintes Perpétue et Félicité”: 67.  Pass. Perp. 16,1 (“proof of her constancy and of the exaltadness of her soul”).  Pass. Perp. 18,5: Ideo ad hoc sponte pervenimus ne libertas nostra obduceretur […] (“The point of deliberately going this far was not to have our freedom taken away […]”). On the theo-

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cause, thus ultimately triumph (agnovit iniustitia iustitiam), her justice being yet another demonstration of her “masculine” features.²²⁷ And ultimately, Perpetua’s death in the arena appears in the editor’s depiction to be her own decision. In her final moments, faced with her inexperienced executioner, she comes across as the more masculine, having to direct the hand of the gladiator to her neck herself and showing the “killer by trade” how to kill her:²²⁸ as if “such a great woman could not have been killed unless she herself had wished it”.²²⁹

2.4 The Passio Perpetuae and the power of martyrs In the first three centuries A.D., martyrs (martyres) as well as confessors (confessores),²³⁰ that is, Christians who publicly confessed their faith and were sentenced to prison in consequence, but who did not die a martyr’s death while incarcerated, were held in exceptionally high regard and invested with a great deal of spiritual authority in the church. Such individuals were believed to be completely indwelled by the Holy Spirit, looked upon, in a sense, as successors to the prophets of the Old Testament.²³¹ This is already in evidence in one of Tertullian’s earliest works, Ad martyras, a letter written in 197 and addressed to imprisoned Christians awaiting martyrdom, intended to give them encouragement and comfort. Tertullian addresses these Christians as benedicti martyres designati, stressing that he himself as a non-martyr is far inferior in terms of authority

logical implications of Christian liberty as an act of will and acquiescence in God’s will, see the incisive study by Clementina Mazzucco, “Il significato cristiano della ‘libertas’”.  Pass. Perp. 18,6.  Michael P. Jensen, Martyrdom and Identity, 139.  Pass. Perp. 21,10: […] tanta femina aliter non potuisset occidi […] nisi ipsa voluisset. Cf. also Judith Perkins, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era, 54.  A clear distinction between these two types of Christian believers based on whether or not they choose to “seal their confession with blood” is already visible in Mart. Lugd. V,2,2‒3. On the meaning of these two terms which may not necessarily have designated two strictly distinct groups of Christians in the earliest period of Christianity, but rather may have accentuated different aspects of a Christian life, that is, passio versus confessio, cf. e. g. Harry Janssen, Kultur und Sprache. Zur Geschichte der alten Kirche im Spiegel der Sprachentwicklung von Tertullian bis Cyprian (Nijmegen: Dekker et Van de Vegt, 1938), 150‒161, especially 159‒160. See also Henricus A. M. Hoppenbrouwers, Recherches sur la terminologie du martyre de Tertullien à Lactance (Nijmegen: Dekker et Van de Vegt, 1961).  For a detailed overview, see Marc Lods, Confesseurs et martyrs succeseurs des prophètes dans l’Église des trois premiers siècles (Neuchâtel ‒ Paris: Éditions Delachaux & Niestlé, 1958).

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and is by no means in a position to give them encouragement or comfort (nec tantus ego sum, ut vos alloquar).²³² Tertullian’s letter also provides us with early evidence of the special spiritual authority that martyrs enjoyed and the power they wielded. Martyrs were believed to be effective mediators between man and God, through whose intercession believers temporarily banished from the church community could impetrate the forgiveness of sins and readmission into the church.²³³ The special status of martyrs, Tertullian concludes, was further borne out by the fact that only martyrs, precisely through their martyrdom, could gain instant admission into paradise, whereas the souls of all the rest had to await the Last Judgement in the underworld of Hades.²³⁴ In view of the common cultural and theological milieu that the Passio Perpetuae and Tertullian’s works share, it should come as no surprise that the same accents on the special power of martyrs surface in the text of our Passio too. This power, which the text again attributes primarily to Perpetua, manifests itself in very concrete instances, and combined with the other features discussed earlier, underscores the exceptional stature of the character of Perpetua and of the text itself. Although all martyrs dwell in divine grace,²³⁵ Perpetua was blessed by God with extraordinary charisma. Her special status is sensed by her comrades too, and is explicitly verbalized in elements such as the way

 Cf. Tertullian, Mart. 1,2 / CCSL 1,3. It is in his tract Ad martyras that Tertullian elaborates on the transposition of the martyr’s trials into a gladiatorial-military context which I have discussed in the previous chapter.  Tertullian, Mart. 1,6 / CCSL 1,3: Quam pacem quidam in ecclesia non habentes a martyribus in carcere exorare consueverunt. (“Some, not able to find peace in the church [as they have been temporarily banished from the church community], have been used to seek it [as well as the forgiveness of sins] from the imprisoned martyrs.”) On further issues relating to the special status of martyrs, see e. g. Ernst Dassmann, Sündenvergebung durch Taufe, Buße und Martyrerfürbitte in den Zeugnissen frühchristlicher Frömmigkeit und Kunst (Münster: Aschendorff, 1973), 163 – 182; Andrew McGowan, “Discipline and Diet: Feeding the Martyrs in Roman Carthage,” HTR 96 (2003): 455‒476.  Cf. Tertullian, An. 55,4 / CCSL 2,862‒863. In Tertullian’s doctrine, a martyr’s death is the only way of receiving absolution for grave sins committed after baptism; death by martyrdom is for Tertullian (as well as for other early Christian authors) a sort of second baptism, baptism in blood, and the same view is expressed in Pass. Perp. (18,3; 21,2); see Petr Kitzler, “Vis divinae gratiae”: 95 – 97; to broader context cf. also David Biale, Blood and Belief. The Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians, (Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press, 2007), 74– 79.  Pass. Perp. 9,1: […] praepositus carceris nos magnificare coepit intellegens magnam virtutem esse in nobis (“junior officer […] who was in charge of the prison, began to show us great respect because he realized that some great power dwelt among us”).

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one of her fellow brothers addresses her, calling her (much like her father did) domina soror, adding that she was “already blessed with great grace” (iam in magna dignatione es).²³⁶ The manifestation of the extraordinary grace granted to Perpetua comes first in the form of her visions – a gift from God that Perpetua, conscious of her unique status, considers natural. Not waiting for God to grant her a prophetic dream, she actively initiates the first vision herself, not doubting that God would comply with her wish (fidenter repromisi).²³⁷ As E. Castelli notes, the verb postulavi used by Perpetua to express her wish to God does not connote the subservient position of the person making the request, but rather the reverse: its connotation is that of a request for something to which one believes one is entitled.²³⁸ Perpetua’s spiritual power comes through even more strongly in her second vision, which she again initiates of her own accord. She realises straight away that she “had been found worthy” (cognovi me statim dignam esse), and hence, on that very night (continuo ipsa nocte),²³⁹ in answer to her prayers, she has a vision of her dead brother Dinocrates who is suffering in the underworld. Perpetua is confident that she will be able to help him in his difficulty (fidebam me profuturam labori eius),²⁴⁰ asking God in her prayers to “gift” her brother to her (ut mihi donaretur). In the early Christian context, the verb donare commonly meant the forgiving of sins.²⁴¹ Perpetua’s intercessory powers are persuasive enough for God to heed her prayers, and she succeeds in commuting her brother’s punishment in the nether world – despite the fact that he was most likely unbaptized. The next vision she has, which comes without any interven-

 Cf. Pass. Perp. 4,1.  As noted by William V. Harris, Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge [Mass.] – London: Harvard University Press, 2009), 39, the belief that prophetic dreams or dream-epiphanies were originally a “princely prerogative” and that “throughout antiquity the recipients were normally persons of distinction either social or religious or literary” can be already detected in Homer; on Harris’s scepticism as to the authenticity of the visions in Pass. Perp. (see ibidem, 110 – 113) cf. recently Jan den Boeft and Jan N. Bremmer, “Notiunculae martyrologicae VI”: 53, note 27.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 4,2 (see also above, p. 44 f.); cf. Elisabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 88.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 7,2‒3.  Pass. Perp. 7,9.  Cf., e. g., Tertullian, Apol. 50,16 / CCSL 1,171 (delicta donantur). Anton de Waal, “Der leidende Dinocrates in der Vision der heil. Perpetua,” RQ 17 (1903): (339‒347) 340, already pointed out that the verb donare also functioned as a technical term whereby the lapsi would implore the martyrs for forgiveness of their sins.

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tion on her part (ostensum est mihi), gives Perpetua the assurance that her brother “had been released from his toils” (intellexi translatum eum esse de poena).²⁴² This case in which the fate of the dead is changed through the prayers of the living is unique in the early Christian literature, with the exception of the fictional Thecla, who through her prayers managed to change the posthumous fate of the pagan woman Falconilla, who attained “the place of the just” (μεταθετῶ εἰς τὸν τῶν δικαίων τόπον).²⁴³ The evocation of Perpetua’s exceptional status is further illustrated by the events in the vision of Saturus which I have already touched upon. Having been martyred, Saturus and Perpetua are carried by four angels to paradise, which resembles a large garden (viridarium). Inside, in a place whose walls “were as if they were made of light”, Saturus and Perpetua are greeted by the Lord himself. On leaving, in front of the gate (ante foras) they meet Optatus the bishop (Optatum episcopum) and Aspasius the priest and teacher (Aspasium presbyterum doctorem), who are not rejoicing with the others but “standing apart from one another and looking sad” (separatos et tristes). The scene that follows echoes once again the theme of the subversion of hierarchy, as the two church dignitaries fall at the feet of the two martyrs (lay persons) (miserunt se ad pedes nobis), pleading with them to bring about a reconciliation.²⁴⁴ Moved, Perpetua and Saturus embrace the two men, but tellingly it is Perpetua, not Saturus, who is the first to speak to them, thus asserting her spiritual superiority. There is more evidence of the special status of martyrs and confessors to be found in the diverse mentions throughout the later literature written in the 3rd century. In addition, the church of North Africa regularly commemorated its martyrs as part of the liturgy, as can be seen e. g. in the letters of Cyprian.²⁴⁵ However, the exceptional spiritual power of martyrs increasingly came to be per-

 Pass. Perp. 8,4. Cf. especially Jeffrey A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead, 76‒90; for an exhaustive summary of various interpretations, see Andreas Merkt, Das Fegefeuer. Entstehung und Funktion einer Idee (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005), 15 – 33 and 53 – 56; cf. also Eugenio Corsini, “Proposte per una lettura della ‘Passio Perpetuae’”: 496 – 505, and more recently also Chiara Beretta, “La visione di Dinocrate nella Passio Perpetuae come ermeneutica di 1 Cor 15,29,” Annali di scienze religiose 7 (2002): 195 – 223; Jerónimo Leal, “Nota Martyrologica: el sueño de Dinócrates en la Passio Perpetuae y las fuentes de la Passio Fabii Vexilliferi,” StPatr 46 (2010): 349 – 354.  Cf. Acta P. et Th. 28‒31.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 13. See also Jan N. Bremmer, “The Vision of Saturus”: 66‒69; cf. also above, p. 39. The opposite interpretation, which does not recognize the potentially subversive nature of the scene, is argued by Andreas Merkt, “Gewaltverarbeitung”: 75.  Cf. e. g. Cyprian, Ep. 12,2 / CCSL 3B,69; and especially 39,3 / CCSL 3B,189. Se also William H. C. Frend, “The North African Cult of Martyrs”: 156‒158, whose overview I draw on.

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ceived as rivalling that of the newly forming church hierarchical structure with the bishop at its head. As Cyprian wrote: “Although all brothers ought to rejoice at this martyrdom, the greater part of this shared joy belongs to the bishop.”²⁴⁶ In time, the charisma of the martyrs begins to be neutralized by the open integration of the confessors in the wider church structures, via their promotion to priesthood;²⁴⁷ and also by celebrating the Eucharist on the feast days of the martyrs, which was intended to bring home the fact that the intermediary between God and man was the church, not the martyrs.²⁴⁸ However, the power of martyrs is only one of the many aspects of the Passio Perpetuae that were bound to attract controversy in the centuries to come. I have shown how the subversion of the established theological schemes, so striking in this martyr narrative, goes hand in hand with the inversion of social and gender stereotypes. The dangerously subversive potential of the Passio Perpetuae could not have failed to be noticed by readers in later years. The situation was further complicated by the remarkable popularity and authority the Passio Perpetuae enjoyed practically from the time of its composition. This can be at least partially attributed to its innovative²⁴⁹ features discussed above. Over the next fifty or sixty years, the Passio Perpetuae was to become a kind of model for similar martyr accounts. As such, its revolutionary undertow could not simply be ignored; the narrative code presented by the text therefore had to be reinterpreted to conform to the changing requirements of sainthood and the newly forming social and theological patterns. This was precisely what later commentators were attempting to accomplish: they felt they could not allow the text of the Passio to “speak for itself”, but instead offered a “correct” interpretation for the benefit of the contemporary public²⁵⁰ – for whom the times of persecution and martyrs’ blood were increasingly coming to signify merely an exciting episode from the past, to be commemorated in liturgical readings recounting the heroic deeds of their ancestors.

 Cyprian, Ep. 13,1 / CCSL 3B, 71: Nam cum gaudere in hoc [scil. martyrio] omnes fratres oportet, tunc in gaudio communi maior est episcopi portio.  This was the case of the confessor Celerinus, as attested by Cyprian in Ep. 39,1– 2 / CCSL 3B,186 – 187.  See William H. C. Frend, “The North African Cult of Martyrs”: 157.  The same conclusion is arrived at by Joseph Farrell, “The Canonization of Perpetua”: 308.  For a similar view, cf. also Joyce E. Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion, 171.

3 From exemplum fidei to admirandum, non imitandum: The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis and its later interpreters 3.1 Mandatum sanctissimae Perpetuae: The editor and his literary staging of the Passio Perpetuae Perhaps the most accessible way of introducing the reception and reinterpretation of the Passio Perpetuae in the literature of the early church is to follow chronological order, inasfar as this can be established for the individual authors and texts that I will discuss. In the next chapters, I therefore focus on all the relevant references to our text in the later patristic literature,²⁵¹ with a special focus on the various manipulations the original text²⁵² was subjected to in the process of its reception. The “Nachleben” of the Passio Perpetuae starts surprisingly early: with the editor himself, who was a contemporary of the events narrated in Perpetua’s and Saturus’ records, and could be seen as the very first interpreter of the Passio. It was the editor who between 203 and 210 incorporated what were most likely originally two separate accounts of the martyrs into a single body of text, giving them a unifying theological perspective by means of the prologue.²⁵³ In the editor’s interpretation, Perpetua’s visions, as well as the single vision of Saturus, are explicitly linked to the workings of the Holy Spirit, whose presence is thus manifested in them. He then positions the visions in yet another interpre-

 My point of depart is the collection of testimonies compiled by van Beek, 149*‒166*, which, however, does not contain the parallels to the Passio Perpetuae in North African martyr texts. A more recent collection of all references to the Passio Perpetuae in the patristic literature was compiled by Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, “Gli ‘Acta brevia sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’. Una proposta di rilettura,” CNS 30 (2009): 1– 38, although his useful collection of source material lacks a more thorough analysis.  For later reinterpretations and manipulations of Pass. Perp. cf. generally e. g. Joyce E. Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion, 166‒179; Gail Corrington Streete, Redeemed Bodies. Women Martyrs in Early Christianity (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 49 – 72; Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, 97– 126. See also my paper “Viri mirantur facilius quam imitantur: Passio Perpetuae in the Literature of Ancient Church (Tertullian, acta martyrum and Augustine),” in The Ancient Novel and the Early Christian and Jewish Narrative. Fictional Intersections, eds. Judith Perkins, Marília P. Futre Pinheiro and Richard Pervo (Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing & Groningen University Library, 2012): 189 – 201. References to further relevant literature will be provided in the corresponding places.  Cf. also Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biographies, 199.

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tative framework. Not only is their existence proof that divine grace operates through the Holy Spirit as it did in the past, but these new manifestations of God’s workings should be accorded even greater authority than those of ancient times, because these new manifestations came to pass “in the final stages of earthly time” (ultima saeculi spatia).²⁵⁴ Both these aspects – the pneumatological and the eschatological – are, however, the editor’s own contribution or constructs, without any textual support in the words of the martyrs themselves. The primary motivation behind the editor’s prologue thus seems to be the anchoring of the Passio Perpetuae in a clearly defined theological perspective through which contemporary readers were to understand the text. At the same time, the editor is trying to create the impression that the theological horizon he thus established was in fact one that the martyrs, whose words he goes on to reproduce, themselves subscribed to. The success of the editor’s intent is best reflected in the fact that modern scholarship has frequently been inclined to read the entire Passio through the prism of the prologue. The presence of the clear pneumatological and eschatological emphases, combined with the editor’s key words prophetias ita et visiones novas […] agnoscimus, which echo similar words by Tertullian written in reference to Montanism,²⁵⁵ have led some interpreters to conclude that the entire text is to be read as a Montanist document, with the implication that the remainder of the Passio is similarly to be combed for further aspects that may be interpreted as Montanist.²⁵⁶ To accept this interpretation would, however, mean equating what was essentially a literary tactic on the part of the editor with an indubitable historical fact. As I noted earlier, if we could ignore the prologue and its role in the Passio, the remainder of the narrative would be perceived in a very different light, and the speculation about its possible Montanist features would most likely never arise.²⁵⁷ Apart from the theological guidance offered in the prologue, which explicitly defines the function of the text as that of honouring God (Deus honoretur), another thoroughly practical invitation for how to perceive the Passio “correctly” is articulated. This concerns the second, again explicitly stated function of the text – its reading for the purpose of “empowering” (homo confortetur). The key word in this connection is repraesentatio: the readings of the text at liturgical assemblies of the church on the feast days of the martyrs “should in a way almost mystical, transcend the barriers of time and space, and by virtue of merely listening to the    

Cf. Pass. Perp. 1,3. Cf. e. g. Tertullian, Prax. 1,5.7 / CCSL 2,1159 – 1160. This is how Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, passim, approaches the text. Thus argues James W. Halporn, “Literary History”: 232, with note 26. See also above, p. 32.

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text, a communion (communitas) with the martyrs, and through them with Christ, is to be achieved”.²⁵⁸ Hence, according to the editor, the liturgical reading of the text is quasi repraesentatio rerum,²⁵⁹ and this “re-presentation of things past” to a degree dictates the editor’s literary technique. The editor does not present the text to the believers as a mere model to imitate, as was the purpose of e. g. earlier Greek martyr texts. What he is trying to achieve is to draw the listeners into the events being described, using carefully chosen literary vehicles so that they almost become eyewitnesses to the events themselves.²⁶⁰ This strategy is most markedly in evidence in the passages devoted to the martyrs’ combat with the wild beasts in the arena. The editor’s evocation turns the audience into “voyeuristic spectators”,²⁶¹ enabling them to identify with the actual audience who witnessed the martyrdom of Perpetua and her fellow martyrs. In order for the readers to be able to identify with the original audience, the editor presents the events as a kind of literary theatrical production, staging the martyrdom as a sort of “Christian theatre” or spectacle,²⁶² designed to rouse the readers’ emotion. The emotional response to be elicited is not merely compassion for the martyrs as they face their cruel deaths, but also pleasure at certain details charged with unmistakeable eroticism, which for even stronger effect were “staged” according to the established literary topoi with which the contemporary audiences were familiar.²⁶³ Perpetua’s triumphant entry into the amphitheatre, where, in the words of the editor, “Perpetua followed them with a steady gait […], parrying the gaze

 Katharina Waldner, “‘Was wir also gehört und berührt haben, verkünden wir auch euch…’. Zur narrativen Technik der Körperdarstellung im Martyrium Polycarpi und der Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” in Die Christen und der Körper. Aspekte der Körperlichkeit in der christlichen Literatur der Spätantike, eds. Barbara Feichtinger and Helmut Seng (Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 2004): (29 – 74) 48 – 49: “Durch die Lesung des Märtyrertextes sollen auf fast ‘mystische’ Weise die Grenzen von Raum und Zeit überschritten werden, allein durch das Hören des Textes soll es möglich sein, Gemeinschaft (communitas) mit den Märtyrern und damit mit Christus zu erlangen.”  Cf. Pass. Perp. 1,1.  On this aspect of the text as well as the apparent favouring of mimesis to diegesis from a narratological point of view, cf. Jesús Hernández Lobato, “Repraesentatio rerum: Hacia un análisis narratológico de la Passio Perpetuae,” Voces 16 (2005): 75 – 95.  Cf. Elisabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 123.  Cf. ibidem, 124.  Cf. especially Katharina Waldner, “‘Was wir also gehört und berührt haben, verkünden wir auch euch…’”: 50 – 55; Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 225 – 228; Heidi Vierow, “Feminine and Masculine Voices”: 609 – 612; Jan N. Bremmer, “Felicitas”: 48.

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of all with the strength of her own”,²⁶⁴ has a clear parallel in the Greek novel about Chaereas and Callirhoe by Chariton.²⁶⁵ Perpetua’s rearrangement of her tunic also appears to have been modelled on a similar gesture by Euripides’ Polyxena:²⁶⁶ “And when she sat up, she rearranged her tunic that had been torn away from the body to cover her hips, thinking more of her modesty than of her pain.”²⁶⁷ The combat scenes in the arena that follow are not lacking in erotic overtones in the editor’s rendition, as he describes how the two young women were stripped naked and clothed in nets only, one of them being described as “beautiful” (puella delicata), and the other as “fresh from giving birth and with dripping breasts” (altera a partu recentem stillantibus mammis).²⁶⁸ Confronted with such a spectacle, the audience were “aghast” (horruit populus),²⁶⁹ even though, as some scholars have noted, this “horror” may have been tinged with an element of sado-eroticism.²⁷⁰ The editor’s descriptive strategy is hence two-pronged: on the one hand, he makes a point of showing the modesty of the female martyrs and their control over their own sexuality (Perpetua’s pulling down her tunic to hide her thighs; tying back her hair with a hairpin), while on the other, he puts a spotlight on this very sexuality, staging it, so to speak, in “colourful close-ups”.²⁷¹ There

 Cf. Pass. Perp. 18,2: […] Perpetua lucido vultu et placido incessu, […] vigore oculorum deiciens omnium conspectum.  Cf. Chariton, Chaer. et Call. V,3,9: Ἐξέλαμψε δὲ τὸ Καλλιρόης πρόσωπον, καὶ μαρμαρυγὴ κατέσχε τὰς ἁπάντων ὄψεις, ὥσπερ ἐν νυκτὶ βαθείᾳ πολλοῦ φωτὸς αἰφνίδιον φανέντος ἐκπλαγέντες δὲ οἱ βάρβαροι προσεκύνησαν […] (“Callirhoe’s face shone forth and it dazzled everyone’s eyes, like a bright light suddenly appearing in the depths of night. Stunned, the barbarians knelt in reverence […]”; translation by Stephen M. Trzaskoma).  Pass. Perp. 20,4: Et ubi sedit, tunicam a latere discissam ad velamentum femoris reduxit, pudoris potius memor quam doloris.  Cf. Euripides, Hec. 568‒570: ἡ δὲ καὶ θνήισκους ̓ ὅμως πολλὴν / πρόνοιαν εἶχεν εὐσχήμων πεσεῖν, / κρύπτους ̓ ἃ κρύπτειν ὄμματ ̓ ἀρσένων χρεών (“ […] but she, even in death, / Took chiefest thought decorously to fall, / Hiding what hidden from men‘s eyes should be.”; translation by Arthur S. Way), and also the literature listed above, note 263 on previous page. See also Craig Williams, “Perpetua’s Gender”: 67– 72; Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, X; Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 32.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 20,2.  Ibidem.  Cf. David Frankfurter, “Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze,” JECS 17 (2009): (215‒249) 217, on Pass. Perp. see also 221‒224; Jan N. Bremmer, “Felicitas”: 49.  David Frankfurter, “Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze”: 224. Cf. also Virginia Burrus, Saving Shame. Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 28 – 32.

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was another reason behind the editor’s tactic of revealing the female body to the spectator’s gaze, which I will discuss later. The editor refers explicitly to Perpetua’s words that “as for an account of the games themselves: someone else may want to write that up”,²⁷² interpreting this comment as a clear approval by the Holy Spirit, as well as Perpetua’s last wish and “last will” (mandatum sanctissimae Perpetuae, immo fideicomissum).²⁷³ Although his humble comment that he is “unworthy to supplement the description of such glory”²⁷⁴ echoes a typical topos modestiae, it can also be viewed as a ploy on the editor’s part to divert the reader’s attention from the fact that it is he himself who is manipulating the text.²⁷⁵ The shift in narrative technique to serve the editor’s objective of supplementing (supplementum) the glory of the martyrs is manifested in their heroization and accentuated by the lofty rhetorical style that contrasts with Perpetua’s sermo humilis. ²⁷⁶ Though the Perpetua of the editor’s rendition, unlike the Perpetua of her own account, does not show any signs of concern or doubt, the editor was well aware that the masculine characteristics he accorded her in his portrayal of her as a woman defying all traditional social patterns²⁷⁷ might come across as too revolutionary for the contemporary audience. To alleviate this risk, the editor attempts to offset these masculine features by attributing feminine characteristics to the martyrs as well. In doing this, he is the first of many interpreters to come.²⁷⁸ The feminization is effected right at the beginning of the Passio, before Perpetua’s own account, with the editor’s attribution to Perpetua of characteristics that would have made her a good woman, mother and wife in the eyes of the audience. Perpetua is “honestly married as a matron” (matronaliter nupta); her family background is portrayed as standard (father, mother, two brothers), and this, combined with the fact that she, aged 22, is breast-feeding her (probably first) child, makes her appear almost as a

 Pass. Perp. 10,15: […] ipsius autem muneris actum, si quis voluerit, scribat.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 16,1 (“we […] nevertheless serve as the executors of the most holy Perpetua’s will”).  Ibidem.  Thus L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 107.  Cf. Erich Auerbach, Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), especially 60 – 66. See also Jacques Fontaine, Aspects et problèmes, 69 – 97.  On the masculinization of Perpetua, see above, p. 47 ff.  The first one to elaborate on the motif of feminization of masculinized women martyrs was arguably L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 107‒113, on whose conclusions I draw at this point. See also Craig Williams, “Perpetua’s Gender”: 66 – 68.

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paradigm of normalcy.²⁷⁹ This may also be the reason why the editor makes no mention of Perpetua’s husband as he builds up this image. If Perpetua had disavowed her husband before her arrest and martyrdom, such information could have pulled the rug from under the editor’s determined efforts to feminize Perpetua and present her as a socially flawless heroine. However, Perpetua’s feminine side also comes through quite markedly in her own notes, which the editor, as we have seen, may have edited to some extent. It is in “her own words” that the theme of the mother concerned for her child appears, as do the purely feminine themes associated with the physiological aspects of motherhood: breast-feeding and inflammation of the breasts.²⁸⁰ These physical aspects come across even more strongly in the editor’s description of Felicity: the premature birth in the 8th month of pregnancy, the pain of labour, the blood associated with birth. The editor’s feminization of the heroines culminates in the entry of the martyrs into the amphitheatre and the combat with the beasts. In these scenes, the martyrs are primarily presented in a traditional way, as women exposed to the gaze of the spectators, with the female body as the centre of attention.²⁸¹ The editor of course could not rewrite Perpetua’s account from scratch in order to suppress its innovative aspects. Instead, he surrounded Perpetua’s own words with explanatory comments and bracketed them with his own sections (the prologue, Felicity’s birth, the fight in the arena),²⁸² which were to serve as a guideline for readers as to how to read and understand the Passio “correctly”. In addition to laying out the theological framework in which the text should be interpreted (an aspect not present in the visions of Perpetua and Saturus) and transforming the lived experience of the martyrs to a transcendental plane,²⁸³ his intention was to make the Passio a suitably instructive, educational model to be imitated. To achieve this, it was necessary to dilute the original emphasis on Perpetua in particular as a masculinized woman defying the standard social and gender hierarchies. Even though a certain degree of masculinity was an indispensable part of the martyrs’ make-up and identity, when it came to the portrayal of female martyrs, this masculinity appeared to be in need of watering

 Cf. L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 108; Brent D. Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua”: 11 to 12.  See also above, p. 42.  Cf. Gail Corrington Streete, Redeemed Bodies, 37‒42; L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 110‒111. See also Maureen A. Tilley, “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity”: passim; Craig Williams, “Perpetua’s Gender”: 61.  Cf. Brent D. Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua”: 30‒33.  Ibidem: 31.

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down, normalizing, in order to balance the masculine and feminine characteristics by accentuating the heroines’ feminine side as well.

3.2 Tertullian and his fortissima martyr In our chronological overview of the reception and recontextualization of the Passio Perpetuae, Tertullian of Carthage, writing at the turn of the 3rd century and generally considered the most significant Christian author of the Latin West before Augustine,²⁸⁴ is the earliest author to explicitly refer to Perpetua and her martyrdom in his work. Though Tertullian’s identification with the anonymous editor of the Passio Perpetuae is almost certainly erroneous,²⁸⁵ the Christian author must have been familiar with the events that took place in the Carthaginian amphitheatre in March 203. We know that Tertullian himself used to attend pagan spectacles,²⁸⁶ which he later castigated in his tract De spectaculis (written both in Latin and Greek versions) aimed at his fellow countrymen at Carthage, who had a reputation for enjoying spectacles of various descriptions, and gladiatorial games in particular.²⁸⁷ Tertullian’s admiration for martyrs is apparent from his earliest works: one of his oldest extant works is a letter to future martyrs (Ad martyras), and the emphasis on martyrdom as the culmination of a Christian life becomes even more pronounced in his later writing, which was influenced by his leanings towards Montanism.²⁸⁸ Although Tertullian’s reference to Perpetua is limited to a single sentence, it is still of interest to us at multiple levels. In his tract De anima, Tertullian states that “the bravest of martyrs, Perpetua, saw in her vision of paradise revealed to her shortly before her death, only martyrs there”.²⁸⁹ The first fact that follows from this brief statement is that the Passio Perpetuae must have been written not long after the events described, i. e. between 203 and 210/213, which is the

 For a general introduction to Tertullian reflecting modern scholarship as well as a detailed bibliography, see e. g. Timothy D. Barnes, Tertullian; and Hermann Tränkle, “Quintus Septimius Tertullianus Florens”.  See above p. 17 ff.  Cf. Tertullian, Apol. 15,5 / CCSL 1,114.  Cf. Timothy D. Barnes, Tertullian, 94, note 2.  For a summary of Tertullian’s theology of martyrdom, see Wiebke Bähnk, Von der Notwendigkeit des Leidens.  Tertullian, An. 55,4 / CCSL 2,862– 863: Quomodo Perpetua, fortissima martyr, sub die passionis in revelatione paradisi solos illic martyras vidit […]. For more on this passage, which poses a serious challenge from the point of view of textual criticism, cf. Jan H. Waszink, ed., Tertulliani De anima, 561‒562 (defending the reading martyras, rather than commartyres).

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terminus post quem non for the writing of the De anima tract.²⁹⁰ It is evident from the fact that he is referring to Perpetua’s vision as described in the Passio ²⁹¹ that Tertullian must have had a literary representation of the martyrdom of Perpetua in mind. But even more significant is that, less than a decade after it was written at the latest, the Passio Perpetuae had become so well known among ordinary believers and Christian intellectuals alike, and had attained such a high regard during this time, that the church authority did not hesitate to refer to it as an authoritative source in settling subtle theological disputes. Tertullian’s allusion to Perpetua has been debated by scholars for decades, especially the question of which particular part of the Passio Perpetuae Tertullian may have been referring to. Some researchers have failed to see any direct correspondence between Perpetua’s visions and Tertullian’s rather vague phrasing and thought it more likely that what Tertullian may have had in mind was the vision of Saturus, rather than that of Perpetua.²⁹² In her first vision, Perpetua does describe a paradisiacal place, writing that she “saw a wide open space, a garden, and in the middle of it a grey-haired man sitting down. He was dressed like a shepherd, tall, milking some sheep. People dressed in white were standing around him, thousands and thousands of them.”²⁹³ Saturus, when he describes his own vision of paradise, goes on to enumerate the martyrs whom he saw there (Iucundus, Saturninus, Artaxius, Quintus),²⁹⁴ and then concludes: “And we began to recognize there many of our brothers, and also martyrs.”²⁹⁵ Whether or not Tertullian was referring to Perpetua’s first vision, as Bastiaensen has tried to prove, or whether he merged the two visions, what is primarily of interest to us is the way he approaches the Passio Perpetuae and the intent behind his reference. Much like the anonymous editor, Tertullian too lays out the theological perspective from which he wants the Passio Perpetuae to be interpreted, even though such a construct has no foundation in the text itself.

 See above, p. 17 with note 65.  Cf., however, Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 130 – 131.  For an overview of past research, see Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, “Tertullian’s Reference”, who, following a detailed analysis, leans towards the opinion that Tertullian does allude to Perpetua’s first vision.  Pass. Perp. 4,8: Et vidi spatium immensum horti et in medio sedentem hominem canum, in habitu pastoris, grandem, oves mulgentem: et circumstantes candidati milia multa.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 11,9.  Pass. Perp. 13,8: Et coepimus illic multos fratres cognoscere, sed et martyras. Modified English translation.

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Tertullian’s applied theological perspective is essentially his theory of the soul,²⁹⁶ or rather, his concept of the fate of the soul after death. For this purpose, he calls upon the text of the Passio Perpetuae as a sort of “key witness.”²⁹⁷ According to Tertullian, the souls of all the dead will await the Last Judgement in Hades, where they will either endure a foretaste of the torture to come or enjoy reward according to their desserts, until resurrection.²⁹⁸ The only exceptions are the souls of martyrs, which will pass directly to paradise immediately after death.²⁹⁹ By including the Passio Perpetuae in his reference, Tertullian is attempting to support his doctrine of the soul, regardless of the fact that neither in Perpetua’s nor Saturus’ accounts do we come across a single passage that would directly support his interpretation. In fact, what Saturus is saying in his vision seems to be the very opposite of Tertullian’s interpretation. Saturus sees “many of our brothers, and also martyrs” (multos fratres, sed et martyras).³⁰⁰ As for Perpetua’s vision of paradise and the candidati milia multa she sees there, the “thousands of people in white” she mentions can certainly be understood to mean martyrs. Furthermore, behind this image there is a discernible allusion to the Book of Revelation (Rev 7,9 – 14), as Bastiaensen has proved. Tellingly, Tertullian includes this allusion not only in his treatise De anima, in which he

 Tertullian’s doctrine of the soul (in particular Tertullian’s corporealism and his theory of the origin and transmission of the soul) has been discussed by me elsewhere, cf. Petr Kitzler, “Nihil enim anima si non corpus. Tertullian und die Körperlichkeit der Seele,” WS 122 (2009): 145‒169; idem, “Ex uno homine tota haec animarum redundantia. Ursprung, Entstehung und Weitergabe der individuellen Seele nach Tertullian,” VC 64 (2010): 353‒381.  This is the term used by Franz Joseph Dölger, “Antike Parallelen zum leidenden Dinocrates in der Passio Perpetuae,”Antike und Christentum 2 (1930): (1‒40) 40.  Cf. Tertullian, An. 7,3 – 4 / CCSL 2,790; 58 / CCSL 2,867– 869.  For more details, see e. g. Wiebke Bähnk, Von der Notwendigkeit des Leidens, 225 – 232.  Modified English translation. A similar view is held by Andreas Merkt, “Gewaltverarbeitung”: 82. The Latin wording is challenging to interpret: although it is true that the conjunction sed is not necessarily exclusively adversative, to understand it in its explicative sense and translate the passage as “those of the brothers who were martyrs”, as does Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, “Tertullian’s Reference”: 791 (similarly Farrell and Williams in their translation, in Perpetua’s Passions: 20: “many of our brothers who were also martyrs”), is, in my opinion, in direct contradiction to the intended meaning of the Latin text. To compare, the Greek translation of the corresponding passage reads πολλοὺς τῶν ἀδελφῶν […] ἀλλά γε καὶ τοὺς μάρτυρας (“many brothers […] but also martyrs”). This is reflected also in the translation of Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 131 (with a commentary on 297– 298), who renders the phrase correctly as: “many of our brothers, and martyrs also”, and states (297): “The syntax suggests that their brethren whom they see in heaven consist of martyrs and others who are not martyrs, since otherwise there would be little reason to cite both groups.” See also Jan N. Bremmer, “The Vision of Saturus”: 70.

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refers to Perpetua, but also in Scorpiace, in which he defends the necessity of martyrdom.³⁰¹ Bastiaensen points out another noteworthy fact that seems to confirm this suspicion of Tertullian’s manipulation of the Passio Perpetuae, or rather, his reinterpretation of its original meaning. The passage from De anima in which Tertullian refers to Perpetua corresponds closely with the section from Scorpiace mentioned above, as both give a description of paradise alongside references to the Book of Revelation, who “saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God” (Rev 6,9). Whereas in Scorpiace, apparently written before or not long after De anima, the Revelation of John is the key passage invoked to back up Tertullian’s doctrine, in De anima Tertullian also includes Perpetua’s vision alongside John’s revelation to bolster his theory. In doing so, he places Perpetua’s vision on a par with the Revelation, thus implying that the new visions informed by the Holy Spirit have the same stature as those included in the canonical Scriptures.³⁰² The Passio Perpetuae, or rather, the Passio Perpetuae as Tertullian presents it to his readers, is then, not for the first or last time, uprooted from its original context and reinterpreted in ways that serve Tertullian’s own theological doctrine. The Passio is used as an additional argument in Tertullian’s assertion that martyrs go straight to paradise after their physical death, an argument that is meant to carry the same authority as the Revelation.

3.3 The Passio Perpetuae and the North African passiones of the 3rd century A.D. The authority that the Passio Perpetuae began to command very shortly after its composition, as illustrated by Tertullian’s citation of the text, became even more pronounced over the course of the following fifty or sixty years. The 60 s of the 3rd century saw the composition of several accounts of martyrdom involving Christians in North Africa, in consequence of the Decian, Valerian and Gallienus persecutions. In addition to Pontius’ account of the life and martyrdom of Cyprian, most likely written shortly after the death of the Carthaginian bishop in 258 (Vita Cypriani), two additional passiones describing the events of 259 have survived to the present day: the Passio Montani et Lucii (Pass. Montan.) and the Passio Mariani et Iacobi (Pass. Mar. Iac.).

 Cf. Tertullian, Scorp. 12,9‒10 / CCSL 2,1093 – 1094, and Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, “Tertullian’s Reference”: 791‒792.  Cf. Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, “Tertullian’s Reference”: 793.

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In the following pages, we will focus on these three works in our tracing of the reception of the Passio Perpetuae, for, in addition to their roughly identical date of origin, they share a further feature with our Passio. Although there is no explicit reference to Perpetua, Felicity or the account of their martyrdom in the texts, all of these works – particularly both passiones – are clearly influenced by the Passio: not only at the level of the themes, motifs and metaphors used, but also at the level of numerous individual words and phrases.³⁰³ The very structure of the two above-mentioned martyr texts reflects the influence that the Passio Perpetuae had on them. Similarly to the Passio Perpetuae, the visions of the martyrs form an integral part of both Pass. Montan. and Pass. Mar. Iac., and as such are viewed by the editors as special manifestations of the divine grace, foreshadowing as they do the future martyrdom of the protagonists. Again similarly to the Passio Perpetuae, the visions are narrated in the first person by the martyrs themselves: Renus, Victor, Quartillosia, Montanus, and Flavianus in Pass. Montan.; Marianus, Iacob and Aemilianus in Pass. Mar. Iac. As far as the motifs are concerned, these too show the influence of the dreams of Perpetua and Saturus: in Pass. Mar. Iac., Marianus falls into a deep sleep and describes his journey to paradise to his brothers on awakening.³⁰⁴ Much like Perpetua’s climb up the ladder to the unearthly garden,³⁰⁵ so is Marianus’ journey

 For an overview of the indebtedness of the North African passiones to the Passio Perpetuae, see: Pio Franchi de’Cavalieri, “Gli atti dei SS. Montano, Lucio e compagni. Recensione del testo ed introduzione sulle sue relazioni con la Passio S. Perpetuae,” in idem, Scritti agiografici, vol. 1, Studi e testi 221 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1962): 199 – 262; Jacqueline Amat, “La langue des Passions africaines du IIIe siècle,” in Latin vulgaire – latin tardif, vol. 5, eds. Hubert Petersmann and Rudolf Kettemann (Heidelberg: Winter, 1999): 301– 307; Valeria Lomanto, “Rapporti fra la ‘Passio Perpetuae’ e ‘passiones’ africane,” in Forma futuri: 566 – 586; Michał Kaczmarkowski, “Struktura pionowa tekstów: Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, Passio Sanctorum Mariani et Iacobi i Passio Sanctorum Montani et Lucii,” Vox Patrum 11– 12, No. 20 – 23 (1991– 1992): 213 – 221. On the influence of the Passio Perpetuae on Vita Cypriani, see especially Jakko Aronen, “Indebtedness to Passio Perpetuae in Pontius’ Vita Cypriani,” VC 38 (1984): 67– 76; and Elena Jurissevich, “Le prologue de la Vita Cypriani versus le prologue de la Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis: De la prééminence du récit de la vie et du martyre d’un évêque sur le récit de la passion de simples catéchumènes et laïcs,” in Cristianesimi nell’antichità: Fonti, istituzioni, ideologie a confronto, eds. Alberto d’Anna and Claudio Zamagni (Hildesheim: Olms, 2007): 131– 148.  Cf. Pass. Mar. Iac. 6,5‒14. For a detailed analysis of Marianus’ vision, see particularly Jakko Aronen, “Marianus’ Vision in the Acts of Marianus and Iacobus,” WS 97 (1984): 169‒186, and Jan N. Bremmer, “Contextualizing Heaven in Third-Century North Africa,” in Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions, eds. Ra’anan S. Boustan and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 159‒173.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 4,3‒4.

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upwards the case of an “arduous way up”, as Marianus has to walk up “many steps” and has “a great height to climb”.³⁰⁶ And similarly to Perpetua’s vision of Dinocrates in which her dead brother at the basin (piscina) drinks thirstily from the golden goblet that never runs out (fiala aurea plena aqua),³⁰⁷ in Marianus’ vision, following a description of the natural beauty of the scenery, there appears the motif of a goblet lying at the edge of a crystal-clear font (fialam super marginem fontis) from which Marianus drinks thirstily. Having drunk from the goblet, he thanks God and “aroused by the sound of his own voice, he awakes” (excitatus, […] mea voce, surrexi)³⁰⁸ – much like Perpetua’s description of her first dream in which she eats the cheese offered by the celestial shepherd, and when those standing around her all say “Amen”, she wakes up “with the sound of their voice still in [her] ears” (Et ad sonum vocis experrecta sum).³⁰⁹ In the same text, Iacob recounts his vision too: at first he sees the apparition of a “young man of great, incredible size, dressed in an ungirt tunic of such brilliance that one’s eyes could not continually behold him”, whose “feet did not touch the ground and his countenance rose above the clouds”.³¹⁰ There is no doubt that the man symbolizes Christ, who throws two “purple belts” (zonas purpureas) to Iacob’s lap, one for himself, the other for Marianus, and beckons to them to quickly follow him.³¹¹ In their respective visions, Perpetua’s and Saturus’ descriptions of Christ or the characters symbolizing Christ are almost identical: the celestial shepherd is described as a “tall man” (homo grandis),³¹² and Pomponius, who represents Christ in Perpetua’s vision, is wearing a “loose white robe” (vestitus discincta candida).³¹³ In the same vein, the lanista or gladiatorial trainer, as Perpetua calls him in her last vision, is “huge, towering over the top of the amphitheatre, with a loose robe on – a purple tunic framed by two stripes in

 Cf. Pass. Mar. Iac. 6,7: […] multis ordinata gradibus et longo sublimis ascensu; translation by Herbert Musurillo. On the topos and background of these commonly shared notions of verticality or (difficult) ascent in reaching the afterlife, cf. Fritz Graf, “The Bridge and the Ladder: Narrow Passages in Late Antique Visions,” in Heavenly Realms, eds. Ra’anan S. Boustan and Annette Yoshiko Reed: 19 – 33.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 8,2‒4.  Cf. Pass. Mar. Iac. 6,15, translation by Herbert Musurillo.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 4,10.  Cf. Pass. Mar. Iac. 7,3: Vidi, inquid, iuvenem inenarrabili et satis ampla magnitudine, cuius vestitus discincta erat in tantum candida luce, ut oculi in eam constanter videre non possent. Cuius pedes terram non calcabant et vultus oris super nubes erat. Translation by Herbert Musurillo.  Cf. Pass. Mar. Iac. 7,4.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 4,8.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 10,2.

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the middle of the chest”.³¹⁴ And finally, Saturus sees Christ as a “man who had […] a youthful face, but we did not see his feet” (hominem […] vultu iuvenili, cuius pedes non vidimus).³¹⁵ Visions play a similarly important role in the account of martyrdom of Montanus, Lucius and their companions, and the text also contains parallels or direct thematic or lexical loans from the Passio Perpetuae. For example, in her vision Quartillosia sees a “young man of remarkable stature carrying in each of his hands two drinking-cups (fialas) full of milk […] And he gave everybody to drink from the cups which he carried, and they were never empty”.³¹⁶ The resemblance to Perpetua’s visions is immediately apparent here too.³¹⁷ Though some of the aspects we come across in the visions and dreams of both the Passio and the two North African martyr accounts may be seen as universally shared religious and cultural notions of the afterlife³¹⁸ (the larger-thanlife size of the figures, light as one of the chief attributes of paradise which often takes the form of a beautiful garden or park, etc.), the impact of the Passio Perpetuae on the two passiones cannot be doubted. H. Mussurillo hardly exaggerates when he states that the Passio Perpetuae is, “in a sense, the archetype of all later Acts of the Christian martyrs”.³¹⁹ The Passio Perpetuae becomes a truly model text of martyrdom, and at least in the territory of Christian North Africa, a canonical one, that is imitated both in its micro-structure, as we have just seen, and its macro-structure as well. Apart from the visions of the individual

 Cf. Pass. Perp. 10,8: Et exivit vir quidam mirae magnitudinis […] discinctatus, purpuram inter duos clavos per medium pectus habens […].  Cf. Pass. Perp. 12,3.  Cf. Pass. Montan. 8,4‒5: Et post hunc introivit iuvenis mirae magnitudinis qui ferebat fialas duas singulis manibus lacte plenas […] Et ex fialis illis quas ferebat dedit omnibus bibere; quae fialae non deficiebant. Translation by Herbert Musurillo.  For analogies between the visions in Pass. Perp., Pass. Montan. and Pass. Mar. Iac. and their interpretations, see particularly Jacqueline Amat, Songes et visions, 118‒147; Michel Meslin, “Vases sacrés et boissons d’éternité dans les visions des martyrs africains,” in Epektasis. Mélanges patristiques offerts au cardinal Jean Daniélou, eds. Jacques Fontaine and Charles Kannengiesser (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972): 139 – 153; Cées Mertens, “Les premiers martyrs et leurs rêves. Cohésion de l’histoire et des rêves dans quelques ‘passions’ latines de l’Afrique du Nord,” RHE 81 (1986): 5 – 46, and idem, “Le rêve dans les passions des martyrs. Analyse narrative,” Aug 44 (2004): 269 – 319; Burkhard von Dörnberg, Traum und Traumdeutung, 152– 190 (Pass. Mar. Iac.) and 191– 211 (Pass. Montan.).  For more, see Jan N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London – New York: Routledge, 2002), 56‒64; idem, “Contextualizing Heaven”.  Cf. Herbert Musurillo, “Introduction,” in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. Herbert Musurillo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972): (XI‒LXIII) XXV: “This passio is, in a sense, the archetype of all later Acts of the Christian martyrs […].”

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martyrs, which come to form an integral part of passion texts, this fact of imitation is manifested chiefly in the similar theological footing that the later passiones share with the Passio. Based on the model of the Passio Perpetuae, these were, in the very words of their respective editors, composed to give testimony to future generations of the acts of the martyrs.³²⁰ This emphasis on testimony is, by way of ring composition, reiterated at the end of the narrative, as it is in the Passio Perpetuae. ³²¹ The martyrdom of the Christians is, however, also seen as the blessing of the Holy Spirit and his continuous presence, by virtue of whom these “new examples of faith” (nova exempla), the compilers claim, carry at least equal educative value as “ancient” examples.³²² This theological concept, adopted by the editor of the martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius, corresponds remarkably closely (including the lexicon used) to the theological horizon proclaimed by the editor of the Passio Perpetuae, thus indicating that what modern scholars have sometimes interpreted as Montanist beliefs may well have been a standard and common view of martyrdom around the middle of the 3rd century. The authority that surrounded the text of the Passio Perpetuae is also mirrored to an extent in the literary rendition of the death of the Carthaginian bishop Cyprian in 258. Unlike the previous two passiones, the author of the “life and passion” (vita et passio) of Cyprian treats our Passio with an apparent critical detachment, though he does not go as far as naming the individual martyrs he had in mind, or the text he is arguing against.³²³ His chief censure is aimed at the authority and popularity that the Passio Perpetuae enjoyed at that time despite the fact that the martyrs it treats of were common believers: It would assuredly be hard that, when our fathers have given such honour even to lay-people and catechumens who have obtained martyrdom, for reverence of their very martyrdom, as to record many, or I had nearly said, well near all, of the circumstances of their

 Cf. Pass. Perp. 1,2; Pontius, Vita Cypr. 1,2; Pass. Montan. 1,1.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 21,11; Pontius, Vita Cypr. 19,1; Pass. Montan. 23,7.  Cf. especially Pass. Montan. 3,4: Nec difficile credentibus fuit nova posse ad vetera exempla contingere, domino in spiritu pollicente, […] (“And it was not difficult for those of faith to believe that modern marvels could equal those of old, in view of the Lord’s promise through the spirit […]”; translation by Herbert Musurillo); ibidem, 23,7: O testium Dei experimenta praeclara, quae ad memoriam posterorum merito conscripta sunt, ut quemadmodum de scripturis veteribus exempla, dum discimus, sumimus, etiam de novis aliqua discamus (“Noble sufferings of God’s witnesses! Duly have these been written down to be preserved for those to come, that just as we have taken examples and learnt from the ancient writings, so too we may derive some profit from those of recent times.”; translation by Herbert Musurillo).  For the most detailed overview of the influence of Pass. Perp. on Vita Cypr. cf. Jakko Aronen, “Indebtedness”, who also provides a summary of past debates on the topic.

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sufferings, […] the passion of such a priest and such a martyr as Cyprian should be passed over.³²⁴

Pontius hereby explicitly voices the changing attitude to martyrs in relation to the power they held in the early church: namely the potential threat that martyrs posed to the emerging hierarchy of the stratifying church, as in the eyes of many believers martyrs ranked higher than church dignitaries. That was precisely the case of Perpetua and her companions, whose glory and veneration, sixty years after their death, was such that, in Pontius’ view, it threatened to overshadow the glory of the church dignitary and bishop Cyprian.³²⁵ This may well have been one of the incentives for Pontius to compose his tract: to create a sort of polemic counterpart to the Passio Perpetuae,³²⁶ in accord with the already quoted Cyprian principle that “the greater part of the glory belongs to the bishop”.³²⁷ However, not even Pontius was quite able to leave the orbit of influence of the Passio Perpetuae, as can be seen from some of the terms and phrases he borrows from the text,³²⁸ and also from the overall outline of his narrative, whose purpose it is to serve as a source of edification for future generations, much like its famous predecessor, the Passio Perpetuae. ³²⁹ Parallels between the two texts are also visible at the level of motifs. Cyprian, like Perpetua and Saturus, is granted a vision in premonition of his future martyr’s death, in which he sees “a youth of supra-human stature” (iuvenis ultra modum hominis),³³⁰ and like Perpetua, Cyprian himself has to guide the executioner’s sword to his neck – perhaps in imitation of Perpetua’s gesture.³³¹ Pontius thus remains loyal to the imitatio et aemulatio principle: in order to confront the tradition initiated by the Passio Perpetuae he deliberately breaks free

 Pontius, Vita Cypr. 1,2: Certe durum erat, ut cum maiores nostri plebeis et catecuminis martyrium consecutis tantum honoris […] debuerint, ut de passionibus eorum multa aut ut prope dixerim paene cuncta conscripserint, […]. Cypriani tanti sacerdotis et tanti martyris passio praeteriretur […]; translation by Robert Ernest Wallis.  Cf. Walter Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter, vol. 1, Von der Passio Perpetuae zu den Dialogi Gregors des Größen (Stuttgart: Hiersemann Verlag, 1986), 59. See also Theofried Baumeister, “Der heilige Bischof. Überlegungen zur Vita Cypriani,” in idem, Martyrium, Hagiographie und Heiligenverehrung: (212– 216) 213.  Cf. Jakko Aronen, “Indebtedness”: 69.  See above, p. 55.  Cf. Jakko Aronen, “Indebtedness”: passim.  Cf. Pontius, Vita Cypr. 1,1.  Cf. ibidem, 12,3‒9.  Cf. Pontius, Vita Cypr. 18,4 and Pass. Perp. 21,9‒10.

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from the standard formal patterns of passion narratives, creating as a result a new hybrid form between a passio and biography.³³² The answer to the question of why the Passio Perpetuae became a model for future passion narratives seems clear: the text carried such authority and respect that the later editors or authors came to believe that if they composed their accounts in a similar way and incorporated the same aspects, their narratives would perhaps attain a similar degree of authority. We have seen that in addition to the compositional parallels, the similarities or direct loans mostly concern the visions of the martyrs and the motifs used (paradise and its evocation; Christ appearing and encouraging the martyrs to complete their martyrdom). In most cases, these visions are eschatological in character and as such helped the early Christians to form an idea of the place where, as they believed, they will await either posthumous reward or punishment. The visions therefore offered a sort of topography of paradise or the Christian afterlife, describing in some detail the figure of God or Christ, who awaits the martyrs there. Furthermore, the visions were an unquestionable proof that a martyr’s death does, without delay, unlock the gates of paradise.³³³ Given the paucity of detail with which the books of the Bible (or other works deemed equally authoritative) evoke the afterlife – with a few exceptions such as the Book of Revelation or the Shepherd by Hermas³³⁴ – it is conceivable to hypothesize that the authors of the later passiones made use of the Passio Perpetuae for their evocations of the afterlife, for which the Passio was the most significant resource of popular imagination in the early centuries.³³⁵ In regard to the

 Cf. Elena Jurissevich, “Le prologue de la Vita Cypriani”: 147.  Cf. Tertullian, An. 55,5 / CCSL 2,863: Tota paradisi clavis tuus sanguis est. (“The only key to paradise is your own blood.”)  Cf. Arpad P. Orbán, “The Afterlife in the Visions of the Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” in Fructus centesimus. Mélanges offerts à Gerard J. M. Bartelink à l’occasion de son soixante-cinquième anniversaire, eds. Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, Anthony Hilhorst and Corneille H. Kneepkens (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989): (269‒277) 269‒270. For a commented anthology of texts that contain descriptions of the afterlife, see e. g. Maria Pia Ciccarese, ed., Visioni dell’aldilà in Occidente. Fonti, modelli, testi (Firenze: Nardini, 1987).  This is the evaluation of the Passio Perpetuae by Arpad P. Orbán, “The Afterlife”: 270. Cf. also Eliezer Gonzalez, “Anthropologies of Continuity: The Body and Soul in Tertullian, Perpetua, and Early Christianity,” JECS 21 (2013): 479 – 502; idem, The Fate of the Dead in Early Third Century North African Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014); Jan N. Bremmer, “The Passion of Perpetua and the Development of Early Christian Afterlife,” NedTT 54 (2000): 97– 111, and Walter Ameling, “Das Jenseits der Märtyrer,” in Topographie des Jenseits. Studien zur Geschichte des Todes in Kaiserzeit und Spätantike, ed. Walter Ameling (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011): 69 – 81. On the considerable influence of The Shepherd by Hermas on the visions of Perpetua

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afterlife, Tertullian already considered the Passio Perpetuae to be as authoritative a source as John’s Revelation, and, moreover, the Passio presented some original aspects that complemented and elaborated on the rather generally formulated biblical concepts drawing on the imagery of Judaeo-Christian apocalyptic writing. (Furthermore, as Orbán has noted, in her visions Perpetua evokes both poles of the afterlife, that is, the paradisiacal positive one, and the dark, negative one as represented by the place where Dinocrates was condemned to dwell.) And finally, there was another feature of the narrative that made it a suitable referential text for the composers of the later North African passiones. Although the authors or editors of the Passio Montani et Lucii and the Passio Mariani et Iacobi, three generations later, would have been unlikely to remember the historical Perpetua, Felicity or their companions, and most likely did not experience themselves what the editor of the Passio Perpetuae, quoting St John, describes as “that which we have heard and handled” (quod audivimus et contrectavimus),³³⁶ the passion of the martyrs was nevertheless to them an event understandably closer to the times and place they were living and writing in than the biblical narratives.

3.4 Spreading the cult: The Passio Perpetuae from the 4th century onward Both the North African passiones and the Vita Cypriani by Pontius came to existence at a time when the Christian church faced waves of persecution that posed an immediate threat to its existence.³³⁷ A martyr facing death for his or her faith in imitation of Jesus Christ was considered a perfect Christian, someone who has consummated his or her life in the best way imaginable. Despite the long-term negative attitude of the early church towards voluntary, spontaneous martyrdom, that is, to the practice whereby some Christians turned themselves in to as well as Saturus, cf. especially Joseph Armitage Robinson, “Introduction,” in idem, ed., The Passion of S. Perpetua, 26‒36.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 1,15 (1John 1,1.3).  This general conclusion essentially still holds true despite more recent research that has estimated the number of documented victims who actually lost their lives during these persecutions to have been comparatively low (rather in thousands than in tens or hundreds of thousands), see e. g. Timothy D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, passim; Danny Praet, “Violence against Christians and Violence by Christians in the First Three Centuries: Direct Violence, Cultural Violence and the Debate about Christian Exclusiveness,” in Violence in Ancient Christianity. Victims and Perpetrators, eds. Albert C. Geljon and Riemer Roukema (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2014): (31– 55) 43 – 45.

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the Roman authorities³³⁸ of their own accord, the available sources indicate that the number of these voluntary martyrs was far higher than is sometimes believed, and these martyrdoms were certainly not confined to those Christian groups that were later labelled as heterodox.³³⁹ Incidentally, the behaviour of Saturus in the Passio Perpetuae can be considered a case of voluntary martyrdom: in Perpetua’s words, the catechist of the group “turned himself in to save us” [i. e. his companions].³⁴⁰ The state-organized persecution, however, only lasted for limited periods of time (the first instance did not occur until the persecution under Decius between 250 and 251), and as early as the end of the 3rd century, the Christian church could savour its complete triumph:³⁴¹ ecclesia martyrum had become ecclesia triumphans. There were hardly any mentions of the Passio Perpetuae in the contemporary literature between the end of the 3rd and the end of the 4th centuries but we know for certain that the cult of Perpetua and Felicity was successfully spreading during this time. The cradle of their worship was naturally Carthage where Perpetua and her comrades suffered their martyr deaths. At the beginning of the 20th century various inscriptions were discovered and published for the first time related to our saints and bearing witness to their growing cult: the most famous epigraphic find was made in the great Basilica maiorum, in the place called Mçidfa, north of Carthage. In 1906 – 1907, P. Delattre discovered 34 fragments of a marble slab there that, after putting together, allowed him to decipher the following inscription: † Hic] sunt marty[res] † Saturus, Satu[r]n[inus]

 Cf. already Mart. Polyc. 4, which explicitly warns against this behaviour.  Cf. on this Geoffrey E. M. de Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom & Orthodoxy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), particularly the chapter entitled “Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church” (153‒200), including a detailed analysis of the sources. See also Anthony R. Birley, “Voluntary Martyrs in the Early Church: Heroes or Heretics?,” CNS 7 (2006): 99‒127. Cf., however, also Candida R. Moss, “The Discourse of Voluntary Martyrdom: Ancient and Modern,” CH 81 (2012): 531– 551, who warns against modern distinguishing between “true” and “voluntary” martyrs too sharply, as this, according to her, does not correspond to the plurality of different ideologies of martyrdom in antiquity.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 4,5: […] Saturus […], qui postea se propter nos ultro tradiderat […].  Timothy D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 97– 105, documents that the legalization of Christianity within the Roman empire did not occur in the first decade of the 4th century following the Edict of Milan, but rather as early as 260, after the emperor Valerian was captured and held by the Persians. Cf. also Jiří Šubrt, “Ecclesia martyrum: Příběhy mučedníků na pozadí donatistického schizmatu” [Ecclesia martyrum: Stories of Martyrs against the Backdrop of Donatist Schism], in Příběhy II: (15 – 63) 16.

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† Rebocatus, S[e]c[undulus], † Felicit(as), Per[pe]t(ua) pas(si) [non)as Mart(ias)] […M]aiulu[s… ³⁴²

While Delattre was convinced that he had found a real burial place of the martyrs known from the Passio Perpetuae, modern research takes more careful position. Since there were discovered several other inscriptions mentioning Saturus and Saturninus (and probably also Perpetua and Felicity) in Carthage,³⁴³ it is rather unlikely that this inscription once marked the very place were Perpetua, Felicity and their fellow martyrs were buried. The indication of the date of martyrs’ death (7th of March) and inclusion of the martyr Mavilus / Maiulus, mentioned by Tertullian as condemned to the wild beasts by proconsul Caecilius Capella at the end of the 2nd century,³⁴⁴ both indicate that the function of the plaque (dating probably from the end of the Vandal period, ca. 530)³⁴⁵ was rather to commemorate local martyrs died on March 7. This, however, does not mean that the Basilica maiorum could not have contained at least some of our martyrs’ relics (this could also have been the case with some relics of Maiulus that could have been transferred to Carthage from Hadrumetum).³⁴⁶ This possibility is fur-

 CIL VIII,4, 25038; cf. Yvette Duval, Loca sanctorum, vol. 1, 13 – 16; William Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia, 105 – 112.  One is the mosaic found in the so-called Saint Stephen monastery in the Carthaginian district of Dermech consisting of seven “medallions” with the names of several martyrs including Saturus and Saturninus (CIL VIII,4, 25037). The text of the two first medallions has not survived, except for the final letters -tas on the second one; scholars restore the missing texts on the first two medallions as sancta Perpetua and sancta Felicitas; cf. Yvette Duval, Loca sanctorum, vol. 1, 7– 10; William Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia, 112– 114 (who dates the mosaic to the late sixth century); the name of Saturus features once again on a baptistery’s mural in the district of Sayda and it is likely that the mural contained also the names of Perpetua and Felicity, cf. Yvette Duval, Loca sanctorum, vol. 1, 12– 13; William Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia, 115.  Cf. Tertullian, Scap. 3,5 / CCSL 2,1129 – 1130. Maiulus of Hadrumetum appears in several martyrologia, and the Martyrologium Hieronymianum lists three martyrs of this name, one commemorated on the 7th of March (cf. Hippolyte Delehaye, “Commentarius perpetuus in martyrologium hieronymianum ad recensionem Henrici Quentin,” AASS Nov. II,2, 133, 247– 248).  Cf. William Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia, 116.  In 1912, there was discovered a painted altar in the necropolis of ancient Thaenae, today Henchir-Thina (Tunisia, ca. 350 km south-east of Carthage). This altar, originated from the mid-fourth century and kept today in the museum of Sfax, Tunisia, is decorated by four images: apart from the depictions of a doryphoros with two spears and a figure sailing a ship, there are two other representations of male figures being attacked by wild animals, one by a bull and one by a bear. While the overall interpretation of the depictions is rather difficult, the scholars tend to think that all four scenes refer to Christian martyrdom, and some of them link them explicitly

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ther reinforced by the information of Victor of Vita who at the end of the fifth century claimed that Perpetua and Felicity were buried there.³⁴⁷ What is also worth mentioning is the reversed order of the martyrs’ names on the slab, with names of male martyrs preceding the women and Saturus appearing first, no doubt suggesting his central position amongst them – we shall see the same shift in the later Acta Perpetuae. ³⁴⁸ In his well-documented essay on spreading of the cult of the African saints in the Mediterranean in late antiquity and early Middle Ages, J. P. Conant considers two routes most important and “robust”,³⁴⁹ the first leading from Carthage to Rome and Italy and the second to Spain. It comes as no surprise, then, that we find clearly visible traces of the cult of Perpetua and Felicity on both of these places in the 4th century. The evidence from Rome is even multiple: first, both martyrs were included in the Depositio martyrum, a sort of liturgical calendar that is contained in the Roman Chronography of 354 and records the dates of feast days of martyrs venerated within the Roman church. There are two points that need to be stressed: the Depositio martyrum is a purely local document; and Perpetua and Felicity are, together with Cyprian (whose cult was generally more wide-spread in late antiquity), the only “foreign” saints who were included.³⁵⁰ To this literary evidence, we can add some Roman iconographical material as well. A painted mural of Jesus Christ from the latter half of the 4th century has been partially preserved in the Domitilla catacombs on the Via Appia. To Christ’s left in the mural, there is a ladder at the foot of which a coiled snake and a figure can be discerned. The figure, who is about to climb up the ladder, simultaneously steps on the snake’s head. Some scholars believe that the scene

to the events described in the Passio Perpetuae. While this interpretation seems very tempting (and one surely can find correspondencies between the images and the details of the combat against the wild beasts narrated in the Passio Perpetuae), it remains only a speculation that cannot be substantiated conclusively. On the altar and its different interpretations (including the reproduction of the depictions) cf. Remo Cacitti, Giuseppina Legrottaglie, Gabriele Pelizzari and Maria Pia Rossignani, L’Ara dipinta di Thaenae. Indagini sul culto martiriale nell’Africa paleocristiana (Roma: Viella, 2011), and especially Remo Cacitti, “Sepulcrorum et picturarum adoratores. Un’iconografia della Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis nel culto martiriale donatista,” in L’Ara dipinta di Thaenae: 71– 136, who connects the scenes on the altar explicitly with Passio Perpetuae and its veneration by the Donatists.  Victor of Vita, Hist. pers. I,3,9 / CSEL 7,5: […] basilicam maiorem, ubi corpora sanctarum martyrum Perpetuae atque Felicitatis sepulta sunt, Celerinae vel Scillitanorum […].  Cf. below, p. 107.  Cf. Jonathan P. Conant, “Europe and the African Cult of Saints, circa 350 – 900: An Essay in Mediterranean Communications,” Spec 85 (2010): (1– 46) 5 and 37.  Cf. ibidem: 6.

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depicts Perpetua’s first vision, which would testify to the knowledge of the text of the Passio Perpetuae. Though J. Wilpert points to the topicality of the concept of the ladder up which the martyr or saint climbs up to heaven, even he associates the mural specifically with Perpetua’s vision.³⁵¹ By the middle of the 4th century at the latest, the glory of both women martyrs (the Depositio, in contrast, fails to mention the male fellow martyrs) had spread beyond the territory of North Africa and reached Rome.³⁵² From approximately the same time, we have evidence of the dissemination of the cult in Hispania which also indicates a direct knowledge of the text of the Passio: a sarcophagus discovered near modern-day Burgos in Spain (Quintana de Bureba, forty kilometers northeast of Burgos) depicts a scene from Perpetua’s first vision: her ascent of the ladder. The depiction of Perpetua (and Saturus, who is standing to the right of the ladder), the snake on whose head Perpetua puts her foot, and of the sharp weapons hanging from the ladder, is, in contrast to the poorly preserved mural with a similar motif in the Roman catacombs, clearly discernible. According to H. Schlunk, the Quintana de Bureba sarcophagus had a North African, perhaps Carthaginian, predecessor on which it was supposedly modelled, though no similar sarcophagus has yet been discovered in North Africa.³⁵³ Given the fact that Perpetua and Felicity appear consistently in later Spanish medieval martyrologies and their feast was regularly celebrated during the Middle Ages in Spain, J. P. Conant is probably right when he suggests that Perpetua’s cult must have been established quite early here.³⁵⁴ Although African saints generally “had only very limited appeal in Gaul and the East”,³⁵⁵ Perpetua and Felicity are mentioned in the 5th century by Prosper  Cf. Joseph Wilpert, Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1903), 485 – 486 (with a representation of the reconstructed mural); idem, Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms. Tafelband (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1903), Tafel 153. See also Cecilia Ames, “Género y martirio. Sobre la Passio Perpetuae”, Auster (1997): (47– 64) 58 – 59.  Cf. Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, “Gli ‘Acta brevia sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’”: 31; cf. also Theofried Baumeister, “Nordafrikanische Märtyrer in der frühen römischen Heiligenverehrung”: 293 – 304.  Cf. Helmut Schlunk, “Zu den frühchristlichen Sarkophagen aus der Bureba,” Madrider Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 6 (1965): 139‒166; Helmut Schlunk and Theodor Hauschild, Die Denkmäler der frühchristlichen und westgotischen Zeit (Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern, 1978), 141‒143 with a representation on plate 35. Cf. also Myla Perraymond, “Alcune visioni nell’arte cristiana antica: Abramo, Giacobbe, Ezechiele, Pastore d’Erma, Felicita e Perpetua,” Aug 29 (1989): (549 – 563) 560 – 563; Jonathan P. Conant, “Europe and the African Cult of Saints”: 14.  Jonathan P. Conant, “Europe and the African Cult of Saints”: 14 and 19.  Ibidem: 21.

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Tiro of Aquitaine,³⁵⁶ and there are interesting traces of the existence of the Perpetua cult in the Greek East from as early as mid-fourth century. The anonymous author of the homily delivered in honour of the martyr Polyeuctus (BHG 1566)³⁵⁷ in one of the Eastern churches, probably around 363, likens the celebrated martyr directly to Thecla and Perpetua, providing us with a literary piece of evidence that proves that the knowledge of Perpetua’s story continued to spread farther afield during that time. Polyeuctus, a former pagan soldier in the Armenian Melitene, also had a vision in which he saw Christ,³⁵⁸ which made the author of the homily apostrophize the martyr enthusiastically as the one who “stepped on the head of the dragon as did the blessed Thecla, the first amongst women martyrs, and Perpetua, who climbed up the bronze and celestial ladder, so tall that it reached all the way to heaven, and climbed up till she reached the Lord”.³⁵⁹ Apparently, the author is alluding to Perpetua’s first vision, which, it seems, must have been known in a number of parts of the Roman empire by the end of the 4th century. The knowledge of Perpetua’s story in the Greek East, evidenced by Passio Polyeucti, may have come from various sources, though. Perpetua (mentioned together with Saturninus) has her entry in the early fifth-century Martyrologium Syriacum,³⁶⁰ which is known to be a translation of a Greek compilation written around 360 in Nicomedia and based on the information found mainly in the writ-

 Prosper Tiro, Epit. chron. / MGH Auct. ant. IX, 434: Qua tempestate Perpetua et Felicitas pro Christo passae sunt non. Mart. apud Carthaginem Africae in castris bestiis deputatae. (“During the same persecution on the Nones of March in the African Carthage Perpetua and Felicity died for Christ, being thrown to the beasts in the garrison games.”)  For an overview of the research on the figure of Polyeuctus, see Joseph-Marie Sauget, s. v. “Polieuto, santo, martire di Melitene,” in Bibliotheca sanctorum, vol. 10 (Roma: Istituto Giovanni XXIII nella Pontifica Universita Lateranense, 1968): 996 – 999. On the very problematic tradition and relationship between the various versions of Polyectus’ acta, see Benjamin Aubé, Polyeucte dans l’histoire (Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot, 1882), who also reprints their Latin and Greek versions. See also van Beek, 164*.  Benjamin Aubé, Polyeucte dans l’histoire, 78 and 86 – 87.  Cf. ibidem, 77: Ἐπάτησε γὰρ καὶ αὐτὸς τοῦ δράκοντος τὴν κεφαλὴν, καθάπερ καὶ ἡ μακαρία Θέκλα ἢ πρωτομάρτυς καὶ Περπετουία, ἣ τὴν χαλκὴν ἐκείνην καὶ οὐρανίον ἤκει κλίμακα, τὴν ἕως τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἀναβαίνουσαν, μακρὰν δὲ ταύτην καὶ ἕως τοῦ οὐρανοῦ τείνουσαν.  Cf. AASS Nov. II,1, LIV (with a Greek version reading as follows: Ἐν τῇ ᾿Aφρικῇ ἐκ τῶν ἀρχαίων Περπέτουα καὶ Σατουρνῖλος καὶ ἕτεροι μάρτυρες δέκα – “In Africa, of the ancients, Perpetua, Saturninus and ten other martyrs”.) Cf. also Breviarium syriacum seu martyrologium syriacum saec. IV, ed. Bonaventura Mariani (Roma – Barcelona – Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1956), 31– 32. Cf. also van Beek, 166*.

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ings of Eusebius of Caesarea.³⁶¹ Eusebius makes no mention of Perpetua and Felicity but his knowledge of African saints was rather poor. However, Perpetua’s cult must have been established in the East by this time, otherwise she would not appear in the local liturgical calendar. Moreover, the contemporaneity of the Greek model of the Martyrologium Syriacum and the text of Passio Polyeucti originating in the Greek East as well is striking. As J. P. Conant suggests, one of the hindrances preventing the African saints to take root in the Greek area on a larger scale could have been the lack of a relevant hagiographical material in Greek concerning the saint.³⁶² Precisely this obstacle could not have entered the play in the case of Perpetua and her comrades because of the existence of the Greek version of their passio which we discussed earlier.³⁶³ The direct allusion to Perpetua’s vision in Passio Polyeucti thus seems to indicate that by the mid-fourth century this Greek translation of the Passio Perpetuae circulated in the East and was used both by the hagiographer of Polyeuctus and by the compilers of Greek martyrologia. Following J. P. Conant’s suggestions we may hypothesize even further: given the fact that Perpetua and Felicity appear in the Roman Depositio martyrum some 150 years after their martyr death (ca. 203), and their occurrence in Greek martyrologia is datable to approximately the same time (ca. 360), there is perhaps no need to suppose a long interval between the composition of the Latin original of the Passio Perpetuae and its Greek translation.³⁶⁴ The circulation of the Greek translation of the Passio Perpetuae in the fourth century seems to be confirmed also by other sources. The opening section of the Greek version of the prologue of Passio Perpetuae appears verbatim in one of the recensions of the passio of Procopius of Scythopolis (BHG 1576), written in the 9th-century manuscript Paris. graec. 1470 which also includes the Greek version of Acta Scillitanorum. ³⁶⁵ Finally, Martyrologium Hieronymianum, being slightly later than the Greek source of the Martyrologium Syriacum on which it partly drew while adding new material as well, has entry on Perpetua and other mar-

 Cf. Bonaventura Mariani, “Introductio,” in Breviarium syriacum seu martyrologium syriacum saec. IV, ed. Bonaventura Mariani (Roma – Barcelona – Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1956): (3 to 26) 12, 16 – 17 and 21– 22.  Cf. Jonathan P. Conant, “Europe and the African Cult of Saints”: 40.  Cf. above, p. 24 ff.  Cf. Jonathan P. Conant, “Europe and the African Cult of Saints”: 30.  Cf. Hippolyte Delehaye, Les légendes grecques des saints militaires (Paris: Librairie Alphonse Picard, 1909), 79 (with the acta of Procopius on 214– 227, here 214); on this text, see also idem, Les legendes hagiographiques (Bruxelles: Bureaux de la Société des Bollandistes, 19062), 142– 167.

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tyrs.³⁶⁶ The entry includes the phrase that Perpetua and Felicity died on the Nones of March in Mauritania civitate Turbitanorum ³⁶⁷ (emended by Delehaye to Tu〈bu〉rbitanorum),³⁶⁸ and the same localization (Thuburbo minus, although considered a home place of the martyrs where they were arrested) is found in the Greek translation of the Passio Perpetuae (and missing from the Latin original).³⁶⁹ The Greek translation, for sure, was a source for two entries on Perpetua and Felicity in the much later (9th/10th cent.) Synaxarium ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae ³⁷⁰ where Perpetua appears together with Felix of Thibiuca and Speratus as the only African saints.³⁷¹ The evidence discussed in this chapter does not allow us to glimpse any reinterpretation of the story of Perpetua, Felicity and their fellow martyrs. On the contrary, these sources confirm that the cult of Perpetua and Felicity spread successfully during this time. Furthermore, it seems that in the Greek speaking East at least there was not felt any need at large to smooth over the problematic aspects of Passio Perpetuae. Probably the “canonic” status of their passio which the text acquired during the third century when martyrs were considered perfect Christians had still its bearing. The situation in the Latin West was, however, completely different, and the fifth century, connected with the name of Augustine, can be seen as a climax of the efforts to reinterpret the Passio Perpetuae thoroughly. Though the era of martyrs was definitively over, the accounts of their heroic acts were still very much part of the lived consciousness of the believers, and were still read before church congregations. Rank and file believers and church dignitaries alike thus contin-

 Cf. e. g. René Aigrain, L’hagiographie. Ses sources – Ses méthodes – Son histoire (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 2000), 32– 50; Bonaventura Mariani, “Introductio”: 20 – 22.  Cf. AASS Nov. II,1, 29; cf. also van Beek, 162*.  Cf. AASS Nov. II,2, 132.  Pass. Perp. 2,1 (Greek version): Ἐν πόλει Θου〈βου〉ρβιτανῶν τῇ μικροτέρᾳ συνελήφθησαν…  Cf. van Beek, 165*–166*. The phrase of the first entry (February 2) that Perpetua “came from the city of Thu〈bu〉rbo in Africa and was arrested…” (Αὕτη ἦν ἐκ πόλεως Θουβριτανῶν τῆς ᾿Aφρικῆς·συνελήφθη…) resembles the wording of the Greek translation closely, moreover, Perpetua is named first and “with her Saturus, Revocatus [Ῥευκάτου], Saturninus [Σατορνίλου], Secundus [Σεκούνδου] and Felicitas”, cf. Synax. eccl. Const. / AASS Prop. ad Nov., 440; the same martyrs are commemorated also on March 14, this time, however, in a different order (Saturus, Saturninus, Revocatus, Perpetua and Felicity) and with a postscript that they died in Rome (ἀθλησάντων ἐν Ῥώμῃ), cf. Synax. eccl. Const. / AASS Prop. ad Nov., 536; Jonathan P. Conant, “Europe and the African Cult of Saints”: 30, therefore suggests that “this particular feast entered the Byzantine liturgical calendar by way of Eternal City, despite the fact that the saints’ martyrdom was consistently observed a week earlier in the West”. On Synaxarium ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae, cf. René Aigrain, L’hagiographie, 72– 83.  Cf. Jonathan P. Conant, “Europe and the African Cult of Saints”: 28 – 29.

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ued to be confronted with patterns of action and behaviour that may have been understandable several decades earlier, but were now clashing with the new religious and social realities, as the shift in the doctrinal paradigm coincided with the societal changes at large. A martyr’s death with all the consequences that the Passio Perpetuae so convincingly evokes was by then becoming an uncomfortable issue for the church. Martyrdom was no longer looked upon as the ideal of a Christian life, and the conceptual horizon of martyr narratives that posited these texts as exemplars to be imitated by believers now became not only of little relevance but outright counter-productive, as this ideal, if applied to its logical consequences, might lead to social disintegration. Church dignitaries were well aware of these implications and tried to eliminate this potential threat. It was not possible, however, to eradicate the widespread authority of texts of the stature of the Passio Perpetuae; nor was it possible to ignore martyr narratives as such. What was possible, though, was to neutralize the potential dangers consisting in the subversion of gender, social and church hierarchies which these texts, and the Passio Perpetuae in particular, posed. These attempts took the form of reinterpretation, rereading of these texts, in other words, the presentation of an exegesis that would explain these uncomfortable aspects to the believers in a way that conformed to the new values and theological standards. This is the task that Augustine, the greatest authority of the Western church, took upon himself in the early decades of the 5th century. His extant writings on the subject account for the most extensive literary reflection of the Passio Perpetuae in the early Christian literature.

3.5 Nec illa sic scripsit: The Passio Perpetuae according to Augustine and the Augustinian tradition 3.5.1 Augustine and the Passio Perpetuae Augustine treats of the Passio Perpetuae both in his theological tract De natura et origine animae,³⁷² and in his oeuvre of sermons. We can also find two rather vague references that do not allude to any specific passages of the Passio but nevertheless assume a good prior knowledge of the original text on the part of the listeners. One is from Enarrationes in Psalmos, where Augustine mentions  For a detailed overview of this text by Augustine and the circumstances under which it came to be written, see Albert C. de Veer, “Aux origines du De natura et origine animae de saint Augustin,” REAug (19) 1973: 121– 157. See also Lenka Karfíková, Grace and the Will according to Augustine (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2012), 220 – 224.

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Perpetua as an example of Christians whose parents tried to dissuade from martyrdom,³⁷³ and the other is found in his homily Sermo de honorandis vel contemnendis parentibus (= Sermo 159 A) from the end of the 4th century, discovered and published by F. Dolbeau, in which Perpetua and Felicity are referred to in a similar context.³⁷⁴ In the corpus of Augustine’s extant sermons, there are three homilies entitled directly In natali martyrum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Sermones 280 – 282),³⁷⁵ and we know of further two on the same topic (one of which was discovered as recently as 1995) which are unanimously considered to be pseudo-Augustinian (Sermo 394 and 394A) by modern scholarship.³⁷⁶ In 2007, several more homilies

 Cf. Augustine, Enarrat. Ps. 47,13 / CCSL 38,548: Quam multos enim tenebant filii ne paterentur! Quam multorum genibus provolvebantur uxores, ne viduae relinquerentur! Quam multos parentes filii prohibebant mori, sicut novimus et legimus in passione beatae Perpetuae! (“For how many were held by their children, that they might not suffer? To how many did their wives fall upon their knees, that they might not be left widows? How many have their parents forbidden to die; as we know and read in the Passion of the Blessed Perpetua!”; translation by James E. Tweed)  Cf. Sermo de honorandis vel contemnendis parentibus (= Serm. 159 A), 11, ed. François Dolbeau, “Sermons inédits de saint Augustin prêchés en 397 (3ème série),” RBén 102 (1992): (267 to 297) 295 (reprinted also in idem, Augustin d’Hippone: Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique [Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 20092], 84– 99, edition on 90 – 99). Already in this homily that Augustine delivered perhaps in mid-July 397, we get the verbal puns on the names of the two martyrs which Augustine also uses in his other sermons in their glory (Perpetua unde facta est perpetua […] Unde tantae felicitatis capax Felicitas […] adtendatur eb eis Perpetua, adtendatur Felicitas, et teneatur perpetua felicitas; “Perpetua therefore became perpetual […] That is why Felicity was so felicitous […] they think about Perpetua, think about Felicity, and receive perpetual felicity”). See also below.  Augustine, Serm. 280‒282 / PL 38,1280 – 1286; cf. Petr Kitzler, “Augustinova kázání In natali martyrum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Sermones 280‒282)” [Augustine’s Homilies In natali martyrum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Sermones 280 – 282)], in Querite primum regnum Dei. Sborník příspěvků k poctě J. Nechutové, eds. Hana Krmíčková, Anna Pumprová, Dana Růžičková and Libor Švanda (Brno: Matice moravská, 2006): 89‒98.  PL 39,1715 – 1716 (Serm. 394) and François Dolbeau, “Un sermon inédit d’origine africaine pour la fête des Saintes Perpétue et Félicité,” AnBoll 113 (1995): 89 – 106 (editio princeps of Serm. 394 A including the rejection of Augustine’s authorship; also reprinted in idem, Augustin et la prédication en Afrique. Recherches sur divers sermons authentiques, apocryphes ou anonymes [Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2005], 337– 354); cf. also Petr Kitzler, “Duae gemmae in ecclesia refulserunt. Pseudo-Augustinovy homilie na svátek svaté Perpetuy a Felicity” [Duae gemmae in ecclesia refluserunt. Pseudo-Augustine’s Homilies on Perpetua and Felicity], in Pulchritudo et sapientia. Ad honorem Pavel Spunar, eds. Zuzana Silagiová, Hana Šedinová and Petr Kitzler (Praha: Kabinet pro klasická studia FLÚ, 2008): 126‒140. On declaring Serm. 394 to be pseudo-Augustinian see Elena Zocca, “Sulla non-autenticità del Serm. 394 attribuito ad Agostino,” SMSR 49 (1983): 361– 367.

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by Augustine were discovered in Erfurt, including another sermon dedicated to Perpetua and Felicity (Sermo 282auct.). This one was declared genuine by its discoverers and editors, as they found the sermon to be an elaboration of the already known homily 282, of which only fragments have survived.³⁷⁷ These three sermons (Sermones 280 – 282auct.) hence probably concur with the entry in Possidius’ Indiculum, who explicitly lists De natale [sanctarum] Perpetuae et Felicitatis tractatus tres among Augustine’s works.³⁷⁸

3.5.2 Augustine and Perpetua’s vision of Dinocrates Augustine’s four-volume treatise De natura et origine animae ³⁷⁹ was written in the 420 s as a polemical response to the work of the otherwise little known Vincentius Victor, which Augustine encountered around 419.³⁸⁰ In this work, Victor defended a number of beliefs considered by Augustine to be fallacious. Augustine was most troubled by Victor’s concept of the corporeality (corporalitas) of the soul, which Victor borrowed from Tertullian.³⁸¹ Another contentious concept held by Vincentius Victor and opposed by Augustine as being in breach of the doctrine of the Catholic church³⁸² was the belief that under specific circumstances salvation could also be attained without the sacrament of baptism.³⁸³ According to Vincentius, children who die unbaptized can attain absolution of original sin through the prayers of the saints and enter paradise (paradisum), though not the heavenly kingdom proper (regnum caelorum), where they will await the Last Judgement.³⁸⁴  See Isabella Schiller, Dorothea Weber and Clemens Weidmann, “Sechs neue Augustinuspredigten. Teil 1 mit Edition dreier Sermones,” WS 121 (2008): (227‒284) 251‒264 (including editio princeps of Serm. 282auct.).  Possidius, Operum sancti Augustini elenchus, 10,6.  This title, under which it is also cited in modern research, was one that modern editors within the Viennese CSEL gave the tract. Augustine himself refers to it as De anima et eius origine, cf. Augustine, Retract. II,56 / CCSL 57,135.  Cf. ibidem.  Cf. especially Tertullian, An. 5 – 9 / CCSL 2,786 – 794. On the corporeality of the soul see the detailed overview by Petr Kitzler, “Nihil enim anima si non corpus”.  Cf. Augustine, Nat. orig. III,9,12 / CSEL 60,369.  Cf. especially Albert C. de Veer, “Aux origines du De natura et origine animae”: 151– 156; Franz Joseph Dölger, “Antike Parallelen”: 20 – 28; Jeffrey A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead, 126‒140, especially 133‒137; Lenka Karfíková, Grace and the Will, 221– 222.  Cf. Augustine, Nat. orig. II,10,14 / CSEL 60,348. It cannot be ruled out that in this respect Vincentius Victor also drew at least partially on the theory of the fate of the soul held by Tertullian, see above, p. 64 f.

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The proof that Vincentius invokes in support of this belief, besides the criminal crucified alongside Jesus and the intercessory prayers of Judas Maccabaeus on behalf of his soldiers, was none other than Perpetua’s vision of her brother Dinocrates.³⁸⁵ In this vision, Perpetua was able to lift the punishment from her dead pagan brother in the nether world through the efficacy of her prayers. Modern scholarship has proved convincingly that the “dark place” where Dinocrates dwells in Perpetua’s vision, suffering from thirst and heat, is not to be interpreted as the founding precedent of the nascent Christian doctrine of purgatory.³⁸⁶ Rather, the context in which this vision should be read is informed by the notions people in antiquity formed of the posthumous fate of the recently departed.³⁸⁷ However, both these 5th-century Christians, Augustine and Vincentius, completely ignored this pagan context and appropriated Perpetua’s vision to suit their respective versions of orthodoxy. Using a text of the stature of the Passio Perpetuae to back up his claims was a clever ploy used by Vincentius, which required Augustine to summon considerable rhetorical and argumentative skills in his turn to succeed in interpreting Perpetua’s vision of Dinocrates in such a way as to refute Vincentius’ arguments. The first essential point on which Augustine was not willing to compromise was that the Passio Perpetuae did not carry the same authority as Scripture (nec scriptura ipsa cannonica est), so even if it suggested that an unbaptized person could attain salvation, this could not be accepted as irrefutable proof. One of the implications of this argument of Augustine’s is that there must have been at least some Christians in those times who treated the Passio Perpetuae with the same veneration as they did the canonical Scripture.³⁸⁸  Cf. Augustine, Nat. orig. II,10,14 / CSEL 60,349: […] et de fratre sanctae Perpetuae Dinocrate argumentatur, quod etiam non baptizatis dari possit indulgentia peccatorum et sedes aliqua beatorum (“[…] from the case of Dinocrates, the brother of St. Perpetua, he argues that even to the unbaptized may be given the remission of sins and an abode with the blessed”; translation by Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis).  This is how the vision of Dinocrates was disinterpreted by Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1990), 48 – 51, whose authority had an impact on a number of other researchers, see e. g. Maria Pia Ciccarese, “Le più antiche rappresentazioni del purgatorio, dalla Passio Perpetuae all fine del IX sec.,” Romanobarbarica 7 (1982– 1983): (33 – 76) 35 – 38. For a detailed analysis see also Andreas Merkt, Das Fegefeuer.  Already interpreted in this way by Anton de Waal, “Der leidende Dinocrates”: 339‒347; Franz Joseph Dölger, “Antike Parallelen”; Peter Dronke, Women Writers, 11‒12.  Cf. Augustine, Nat. orig. I,10,12 / CSEL 60,312: […] nec scriptura ipsa canonica est […] (“Concerning Dinocrates, however, […] there is no record in the canonical Scripture […]”; translation by Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis); III,9,12 / CSEL 60,370: […] ipsa lectio non sit in eo canone scripturarum, unde in huiusmodi quaestionibus testimonia proferenda sunt (“[…] the account itself that we have of him does not occur in that canon of Holy Scripture whence in all

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The second tactic Augustine resorts to in order to undermine the authority of the Passio Perpetuae lies in the expedient way in which he tries to call into question the very authenticity of Perpetua’s vision and consequently its content. Whoever it was who wrote the Passio in Augustine’s view, the hard fact remains that neither Perpetua nor any other author made any claims in it (nec illa sic scripsit vel quicumque illud scripsit)³⁸⁹ to the effect that Perpetua’s brother Dinocrates died unbaptized. Confronted with a tradition of martyrdom now nearly three centuries old, Augustine cannot deny the special spiritual power of martyrs or those awaiting martyrdom, nor can he deny that Perpetua, as one whose imminent death made her feel in close touch with God, was able to successfully obtain the forgiveness of Dinocrates’ sins through her intercession – much like the generations of Christians before Augustine’s time who turned to incarcerated martyrs to intercede on their behalf to request the forgiveness of their sins. While even Augustine does not doubt the intercessory powers accorded to martyrs, he now sets out to ward off a far more dangerous threat, that is, that Perpetua’s prayers could have obtained the forgiveness of sins for a non-Christian too. In this respect, Augustine has a bit more room to argue, as the Passio mentions the age of Dinocrates: seven, which is according to Augustine the age by which children already can differentiate between truth and falsehood, and he attempts to prove by any and all means that Dinocrates must have been baptized prior to his death. Though the Passio Perpetuae does not explicitly state whether or not Dinocrates was a Christian, Perpetua’s comment that her father “was going to be the only one in my whole family who would not rejoice at my martyr-

questions of this kind our proofs ought always to be drawn”; translation by Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis). On the efforts to make the Passio Perpetuae part of canonical Scripture, see above, p. 8.  Augustine, Nat. orig. I,10,12 / CSEL 60,312: De fratre autem sanctae Perpetuae Dinocrate, nec scriptura ipsa canonica est, nec illa sic scripsit, vel quicumque illud scripsit, ut illum puerum qui septennis mortuus fuit, sine baptismo diceret fuisse defunctum. To try to interpret this statement by Augustine as objective proof from the times of antiquity meant to call into question the authenticity of the Passio Perpetuae, as has been attempted by some scholars (see e. g. Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, 45), is itself questionable, as this completely ignores the polemical context in which Augustine wrote those words. See also Vincent Hunink, “Did Perpetua Write Her Prison Account?” Cf. in a similar vein also Jan den Boeft and Jan N. Bremmer, “Notiunculae martyrologicae VI”: 56 – 57. Moreover, these scholars, referring to the fact that this formulation (vel quicumque illud scripsit) also appears in other works by Augustine, conclude that Augustine “does not express any personal doubt about Perpetua’s authorship, he merely mentions the possibility that others may do so, adding that this is entirely irrelevant for his interpretation” (57).

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dom”,³⁹⁰ may allow the – rather implausible – interpretation that everybody in Perpetua’s family, with the exception of the father, was a Christian.³⁹¹ Augustine’s reading of Perpetua’s vision of Dinocrates is, however, manipulative on two counts. Firstly, Augustine relativizes the truthfulness of the claim that Perpetua could indeed have changed the posthumous fate of her late brother (this he does by means of e. g. the verb form creditur, which connotes the sense of “some people believe that”). He also relativizes the theological gravity of her vision: even if the vision is true, it still remains spurious, as the Passio Perpetuae is not part of the canonical Scriptures. Secondly, Augustine fabricates fictitious circumstances under which, as he sees it, the vision may have been valid: Dinocrates must have died a Christian, and following his death must have been damned because his “impious father estranged him from Christ to idolatry”.³⁹²

 Pass. Perp. 5,6: […] casum patris mei, quod solus de passione mea gavisurus non esset de toto genere meo […].  Most researchers are wary of such a positive interpretation. Though we cannot rule out that Perpetua’s family may have been sympathetic to Christianity, the text itself provides no hints that they were in fact Christians. The opposite view seems to be favoured by Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 44– 45. On the contrary, the fact that only one of Perpetua’s brothers was referred to as a catechumen by the editor (Pass. Perp. 2,2) seems to indicate that the rest of the family did not confess the Christian faith. Moreover, Perpetua herself was not baptized until shortly before her martyrdom, while under house arrest before being sent to prison, so it seems very unlikely that her little brother, who had died years earlier, could have been baptized; see Peter Dronke, Women Writers, 10. To conclude, Dinocrates’ dying unbaptized can be considered the scholarly consensus on the matter.  Cf. Augustine, Nat. orig. I,10,12 / CSEL 60,312: De fratre autem sanctae Perpetuae Dinocrate nec scriptura ipsa canonica est nec illa sic scripsit vel quicumque illud scripsit, ut illum puerum, qui septennis mortuus fuit, sine baptismo diceret fuisse defunctum, pro quo illa imminente martyrio creditur exaudita, ut a poenis transferretur ad requiem. Nam illius aetati pueri et mentiri et verum loqui et confiteri et negare iam possunt. […] Quis igitur scit, utrum puer ille post baptismum persecutionis tempore a patre impio per idololatriam fuerit allienatus a Christo, propter quod in damnationem mortuus ierit nec inde nisi pro Christo moriturae sororis precibus donatus exierit? (“Concerning Dinocrates, however, the brother of St. Perpetua, there is no record in the canonical Scripture; nor does the saint herself, or whoever it was that wrote the account, say that the boy, who had died at the age of seven years, died without baptism; in his behalf she is believed to have had, when her martyrdom was imminent, her prayers effectually heard that he should be removed from the penalties of the lost to rest. Now, boys at that time of life are able both to lie, and, saying the truth, both to confess and deny. […] Who can tell, then, whether that boy, after baptism, in a time of persecution was estranged from Christ to idolatry by an impious father, and on that account incurred mortal condemnation, from which he was only delivered for Christ’s sake, given to the prayers of his sister when she was at the point of death?”; translation by Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis). See also Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, “Gli ‘Acta brevia sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’”: 20‒23.

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3.5.3 Perpetua felicitas: Augustine’s Sermones In his tract on the soul, Augustine concerned himself with those aspects of the Passio Perpetuae that he could subject to a theological investigation that was only understandable to a rather limited circle of Christian intellectuals. In the case of his sermons, however, which were aimed at ordinary believers of all descriptions,³⁹³ Augustine felt that what needed to be explained sufficiently and made consistent with the accepted social and gender norms was above all the fact that feminea fragilitas was able to endure and triumph over the cruel torture, while not hesitating to break all social ties deemed inviolable by contemporary society (such as the mother’s love for her child, obedience towards her parents, and subordination to men). Unlike a number of his homilies from De sanctis (dedicated mostly to male martyrs), in which the martyr or saint whose feast day was celebrated on the given day was not actually the (chief) subject of Augustine’s sermon, in case of the feast day of Perpetua and Felicity, Augustine did deliberately focus on quite specific aspects of the Passio Perpetuae. In his three authentic sermons (280 – 282auct.),³⁹⁴ his primary concern seems to be to explain why it was that the church festival as well as the martyr narrative itself were named after the two women when several male fellow martyrs died equally cruel deaths alongside the women.³⁹⁵ The answer is obvious to him. It was not because the women “ranked higher than the men in the quality of their conduct” (non quia feminae viris morum dignitate praelatae sunt),³⁹⁶ though men, he claims, “can more easily admire [their courage] than imitate” (viri mirantur facilius quam imi For a general overview of how Augustine composed his homilies cf. Lutz Mechlinsky, Der modus proferendi in Augustins sermones ad populum (Paderborn ‒ München ‒ Wien ‒ Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2004). On his rhetorical skills as an orator, including the use of e. g. puns for a greater effect, see Christine Mohrmann, “Das Wortspiel in den augustinischen Sermones,” in eadem, Études sur le latin des chrétiens, vol. 1, Le Latin des chrétiens (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 19612): 323‒349.  The three homilies dedicated by Augustine to one particular martyr is not in itself an excessive number (cf. however, Brent D. Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua”: 37), for example, Cyprian had 12 homilies dedicated to him, Stephen 7, Lawrence of Rome 5, etc. Perpetua and Felicity are, however, in addition to Eulalia (Serm. 313G) the only martyrs of the female sex that had a separate homily dedicated to them in the De sanctis section. For a general overview cf. Victor Saxer, Morts, martyrs, reliques, passim; see also most recently Michael Margoni-Kögler, Die Perikopen im Gottesdienst bei Augustinus. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der liturgischen Schriftlesung in der frühen Kirche (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), especially 143 – 170.  See Brent D. Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua”: 37‒41.  Augustine, Serm. 282auct. 6.

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tantur),³⁹⁷ but because “a more splendid crown is owed to those of the weaker sex” (ibi est corona gloriosior, ubi sexus infirmior).³⁹⁸ Furthermore, the very names of the two women symbolize the reward awaiting all martyrs without exception: that of perpetual felicity (perpetua felicitas), and hence the names predestined the women to have the feast day and the text named after them.³⁹⁹ In his sermons, Augustine goes out of his way to smooth over all elements that the church dignitaries must have believed too unsettling for the contemporary reader or listener and which, if taken to their logical conclusions, would militate against the status quo of the existing value hierarchies. Augustine’s strategy of normalization essentially consists in the transposition of specific details of the Passio Perpetuae to a kind of transcendental level where these details become symbolic and universally valid theologumena, removed from their original martyrological context.⁴⁰⁰ The martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity is no doubt worthy of glory, but it is the glory of God himself, in whom the women believed and in whom there is no longer any difference between male and female (Gal 3,28).⁴⁰¹ Augustine further desexualizes the concrete, historical women, transforming them into asexual ideals of Christian asceticism: “[…] so that even as regards the femininity of the body, the sex of the flesh is concealed by the virtue of the mind, and one is reluctant to think about a condition in their members that never showed in their deeds”.⁴⁰² To bolster the ascetic image of the women he is trying to project, Augustine makes inventive use of selected aspects of the Passio that believers

 Augustine, Serm. 280,1 / PL 38,1281.  Augustine, Serm. 281,1 / PL 38,1284.  Cf. also above, note 374 on p. 81.  For a fine analysis of Augustine’s treatment of (women) martyrs in his Sermones which includes, e. g., the removing of the original narrative structure, censoring female nudity, and abstracting and depersonalizing the martyrs, all of which can be seen also in his sermons on Perpetua and Felicity, cf. Elena Martin, “Commemoration, Representation and Interpretation: Augustine of Hippo’s Depictions of the Martyrs,” in Saints and Sanctity, Studies in Church History 47, eds. Peter Clarke and Tony Claydon (Woodbridge – Rochester, N. Y.: The Boydell Press, 2011): 29 – 40, who concludes (40): “Augustines’s methods of abstraction and erasure reduce the martyrs to the bare essentials in order to emphasize only those details that direct our minds towards the spiritual message communicated through the martyrs. In this way, his methods of representation tame and control the dangerous process of remembrance by prescribing the exact details that his listeners should forget or recollect, and then providing an authoritative interpretation of those details to guide them away from the physical and temporal moment of martyrdom, and towards a perception of spiritual and eternal truth.”  Augustine, Serm. 280,1 / PL 38,1281.  Ibidem: […] ut etiam in his quae sunt feminae corpore, virtus mentis sexum carnis abscondat, et in membris pigeat cogitare, quod in factis non potuit apparere. Translation by Edmund Hill.

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might find unsettling or that might be prone to undesirable interpretation. Hence the absence of Perpetua’s husband in her story is normalized by explaining that it was necessary and had a theological rationale: “And it was not her husband he [the Devil] introduced into the ring, because she was already, in her exaltation of spirit, living in heaven (habitabat in coelis), and the slightest suspicion of carnal desire, would make her, for very shame, all the stronger”.⁴⁰³ Other passages from the Passio Perpetuae are also given this sort of symbolic treatment: Perpetua’s ascent of the ladder in her fist vision, in which she steps on the head of the serpent as if it were the first rung of the ladder,⁴⁰⁴ is interpreted by Augustine as the biblical crushing of the Devil (Gen 3,15),⁴⁰⁵ even though this reading is alien to the original text.⁴⁰⁶ Likewise, Perpetua’s transformation into a man was, according to Augustine, of profound theological import, since it was because of the transformation that Perpetua grew in virum perfectum, “unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4,13), so that she was able to defeat the Devil. This interpretation is considered by Augustine to be the only correct one which is implied in his statement that if Perpetua’s vision is viewed through this lenses, then the “devout mind is delighted to behold such a spectacle” (delectat autem piam mentem tale spectaculum).⁴⁰⁷

 Cf. Augustine, Serm. 281,2 / PL 38,1284: Nec maritum supposuit [sc. diabolus], ne illa quae iam superna cogitatione habitabat in coelis, suspicionem desiderii carnis erubescendo permaneret fortior […]; translation by Edmund Hill.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 4,3 – 7.  Cf. Augustine, Serm. 280,1 / PL 38,1281: Calcatus est ergo draco pede casto et victore vestigio, cum erectae demonstrarentur scalae, per quas beata Perpetua iret ad Deum. Ita caput serpentis antiqui, quod fuit praecipitium feminae cadenti, gradus factum est ascendenti. (“So the dragon was trampled on by the blessed Perpetua’s chaste foot and victorious tread, when the ladder by which she would go to God was set up and revealed. Thus the head of the ancient serpent, which had been the ruin of woman as she fell, was made into a step for woman as she ascended.” Translation by Edmund Hill)  Cf. Franz Joseph Dölger, “Der Kampf mit dem Ägypter”: 180.  Cf. Augustine, Serm. 281,2 / PL 38,1284, translation by Edmund Hill. Perpetua’s transformation into a man is also discussed by Augustine in his treatise on the soul, where he insists that it could only have been Perpetua’s body that turned male, while her soul must have remained in its original female form. See Augustine, Nat. orig. IV,18,26 / CSEL 60,405, for more details cf. Mary Sirridge, “Dream Bodies and Dream Pains in Augustine’s ‘De natura et origine animae’,” Vivarium 43 (2005): 213‒249. See also Craig Willimas, “Perpetua’s Gender”: 65. For another theological / speculative interpretation of Augustine’s explication of Perpetua’s transformation, see also Gertrude Gillette, “Augustine and the Significance of Perpetua’s Words: ‘And I Was a Man’,”AugStud 32 (2001): 115‒125.

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Augustine also makes a considerable effort to normalize those aspects of the Passio Perpetuae that attribute to Perpetua strongly masculine characteristics⁴⁰⁸ that undermine the traditional social and gender patterns. Similarly to the anonymous editor of the Passio, Augustine too tries to make Perpetua appear more feminine.⁴⁰⁹ In Augustine’s words, the martyrs “were not only women, they were wives as well” (non solum feminae, verum etiam mulieres); furthermore they were mothers too, “so that to the weakness of [their] sex might be added feelings less capable of endurance”.⁴¹⁰ Felicity, in her turn, “testified with her woman’s voice to her woman’s condition”, as for her, although she was a martyr, “the punishment of Eve was not missing, but the grace of Mary was at hand.”⁴¹¹ Once again, much like the editor of the Passio, Augustine attempts to cast Perpetua and Felicity in the mould of traditional womanhood and thus dilute the strikingly masculine aspects particularly visible in Perpetua’s own recorded words. With this purpose in mind, Augustine strives for a “radical rewriting”⁴¹² of other challenging aspects of the Passio Perpetuae as well. This is most evident in his explication of Perpetua’s conflicts with her father in which, as we have seen, the reversal of traditional social hierarchy was at its most radical. But in Augustine’s reading of these dramatic encounters, Perpetua “answered her father with such moderation, that she neither violated the commandment by which honour is owed to parents,”⁴¹³ nor did she ever lose her affection and compassion she felt for him.⁴¹⁴ In his patent manipulation of the text (directly opposite to its original meaning,) Augustine goes even further when he explains to his audience why Perpetua refused the authority of her father. The reasons are, in his view, of theological nature again: “What she hated in him was his folly,

 On the masculinization of Perpetua, see above, p. 47 ff.  Cf. L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 109‒110; Gail Corrington Street, Redeemed Bodies, 59‒64.  Serm. 282auct. 2: […] non solum feminae, verum etiam mulieres fuerunt. Quarum altera et mater, ut ad infirmitatem sexus impatientior adderetur affectus […].  Cf. Serm. 281,3 / PL 38,1284: In parturiendo femineam conditionem feminea voce testata est. Non aberat Evae poena, sed aderat Mariae gratia. Translation by Edmund Hill.  L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 109.  Serm. 281,2 / PL 38,1284: Ubi sancta Perpetua tanta patri moderatione respondit, ut nec praeceptum violaret, quo debetur honor parentibus […]. Translation by Edmund Hill.  Ibidem: […] cuius verba contempserat, saltem verbera condoleret. Ibi vero doluit illa senis parentis iniuriam; et cui non praebuit assensum, servavit affectum. (“[…] while she had ignored his words, she would at least grieve at his lashes. She, though, did indeed grieve at the insult offered her aged parent; and while she did not give him her consent, she kept her affection for him undiminished.”; translation by Edmund Hill).

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not his nature; his unbelief, not her roots. Thus she earned all the greater glory by resolutely rejecting the bad advice of such a beloved father […].”⁴¹⁵ Since Augustine could not quite ignore and eliminate the indisputable “masculinity” of the heroines that formed an integral part of a martyr’s identity, he tried, on the one hand, to smooth it over by stressing the feminine behaviour of the martyrs, and through manipulative explication of the relevant parts of the original text make the women appear as exemplary Christian mothers, daughters and wives. On the other hand, the masculinity of the heroines is once again transformed to a theological level. Though Augustine concedes that in enduring the harsh torture, Perpetua and Felicity behaved in a manly fashion, this was the case because of the powerful work of a “manly spirit” (virilis animus)⁴¹⁶ in them, as they clung to their husband – Christ, who had filled them with his grace. This grace of Christ enabled the women to expiate, by their martyrdom, the death which came to the world through the first woman.⁴¹⁷ Augustine’s exegesis of the Passio Perpetuae was no doubt also informed to an extent by the contemporary historical and theological circumstances.⁴¹⁸ Although I cannot agree with the views which see Augustine’s manipulative exegesis as an attempt to give the original, arguably Montanist, passio a Catholic bias,⁴¹⁹ there can be little doubt that some aspects of his interpretation should be read in the context of his polemic with the schismatic movements of the time, in particular the Donatists, Manichaeans, and Pelagians. D. Elm von der

 Ibidem: Oderat quippe in illo stultitiam, non naturam; et eius infidelitatem, non originem suam. Maiore igitur gloria tam dilectum patrem male suadentem fortiter repulit […]. Translation by Edmund Hill.  Serm. 281,1 / PL 38,1284.  Serm. 281,2 / PL 38,1284. See also Marleen Verschoren, “Eeuwige Gelukzaligheid. Het Martelaarschap van Perpetua en Felicitas in enkele sermoenen en in De anima et eius origine van Sint-Augustinus (354‒430),” in De kracht van Gods Woord. Augustinus als Predikant (Heverlee ‒ Leuven: Augustijns Historisch Instituut, 2009): 89‒120. For Augustine’s doctrine of the place and role of a woman cf e. g. Kari Elisabeth Børresen, “In Defence of Augustine: How Femina is Homo,” in Collectanea augustiniana. Mélanges T. J. van Bavel, eds. Bernard Bruning, Mathijs Lamberigts and Josef van Houtem (Leuven: Augustinian Historical Institute, 1990): 411– 428.  For the most detailed overview cf. Dorothee Elm von der Osten, “‘Perpetua felicitas’: Die Predigten des Augustinus zur Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis (S. 280‒282),” in Die christlich-philosophischen Diskurse der Spätantike: Texte, Personen, Institutionen, ed. Therese Fuhrer (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008): 275‒298 – an abridged and edited version also published under the title of “Perpetual Felicity: Sermons of Augustine on Female Martyrdom (s. 280 – 282 auct. [Erfurt 1]),” StPatr 49 (2010): 203 – 209.  This view is held e. g. by Kenneth B. Steinhauser, “Augustine’s Reading of the Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” StPatr 33 (1997): 244‒249; see also Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, 105 – 110.

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Osten outlines three themes that can be detected in Augustine’s homilies devoted to Perpetua and Felicity. These are: the cult of martyrs that Augustine tries to come to terms with, the role of women in the church, and the formulation of his own theory of martyrdom.⁴²⁰ Even though a precise dating of Augustine’s homilies has not been established, a majority of researchers seem to favour the hypothesis that the homilies would have been delivered between 400 and 420,⁴²¹ most likely directly in the Carthaginian Basilica maiorum, where Perpetua, Felicity, and their companions are believed to have been buried. What also seems very likely is that these sermons were composed after the Synod of Hippo of 393, which allowed martyr acts to be read in North African church, though on the feast days of the martyrs only.⁴²² The Synod of Hippo introduced yet another reform to the liturgy, in that it forbade the holding of celebrations and ritual feasts at the graves of the martyrs (so-called refrigeria), which were, as was customary in the cults of antiquity, associated with wine libations.⁴²³ Donatists, on the other hand, held on to the tradition of these feasts at the graves of the martyrs, despite the criticism at the hands of the Catholic authors. Hence Augustine’s accent on the “appropriate”, i. e. Catholic character of these martyr celebrations, apparent in e. g. his Sermo 280 (“So then, let us celebrate their feasts, as indeed we are doing, with the utmost devotion, soberly cheerful, gathered in a holy assembly, thinking faithful thoughts […]”),⁴²⁴ may be clearly seen as signalling his distance from this Donatist practice. Augustine’s antagonistic view of the Donatist emphasis on martyrdom, which was often seen as an act of suicide in the judgement of Catholic authors, is also reflected in his overall attitude to the martyrdom of Perpetua, Felicity, and their companions.⁴²⁵ Augustine recounts their passion as an unattainable event

 Cf. Dorothee Elm von der Osten, “‘Perpetua felicitas’”: 297, whose study I draw on in this respect.  Thus comments Edmund Hill, “Notes,” in Saint Augustine, Sermons III/8 (273 – 305A) on the Saints, trans. Edmund Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century, part III, vol. 8 (New York: New City Press, 1994), 76, 80 and 82 in his notes on the English translation of the sermons.  See above, note 37 on p. 11.  Cf. Dorothee Elm von der Osten, “‘Perpetua felicitas’”: 283‒285. See also Jiří Šubrt, “Ecclesia martyrum”: 43 – 44. On Augustine’s polemic with these practices, cf. also Victor Saxer, Morts, martyrs, reliques, 133 – 149.  Serm. 280,6 / PL 38,1283: Unde solemnitates eorum, sicut facimus, devotissime celebremus, sobria hilaritate, casta congregatione, fideli cogitatione […]. Translation by Edmund Hill.  See Gail Corrington Streete, Redeemed Bodies, 60. For an overview of Augustine’s evolving attitude to martyrs see e. g. Tarcisius J. van Bavel, “The Cult of Martyrs in St. Augustine. Theology

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from the past, an exceptional feat of great individuals, which the community of Augustine’s “insignificant” believers cannot imitate and “follow in action” two hundred years down the road⁴²⁶ – in short, in Augustine’s view a martyr’s death was a privilege of elect titans of the past, not a path that his contemporaries could or should follow. Augustine’s Perpetua and Felicity cease to be humans of flesh and blood, as they already dwell in heaven during their martyr combat,⁴²⁷ having been turned into nearly sexless, angelic citizens of paradise and prototypes of the ascetic ideal which was to replace, particularly with reference to Donatist martyrs, the by now problematic ideal of the martyr as a perfect Christian.⁴²⁸ Similarly, Augustine’s re-evaluation of the role and work of the Holy Spirit can be attributed to his polemic with the Donatists between approximately 401 and 415, which shaped his view of the cult of martyrs in general. As noted by T. J. van Bavel, whereas in his early texts Augustine stressed the presence of the Holy Spirit in martyrs, in his anti-Donatist phase, this accent fades, to give way to the concept which van Bavel terms “totus Christus”.⁴²⁹ The intimate bond between Christ and the martyr begins to be understood by Augustine as one in which “it is Christ who witness to Himself in and through the martyrs, for He dwells in them”,⁴³⁰ and this is precisely the interpretation that we find in his sermons on Perpetua and Felicity. If the martyrs, then, act as intercessors with God, this power is exercised not through the martyrs themselves but through Christ, for in their martyrs’ combat it was not only the martyrs who triumphed but rather Christ himself.⁴³¹ Of the anti-Pelagian accents detectable in Augustine’s homilies, the most pronounced is the constant emphasis on original sin, with which the women

versus Popular Religion?,” in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective. Memorial Louis Reekmans, eds. Mathijs Lamberigts and Peter van Deun (Leuven: Peeters, 1995): 351– 361; cf. also Victor Saxer, Morts, martyrs, reliques, passim. On Augustine’s reinterpretation of martyrdom in his polemic with Donatists cf. most recently also Collin Garbarino, “Augustine, Donatists and Martyrdom,” in An Age of Saints? Power, Conflict and Dissent in Early Medieval Christianity, eds. Peter Sarris, Matthew Dal Santo and Phil Booth (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2011): 49 – 61.  Cf. Serm. 280,6 / PL 38,1283: Si eos sequi non valemus actu […].  Cf. Serm. 280,4 / PL 38,1282.  Cf. Dorothee Elm von der Osten, “‘Perpetua felicitas’”: 294‒295 and 298.  Tarcisius J. van Bavel, “The Cult of Martyrs in St. Augustine”: 358.  Ibidem.  Cf. e. g. Serm. 280,4 / PL 38,1282: Vicit in eis qui vixit in eis; ut qui non sibi, sed illi vixerunt […] (“It is the one who lived in them that conquered in them, in order that, as they lived not for themselves but for him […]”; translation by Edmund Hill).

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martyrs were inevitably saddled,⁴³² as well as Augustine’s efforts to offer a reading of the Passio to his congregation that would undermine the special spiritual power of the martyrs and the suggestion that the martyrs held this power per se, due to their exalted status. All the trials that Perpetua and Felicity were able to endure, Augustine claims, were only bearable through the incessant aid of Christ, and, despite the veneration they deserved as martyrs, the women could not avoid the punishment that original sin entails, such as the pains of labour which Felicity, in her imitation of Eve, had to bear.⁴³³

3.5.4 Augustine’s successors and the Passio Perpetuae The way in which Augustine interpreted the Passio Perpetuae in his homilies was to become a model to imitate, a guideline for the next generation of North African homilists on to explain the text to their congregations gathered for liturgy. This can be seen from the other homilies delivered on the feast days of saints Perpetua and Felicity that have survived to date. Some of these bore the name of Augustine directly (Sermo 394⁴³⁴ and Sermo 394 A);⁴³⁵ some have survived as anonymous texts ([Tractatus] De SS. Perpetua et Felicitate);⁴³⁶ and finally, Quodvultdeus’ sermon De tempore barbarico, or rather a passage thereof, may also be considered an instance of the reception of the Passio Perpetuae heavily influenced by Augustine.⁴³⁷ As for homily 394, it was recognized as pseudoepigraphical as early as the 17th century by the Maurists who were publishing Augustine’s opera omnia at that time, and as such it was also treated by J.-P. Migne, who included this homily among dubia. It is manifestly less elaborate and less organized than is the case with authentic sermons by Augustine. The numerous quotes from the Bible that the author puts in the mouth of Perpetua at one time and Felicity the next; the mixture of paraphrases and allusions to the events evoked in the Passio Perpetuae, which are only loosely linked together, with little conceptual coherence;

 Cf. above, p. 89 with note 411.  Cf. Dorothee Elm von der Osten, “‘Perpetua felicitas’”: 291‒292 and 298.  This homily was published in PL 39,1715 – 1716.  The editio princeps of this sermon was prepared by François Dolbeau, “Un sermon inédit”.  Edition in: Patrologiae Latinae Supplementum, vol. 3, ed. Adalbert Hamman (Paris: Editions Garnier Frères, 1963), 303‒306.  Cf. Quodvultdeus, De tempore barbarico I, 5 / CCSL 60,430‒431.

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this all, combined with the unreliable Latin text⁴³⁸ render this sermon rather fragmented and thematically unfocused. The text has a marked rhythm, written as it is in sketchy, brusque periods with inner rhymes. It contains a number of contradictions and discrepancies, lacking a clear theme as well as Augustine’s pet pun on the names of the two women martyrs. Furthermore, the author mistakes Perpetua’s and Saturus’ visions for one another and contaminate them. In contrast, homily 394 A, discovered by F. Dolbeau in 1995 and attributed by him to one of Augustine’s disciples,⁴³⁹ does feature a theme which was originally elaborated by Augustine and which is typical for the entire subsequent post-Augustine tradition of sermons delivered on the feast days of Perpetua and Felicity. This recurring motif consists in trying to explain and justify the fact that the church festival as well as the text of the Passio Perpetuae were named exclusively after the two women martyrs, even though their male fellow martyrs also died alongside the women on that same occasion. The author of the sermon essentially reiterates Augustine’s arguments that a martyr’s death was the more remarkable in the “weaker sex” (in sexu infirmiore), and that naming the festival and the text after Perpetua and Felicity was due to the literal meaning of their respective names, which symbolizes the only reward for all martyrs alike: “perpetual felicity”.⁴⁴⁰ The Augustinian interpretation comes through in other themes of the homily too. Similarly to Augustine, the anonymous author also stresses the feminine side of the women martyrs, by bringing Perpetua’s constant compassion for her father to our attention, as well as Felicity’s labour pains. In line with the Augustinian template, the author also does not fail to mention that not even these women martyrs were able to avoid the fate of Eve and her punishment⁴⁴¹ (as manifested by the pains of labour), and that it was only by virtue of Christ’s extraordinary grace that they were able to endure and triumph in their martyr combat. The presence of the grace was also in evidence in the way Perpetua’s mind became as if “separated from the body”,⁴⁴² which the author reads as a gift God  The text of the homily has been preserved in a sole manuscript Cod. Vat. Lat. 3836 together with Augustine’s Sermones 280 and 282; cf. Elena Zocca, “Sulla non-autenticità”: 361, with note 4.  François Dolbeau, “Un sermon inédit”: 98 – 99.  Cf. Serm. 394 A, 1; see François Dolbeau, “Un sermon inédit”: 101‒102.  Cf. Serm. 394 A, 3; see François Dolbeau, “Un sermon inédit”: 103.  Cf. Serm. 394 A, 3: Perpetuae concessum est, ut eius mens quodammodo averteretur a corpore […] (“To Perpetua it was granted that her mind became in a sense separated from her body […]”). The reference to the separation of the mind and body experienced by Perpetua appears in an almost identical wording in Bede’s Martyrologium from the beginning of the 8th cen-

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grants to those who believe in him. In his sermons, Augustine too views Perpetua’s fight against the wild heifer, during which she was not fully aware of herself, as yet another manifestation of divine grace.⁴⁴³ Both these references clearly imply that neither Augustine nor the author of homily 394 A saw the relevant passage in the Passio Perpetuae ⁴⁴⁴ as a foreign or even heterodox element. Some scholars, however, have indeed recently interpreted this passage in the Passio, one in which Perpetua is described as feeling no pain, as she was “in the Spirit and in ecstasy” (in spiritu et in extasi),⁴⁴⁵ in the way described above. R. D. Butler, for example, reads this part (with little justification, in my view) as another proof of what he sees as a clearly Montanist character of the Passio Perpetuae, interpreting the state of mind Perpetua was in as the kind of ecstasy that was typical for the prophetess of Montanism.⁴⁴⁶ Quodvultdeus, who became bishop of Carthage before the middle of the 5th century (perhaps in 432 or 433)⁴⁴⁷ followed his spiritual mentor Augustine in his own interpretation of the Passio Perpetuae as well. In his homily De tempore barbarico I, he briefly mentions Perpetua and Felicity and goes on to tackle once again one of the central Augustinian themes recurring on the feast day of the two martyrs: how did it happen that Perpetua and Felicity were given precedence over so many men?⁴⁴⁸ Slightly modifying Augustine’s arguments, Quodvultdeus goes even further in that he claims that the women’s “weaker sex” (infirmior sexus) was able to emulate the men only because of the exceptional grace of Christ, which “repaired” the female sex (reparavit enim sexum muliebrem) – the sex due to which all people are doomed to die (propter hanc omnes morimur). In other words, Perpetua and Felicity were able to expiate partially the original sin of Eve, but this was not through their own merit but through the agency of Christ, who was present in them and in whom they attained “perfect manhood” (in virum perfectum – with reference to Eph 4,13), without the sex differentiation (with reference to Gal 3,28). It is worth noting that Quodvultdeus is arguably the first interpreter to attempt a psychological explication of Perpetua’s visions, or rather, her first vi-

tury, which indicates that Bede used Sermo 394 A itself for his brief entry; see Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, “Gli ‘Acta brevia sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’”: 33; François Dolbeau, “Un sermon inédit”: 94‒95.  Cf. Augustine, Serm. 280,4 / PL 38,1282.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 20,1– 9.  Cf. Pass. Perp. 20,8.  Cf. Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, 91– 92.  See Wolfgang Strobl, “Notitiolae Quodvultdeanae,” VC 52 (1998): 193‒203.  Cf. Quodvultdeus, De tempore barbarico I, 5,2 / CCSL 60,430.

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sion.⁴⁴⁹ Similarly to most modern interpreters, he identifies the celestial shepherd with Perpetua’s father (ab illo pastore simul et patre), and the sweet mouthful that Perpetua receives from the shepherd foreshadows not only the end of Perpetua’s nursing⁴⁵⁰ but also her “condemnation of the child and spurning of the father” (contemnere filium, spernere patrem).⁴⁵¹ By virtue of Christ’s grace, symbolized by the milk she receives from the shepherd, the martyr overcomes her feminine frailty and imperfection, while also divesting herself of the role of mother, in order to become a “perfect man” in Christ.⁴⁵² The last text I want to discuss at this point is the anonymous sermon De SS. Perpetua et Felicitate, published by G. Morin in 1917 and based on the homiliary of Wolfenbüttel.⁴⁵³ With regard to its authorship, we can rule out its attribution to Augustine for stylistic and formal reasons (e. g. the second part of paragraph six reproduces verbatim the introduction of Augustine’s Sermo 282auct.).⁴⁵⁴ Some researchers attribute the text to Quodvultdeus.⁴⁵⁵ This sermon too may be seen as a direct continuation of the Augustinian interpretative tradition. Once again we are presented with the same themes reiterated: the festival in honour of the two martyrs bears their name, for the triumph of “feminine weakness” is more remarkable than that of the men;⁴⁵⁶ and again, the names of the women martyrs point to the reward common to all martyrs. Like Augustine, the author considers Perpetua’s conflict with her father and dilutes its intensity. Perpetua, in the interpretation of the author, still harbours feelings for her father, but because she “clings” (inhaerebat) to Christ more, she has to reject the one who dissuades her from the crown of martyrdom, though this rejection is “never defiant or proud” (numquam contumaciter superbeque).⁴⁵⁷ Generally, we can detect clearly identifiable allusions to the Passio Perpetuae or direct quotes from it, which are, in line with Augustine, interpreted in a symbolic way, to give them general validity. As F. Dolbeau noted, in addition to the section adopted

 This fact was pointed out by Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 67, with note 17 on 305.  This interpretation by Quodvultdeus is nevertheless erroneous, for according to the text of the Passio Perpetuae Perpetua breast-feeds her baby even after her first vision, see Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 71‒72.  Cf. Quodvultdeus, De tempore barbarico I, 5,3 / CCSL 60,431.  Cf. Brent D. Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua”: 43.  The edition of Morin is reprinted in PLS, see above, note 436 on p. 93. See François Dolbeau, “Un sermon inédit”: 95‒97.  Cf. De SS. Perp. et Fel. 6 / PLS III,306.  See François Dolbeau, “Un sermon inédit”: 95‒96; Isabella Schiller, Dorothea Weber and Clemens Weidmann, “Sechs neue Augustinuspredigten”: 252.  De SS. Perp. et Fel. 1 / PLS III,304.  De SS. Perp. et Fel. 2 / PLS III,304.

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from Augustine’s authentic sermon (Sermo 282auct.), the text also contains two verbatim citations from the pseudo-Augustinian sermon 394 A, which implies at least some degree of indebtedness.⁴⁵⁸ Before concluding this chapter, one more text needs to be briefly mentioned. Pseudo-Augustine’s Sermo Mai 66 (De natali sanctae Victoriae), which was created probably in Rome sometimes between the 5th and 8th century and whose edition was published by Angelo Mai in 1852, was very soon recognized as being composed of large portions of other known Augustine’s sermons – those on Perpetua and Felicity (Sermones 280 – 282). Only after the discovery of the full version of Sermo 282auct. in 2007, however, it became clear that this sermo on saint Victoria is technically rather a cento, consisiting almost entirely of various passages of Augustine’s three authentic homilies In natali martyrum Perpetuae et Felicitatis,⁴⁵⁹ with only very few original additions of its author. This compiler, whose lack of language and literary skills is clearly visible, proceeded mechanically: the names of Perpetua and Felicity were simply replaced by beata Victoria and the allusions to Perpetua’s first vision or to the martyrs’ death in the arena were preserved even though they did not match with the hagiographical tradition about saint Victoria. Many phrases that originally pertained to Perpetua and Felicity were left in the plural form, and also other details from Augustine’s homilies that dealt with specific aspects of the Passio Perpetuae feature in the Victoria sermon as well. This is for instance the case when the compiler took over the passage about the Devil who tried to triumph over the female martyr through a man (per virum eam superare temtavit):⁴⁶⁰ while Augustine had Perpetua’s father in mind, the compiler was forced to introduce another “man”, namely iudicem saevum who is not mentioned again in the text of this sermo. As C. Weidmann observes, the Sermo Mai 66 can be seen as a cento only in a technical sense, though, since the typical features of a true cento, the conscious and elaborate work with the context of the pre-text, is completely missing.⁴⁶¹ The value of the Sermo Mai 66 thus lies mainly in that its readings allow to emend

 François Dolbeau, “Un sermon inédit”: 97.  Cf. Clemens Weidmann, “Der Augustinuscento Sermo Mai 66: Mit einem textkritischen Anhang zu Predigten auf Perpetua und Felicitas,” in Sermo doctorum. Compilers, Preachers, and Their Audiences in the Early Medieval West, eds. Maximilian Diesenberger, Yitzhak Hen and Marianne Pollheimer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013): 59 – 79 (with critical edition of Sermo Mai 66 on 68 to 73).  Pseudo-Augustine, Sermo Mai 66, 1 (cf. Clemens Weidmann, “Der Augustinuscento Sermo Mai 66”: 69).  Clemens Weidmann, “Der Augustinuscento Sermo Mai 66”: 63.

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the Latin of the Augustinian sermons; and it also bears another witness to the immense popularity of Augustine’s homilies on Perpetua and Felicity. Augustine’s interpretation of the Passio Perpetuae was one that had a fundamental impact on the reception of the text in North Africa at least. His successors adopted to a large extent both the themes and interpretative strategies that Augustine applied to the Passio, and used them in their own homilies delivered to their congregations on the feast days of the two saints, after reading the original Passio. Presenting the Passio Perpetuae in this manner had the sad consequence of causing the text to, in a sense, lose its voice, become mute, for it was now the churchmen, the dignitaries who provided a “correct” re-reading of what the gathered audiences had just heard, speaking “on behalf” of the text, explaining (away) how to understand correctly some of the uncomfortable aspects of the martyrs’ account. Yet despite the shifts in meaning and manipulations that Augustine and other church figures treated the text of the Passio to, it still continued to serve the purpose set for it by the anonymous editor in the prologue: its recording and reading was to serve for the honour of God and the comfort of man (Deus honoretur et homo confortetur), as well as the edification of the church (aedificationem ecclesiae). The Passio now becomes a text which no longer calls for imitation on the strength of its glorious past, since its imitation has by now ceased to be desirable, but, rather, has to be content with a reverent adoration from the safe confines of church-provided exegesis.

3.6 The Passio Perpetuae and the Acta Perpetuae: Between tradition and innovation Perhaps the most significant attempt at bringing together the strategies of smoothing over the revolutionary aspects of the Passio Perpetuae and thus complete the interpretative path initiated by Augustine, his disciples and successors, is represented by the so-called Acta Perpetuae, which will be the focus of the last chapter in our tracing of the literary “Nachleben” of the original Passio. ⁴⁶²

 The relationship of the Acta Perpetuae to the Passio Perpetuae has not yet been examined in a systematic way. The only studies of some length thus remain an essay by James W. Halporn, “Literary History”, an exposition included in Paul Monceaux, Histoire littéraire de l’Afrique chrétienne depuis les origines jusqu’à l’invasion Arabe, vol. 1, Tertullien et les origins (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1901), 77‒82, and an analysis by Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, 100 to 103; see also Hippolyte Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs, 52‒55; Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 265‒271; Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, “Gli ‘Acta brevia sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’”; most recently also Jan N. Bremmer, “Felicitas”; Joseph Farrell, “The Canonization of Per-

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From a philological and historical perspective, the Acta Perpetuae are a certain enigma. The Acta were composed as another attempt at a radical rewriting of the original text. The name Acta itself was not given to this variant of the text until the middle of the 20th century when van Beek entitled it in this way so as to differentiate it from the longer Passio in his edition containing both texts – though in the manuscript tradition even the Acta are designated as passio. ⁴⁶³ The text of the Acta has survived in two variants, traditionally designated as A and B (in the J. Amat edition designated as I and II), and in both cases they were written in Latin. The mutual relationship between the two variants has not been so far fully illuminated. Very generally, version B on the whole abridges the account given by recension A, though recension B too does contain several sections that are more detailed than the corresponding sections of variant A. ⁴⁶⁴ Based on the number of extant manuscripts, it appears that recension A was the more popular of the two in the Middle Ages. In his edition, van Beek mentions 76 manuscripts in which recension A survived, while recension B was recorded only in 13.⁴⁶⁵ As early as the end of the 19th century, J. A. Robinson pointed out that the Acta revealed some similarities to the extant Greek translation of the Passio Perpetuae,⁴⁶⁶ and these similarities were detectable not only at the level of phrases or evocations of some of the scenes, but also in the historical framing of the text. Similarly to the Greek version of the Passio Perpetuae, the Acta too mention that the group of Christians was arrested in civitate Tuburbitanorum,⁴⁶⁷ i. e. in the North African town of Thuburbo Minus, and both texts also date the event identically sub Valeriano et Gallieno,⁴⁶⁸ i. e. to between 257 and 258.⁴⁶⁹ In his recent petua”, and François-Xavier Romanacce, “Construction et fonction du récit dans la littérature martyriale”. I examined the mutual relationship between the texts in some detail in my study “Passio Perpetuae and Acta Perpetuae: Between Tradition and Innovation,” LF 130 (2007): 1 to 19, whose essential tenets I have adopted for this chapter.  Cf. van Beek, 58 (critical apparatus).  For a detailed description and comparison of both recensions, see James W. Halporn, “Literary History”: 226‒230; van Beek, 98*‒99*.  Cf. van Beek, 107*‒131* (the manuscripts containing text A can be dated to the 12‒15th centuries, manuscripts with text B to 8/9.‒17th centuries).  Cf. Joseph Armitage Robinson, “Introduction”: 15‒22.  Cf. Acta Perp. A 1; see Acta Perp. B 1 ([…] in civitate Tuburbitana […]); Pass. Perp. 2,1 (Greek version): Ἐν πόλει Θου〈βου〉ρβιτανῶν τῇ μικροτέρᾳ […]. See on this Jan den Boeft and Jan N. Bremmer: “Notiunculae martyrologicae VI”: 50 – 51.  Acta Perp. A 1 (cf. Acta Perp. B 1: Valeriano et Gallieno consulibus […]); Pass. Perp., the incipit of Greek version: Ἐπὶ Οὐαλεριανοῦ καὶ Γαλιηνοῦ […].  This dating is, however, contradicted by both the information in the Passio Perpetuae and the references by Tertullian and those in the martyrologies and hence cannot be seen as rele-

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collection of testimonies on the Passio Perpetuae and based on the extant sources, G. A. Guazzelli demonstrated that until the middle of the 5th century at least, only the Passio was read for liturgical purposes in North Africa. As for Western Europe, there is no evidence of the Acta until as late as the end of the 8th century. Guazzelli put forth the hypothesis that the Acta Perpetuae may have been composed as late as the 5th century as a response to the Augustinian re-interpretation of the text of the Passio Perpetuae. ⁴⁷⁰ Similarly, J. Amat has proposed that the Acta were most likely written relatively late, based on the evidence she finds in some of the linguistic features of the text. Amat considers the Acta Perpetuae to be a hagiographic work composed at a different period to the Passio Perpetuae, and dates it, much like Guazzelli implicitly does, to the 5th century.⁴⁷¹ Past scholarship was on the whole of the opinion that the Acta were merely a reworking of the original text, with no literary value to it.⁴⁷² On closer examination, however, this conclusion does not appear to be justified, as it does not take into consideration the original purpose that the editor of the Acta seemed to have in mind: to satisfy the horizon of expectation of the contemporary audiences, who must have found some aspects of the Passio Perpetuae rather unsettling on several counts – and in this respect, the editor did a more than satisfactory job.⁴⁷³

vant. In spite of this (and possibly influenced by the reference to Valerian and Gallienus), Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 1, dates the Acta to the 3rd century. Such an early dating is, however, untenable (cf. contra most recently Jan N. Bremmer, “Felicitas”: 39; see also below note 471 on this page).  Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, “Gli ‘Acta brevia sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’”: 34‒35.  Cf. Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 271. In contrast, Jan N. Bremmer, “Felicitas”: 39, attempts to date the Acta Perp. to a time shortly after 260 due to the dating of the martyrdom to the time of Valerian and Gallienus contained in the Acta Perp. themselves and also in the Greek version of Pass. Perp.  See e. g. Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Passions des martyrs, especially 53 – 54.  Cf. James W. Halporn, “Literary History”: passim. In contrast, some researchers have recently also tried to rehabilitate the value of Acta Perp. in the area of the historical plausibility of some of the information contained in them (the details of interrogation, the more austere description of the combat scenes, etc.), see especially Jan N. Bremmer, “Felicitas”: passim; Joseph Farrell, “The Canonization of Perpetua”: 306 – 308. On the dangers of this approach, see below, p. 114 f.

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3.6.1 Acta Perpetuae A, Acta Perpetuae B, and their mutual relationship Before analysing the Acta proper and trying to evaluate their place in the reception of the Passio Perpetuae in general, let us first introduce the two recensions in more detail. Both recensions start off without any preamble – with the stock formulations that can be found in most preceding as well as later martyr acts, summarizing the basic facts about the group of believers arrested during the persecution under Valerianus and Gallienus, and brought before the proconsul. The economical style of variant A makes it sound rather similar to the corresponding openings in other known martyr texts⁴⁷⁴ (Facta itaque persecutione […] conprehensi sunt [A]; […] missa in Christianos persecutione violenta […] [B]). In variant A, Saturus and Saturninus are designated as brothers (perhaps due to the phonetic similarity of the two names), and Felicity is identified as Revocatus’ sister. On the other hand, variant B merely reiterates the fact that Revocatus and Felicity are siblings. Saturus answers to the proconsul on behalf of the group, and having refused to make the pagan sacrifice they were asked to carry out, the Christians are sent to prison. In both variants, the second chapter begins with the conversation between Perpetua and her father, who comes to visit her in the prison. Whereas variant A partially sticks to the dialogue from the Passio Perpetuae in which Perpetua likens her status as a Christian believer to the vessel she points to (vas iacens aut fictile [A 2,2]), refusing to be anything other than a “Christian”, in variant B this passage is missing and is replaced by a pun on Perpetua’s name (Filiam tuam, […] si vis vere esse perpetuam […] [B 2,2]). The third chapter captures Perpetua’s first vision from the Passio Perpetuae. Both versions follow the evocation from the original Passio, describing the ladder Perpetua climbs up as well as the dragon lying menacingly at its foot. Both versions also describe the lovely garden the ladder leads to, though this evocation is considerably briefer and vaguer in variant B. Version A uses the perfect tense (vidi) to recount Perpetua’s vision, with the lexicon used also corresponding to the wording of the original Passio, whereas version B for the most part employs the imperfectum (videbat; aspiciebat) in the impersonal third person, which unexpectedly shifts to the first person plural towards the end (Qui vocavit nos et dedit nobis de fructibus gregis. Et cum gustassemus […] [B 3,6 – 7]). After the vision, the next scene is the interrogation before the proconsul. Saturus is the first to answer the proconsul’s questions, with both versions stress-

 Cf. e. g. Acta Iust. 1; Acta Scill. 1; Mart. Apol. 1; Acta Cypr. 1 etc.

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ing the fact that he is speaking on behalf of all the arrested Christians.⁴⁷⁵ In both recensions, the proconsul subsequently has the women separated from the men, and proceeds to interrogate the men first. The interrogation is a mundane affair in both recensions, quite in keeping with the trial-transcript stylization, in which the routine questions of the proconsul are answered in quick succession by no less routine retorts of the accused. This aspect, which is the most typical feature common to all early Christian acts is, it is worth remarking, pared down to the minimum in the original Passio. The interrogation culminates in the proud confession to Christianity, Christianus sum, of the accused. After the men, it is the women’s turn to be interrogated. Unlike the Passio, here it is Felicity who is interrogated first, and is given almost a full one chapter in variant A, again unlike the Passio, where she receives only limited attention from the editor. The proconsul asks a series of rather probing questions regarding Felicity’s family situation. She replies she has a husband though she has rejected him [A 5,3]). The proconsul then attempts to persuade her to make the pagan sacrifice, also because she is pregnant (te infantem in utero habere video [A 5,7], and plainly expresses his sympathy for her (doleo enim de te [A 5,8]). In contrast, in recension B the interrogation is much shorter; the questions about Felicity’s family situation are omitted. What is added is the in nuce pun on the literal meaning of her name: after asking her about her name, the proconsul beseeches Felicity to make the sacrifice so as not to “have the joy of her own life taken away”, to which Felicity retorts that she longs to find her “splendour” in the life eternal.⁴⁷⁶ In both recensions, the interrogation ends with the presentation of Perpetua, who, like Felicity, points to the meaning of her name and refuses to undertake the sacrifice in order to “preserve her perpetuity”.⁴⁷⁷

 Cf. Acta Perp. A 4,2– 3: Proconsul dixit: “Pro te respondes an pro omnibus?” Saturus dixit: “Pro omnibus: una enim est in nobis voluntas.” (“The proconsul asked, ‘Are you answering for yourself or on behalf of all?’ Saturus replied, ‘On behalf of all; as we are all of one mind.’”); cf. Acta Perp. B 4,2– 3.  Acta Perp. B 5,3: “Miserere tui puella, ne vitae istius iucunditate et lucis splendore […] priveris.” Felicitas respondit. “Ego ad aeternam vitam et perennem splendorem […] opto pervenire.” (“‘Have pity on yourself, girl, so as not to be deprived of […] the joy and splendour of this life.’ Felicitas replied, ‘I long to […] to find life eternal and unceasing splendour.’”)  Acta Perp. A 5,9: “Christiana sum, et nominis mei sequor auctoritatem, ut sim perpetua.” (“‘I am a Christian and cling to what the meaning of my name is, so I can live in perpetuity.’”); Acta Perp. B 5,5: “Christiana sum, et ut merear esse perpetua, in Christi nominis confessione permaneo.” (“‘I am a Christian and will not stop confessing the name of Christ in order to deserve perpetuity.’”)

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Just as Felicity was the protagonist of chapter five, Perpetua and her family take up much of chapter six. Perpetua’s father, mother, brothers, and also the husband with her baby child (pater et mater, fratres et maritus simulque cum parvulo eius, qui erat ad lac [A 6,1]) all come to visit her in the prison to beg her to save her own life. Perpetua does not heed her father’s implorations, and bringing up the pun on her name again (only in recension A), she begs him not to dissuade her from becoming his “perpetual daughter” (Perpetuam enim filiam tuam, si non obstiteris, perpetuam filiam possidebis [A 6,3]). The tearful father, mother and husband make one final plea by “hanging” her child round her neck (Pater vero eius iactans infantem in collum eius […] [A 6,5]; […] iactans infantem in collo eius [B 6,5]), but Perpetua “throws away” the child and repudiates the parents by quoting from Matt 7,23 (At illa proiciens infantem eosque repellens dixit: “Recedite a me operarii inquitatis, quia non novi vos” [A 6,6; see also B 6,6]). The martyrs to be are then sentenced and sent back to prison. Before that, the men are flogged (flagellis caesos [A 7,1; see also B 7,1]), and the women are smacked in the face (exalapatas [A 7,1; B 7,1]). In the prison, Perpetua has another vision, in which she sees a menacing Egyptian writhing and rolling at their feet.⁴⁷⁸ The martyrs understand this prophetic dream to mean that they have defeated the Devil (prostrato inimico generis humani [A 7,3; see also B 7,3]) and are worthy of martyrs’ glory. They worry about Felicity though, since she is pregnant. Whereas version B mentions laconically that Felicity gave birth following the martyrs’ prayers (Qui dum in oratione persistunt, enixa est [B 8,1]), recension A relates (using different lexicon) a conversation between Felicity and one of the prison wardens concerning the presence of Christ in her body. The last chapter (nine) treats of the death of the martyrs and their combat in the amphitheatre. The triumphant entry to the place of execution is absent from both versions; only Felicity is given some detailed attention. Recension A maintains the original metaphors as it describes Felicity being led from “the blood of the body to the blood of salvation, from midwife to gladiator” and how she “after the post-partum bath deserved to be bathed in spouting blood”.⁴⁷⁹ In contrast, version B deviates from the original in saying that Felicity, due to her love of

 Acta Perp. A 7,2: […] Aegyptium quendam horridum et nigrum, iacentem et volutantem se sub pedibus eorum […] (“[…] some horrid black Egyptian who was throwing himself to the ground and writhing at their feet […]”); Acta Perp. B 7,2: Vidit Aegyptium horrore et nigredine taetrum, sub eorum pedibus volutantem (“She saw an Egyptian, who was horrible to see, writhing at their feet.”).  Acta Perp. A 9,2: […] sequebatur et Felicitas, quae ex sanguine carnis ad sanguinem salutis ducebatur, et de obstetrice ad gladium, et de lavatione post partum balnei sanguinis effusione meruit delavari.

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Christ, did not seek the midwife or obstetrician (nec obstetricem quaesivit [B 9,2]), and supplies two additional accents, typical for the Augustinian reading of the original Passio. One is an allusion to her first name, now quite explicit (sed vere felix), and the other is an interpretation of her martyrdom as an example fit not only for the female but also the male sex (non solum femineo sexui, sed etiam virili virtuti praebebat exemplum). And finally, the combat with the wild beasts again receives a very different treatment from the original Passio, and is on the whole much less colourful. According to both recensions, Saturus and Perpetua were devoured by lions (a leonibus sunt devorati [A 9,3]), Saturninus was mauled by bears and finished off with a sword (ab ursis erutus gladio est percussus [ibidem]), and Revocatus and Felicity were killed by leopards. The recounting of the deaths is longer and contains more details in version B. Even this condensed comparison of the two versions yields some concrete conclusions. First and foremost, it is very clear that of the two, version A follows the original Passio more closely, both in terms of the lexicon used and the actual content, which may indicate that it was composed shortly after the original Passio or was at least directly indebted to it. In contrast, it appears that the author of version B did not have the Passio Perpetuae in mind when he was composing his adaptation, and that it was most likely recension A that he used as the basis of his retelling.⁴⁸⁰ The comparatively greater distance from the original Passio is manifest, for example, in the way the content of some of the episodes is distorted. The manner in which the author of Acta B summarizes these episodes is at times completely contradictory to the pre-text, as is the case in e. g. the abovementioned scene of Felicity’s entry into the amphitheatre. This stylization, typical for later hagiography, is, however, apparent across the whole composition of the text, as well as in its rhetorical phrases and topoi that tend to appear very frequently in martyr literature, albeit in a different lexical setting.⁴⁸¹ The supposition that recension B must have been written later than version A was corroborated by H. A. M. Hoppenbrouwers, whose analysis showed that the martyrological terminology used in either version as well as the use of the epithets beatus or sanctus, that were customarily appended to the martyrs’ names, matches two different historical periods. While in recension A these significant terms correspond roughly to the Tertullian era, version B must be dated to a later period.⁴⁸²

 Cf. Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 271.  Cf. Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 270 – 271; on the hagiographic stylization of both versions of Acta Perp. in general see also Hippolyte Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs, (52– 55) 53: “Tout le reste est sans originalité […] Il suffisait, pour le rédiger, d’avoir lu quelques Passions des martyrs […] Notre hagiographe n’a fait que développer un thème déjà devenu banal.”  Cf. Henricus A. M. Hoppenbrouwers, Recherches sur la termonologie du martyre, 84– 88.

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Acta Perpetuae B, then, despite its comparatively more laconic treatment and shorter word count cannot be considered to be the older version of the text, as van Beek believed.⁴⁸³ Quite the reverse seems to be the case, for version A sticks closer to the original Passio Perpetuae both at the level of content and style, and therefore appears to be the older of the two. But as to why and precisely when these two versions came to existence in the first place, these are questions that we still cannot answer definitively. Given the stylistic differences between the two recensions, it appears likely that they were composed by two different authors, with the author of recension B writing his version later. Another conclusion derived from a closer examination of the two versions of the Acta is that recension B presents more elements typical of the Augustinian reinterpretation of the Passio than does recension A, which indicates that its author must have been aware of Augustine’s view of the Passio Perpetuae. This brief overview of the differences between the two versions should not, however, overshadow the primary and more pressing question concerning both variants of the text: what exactly was the purpose the respective authors of the Acta had in mind when writing them, and why did they write them in the first place?

3.6.2 Perpetua and the evolving ideal of sainthood: Motivation, aims, and means On comparing the narrative technique of the Acta Perpetuae and the Passio Perpetuae, the immediately recognizable difference is the return in the Acta of the pseudo-trial-transcript style consisting of a quick succession of questions and answers, encountered in e. g. the Acta Scillitanorum. Due to this predominantly dialogic form, also other martyrs featuring in the narrative (especially Felicity)⁴⁸⁴ could have now come into play, whereas in the Passio, because of its hybrid structure, they mostly appeared as mute characters only. By using this format, the editor thus consciously invokes the established tradition whose conventions were well known to the contemporary audiences. This also accounts for the absence of the polemical and theologically charged prologue with its Montanist elements that we find in the original Passio Perpetuae, for such an introduction was of little relevance at a time when Montanism had become definitively a thing of the past,⁴⁸⁵ at least in North Africa.

 Cf. Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 271.  On Felicity’s character in the Acta Perpetuae, cf. also below, p. 115.  Cf. Christine Trevett, Montanism, 224.

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The omission of the prologue may have had other motivations, however. While Montanism had become an issue of little import in the 4th and 5th centuries, the situation in North Africa at that time was made rather volatile by another Christian community: the Donatists, who came to form a second independent North African church alongside Catholics.⁴⁸⁶ Donatists defined themselves not only in terms of opposition to the Catholic traditores, but also as a church community following in the footsteps of the original martyr-dominated church of the 3rd century and furthering its agenda. Donatist authors therefore denounced their Catholic antagonists as modern-day pagans and persecutors⁴⁸⁷ in the mould of the Decian and Diocletian officers who had plagued them 150 or 200 years before. This perspective is clearly visible in Donatist passiones, which frequently employ a similar set of themes as those of the martyr narratives of the 3rd centuries and subscribe to the same theological concepts (martyrdom as a fight against the Devil, whose role is now performed by the Catholic traitors). This deliberate acknowledgement by Donatists of the earliest martyr texts has as its purpose the strengthening of self-identification of the Donatist community, and the indebtedness goes as far as introducing to the Donatist passiones aspects similar to those we find in the prologue and epilogue of the Passio Perpetuae, in which we can see a general influence of the original Passio on these passiones. This influence is predominantly manifest in the way these martyr narratives are presented – much like their model, the Passio Perpetuae – as exemplary texts, and particularly in the way in which Donatist martyrs, again much like Perpetua, Felicity, and their companions, are expressly hailed as “new examples” of extraordinary faith, to be proudly juxtaposed with the “witnesses of

 A concise summary, including the relevant literature, of the turning points in the origin and development of Donatism is given by Jiří Šubrt, “Ecclesia martyrum”: 15 – 57. For more on this movement, in addition to the older exposition by William H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church, or Ernst Ludwig Grasmück, Coercitio. Staat und Kirche im Donatistenstreit (Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag, 1964), see more recently e. g. Maureen A. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa. The Donatist World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996); Arne Hogrefe, Umstrittene Vergangenheit. Historische Argumente in der Auseinandersetzung Augustins mit den Donatisten (Berlin – New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), and especially Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence. African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Cf. also Remo Cacitti, Furiosa Turba. I fondamenti religiosi dell’eversione sociale, della dissidenza politica e della contestazione ecclesiale dei Circoncellioni d’Africa (Milano: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 2006).  This view is clearly visible in the extant corpus of Donatist martyrological literature, see Příběhy II, passim; cf. e. g. Pass. Marcul. 5,5; Pass. Donat. 3 and 14.

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old”.⁴⁸⁸ This “recycling” of the Passio Perpetuae and its appropriation for the purposes of Donatist theological propaganda may have been one of the reasons why the anonymous editor of the Acta Perpetuae omitted the original prologue in his adaptation. And conversely, seen through this lens, the revisiting of the trialtranscript style of questions and answers without a lengthy prologue and limiting the narrative component to the bare minimum, could be construed as a deliberate polemic with Donatists and their implicit invocation of the exemplars of Perpetua, Felicity, and their companions. In other words, just as Donatist were trying to join in with the tradition of the authentic church of the martyrs of the early centuries by appropriating the same theological terms laid down by the Passio Perpetuae, the trial-transcript, prologue-free style of the Acta could be read as a signal of distancing from or even rejecting this Donatist use of the Passio. The uniform character of the text of the Acta is further enhanced by the fusion of all the disparate voices of the original Passio into an impersonal 3rd-person voice which integrates the staged dialogues of the protagonists. Hence Perpetua is no longer the central character, which is also seen from the variant titles of the Acta, in which Saturus is often named first, in reflection of his hierarchically superior status as the catechist of the group.⁴⁸⁹ It is the character of Saturus who becomes the leader of the group in the editor’s adaptation, since Perpetua may have been deemed too revolutionary a character by the midstream church

 Cf. e. g. Pass. Donat. 1: Si manifesta persecutionum gesta non otiose conscripta sunt nec inconsulte in honore martyrum et aedificatione credentium anniversaria sollemnitate leguntur, cur non magis […] insidiae conscribantur et legantur […] (“If we have not written in vain of wellknown acts of persecution, and on this annual solemnity we read them not unadvisedly in honor of the martyrs and for the edification of belivers, why don’t we likewise write and reas of cunning deceits […]”; translation by Maureen A. Tilley); Pass. Marcul. 1,1.3: Quoniam multorum martyrum passiones et gloriae in sublimi memoria eximio olim sermone digestae ad magnam utilitatem proficiunt populorum, dum ad incentivum virtutis et laudis ecclesiae semper auribus recitantur […] Iustum enim ac satis dignum est, ut antiquorum testium laudibus recentium quoque martyrum virtus adiuncta glutinetur […] (“The passions and the glories of many martyrs have already been laid out in lofty style as a sublime memorial. They provide great benefit for the people who listen each time they are recited as an incentive to virtue and as praise for the Church. […] It is right and proper enough that the bravery of the more recent martyrs should be joined to the praise of the witnesses of old.”; translation by Maureen A. Tilley).  Cf. van Beek, 58 – 59 (in some manuscripts of version A as well as B the title has been preserved as Passio SS. martyrum Saturi, Saturnini, Revocati, Felicitatis et Perpetuae); see also Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 270. Cf., in contrast, Jan N. Bremmer, “The Motivation of Martyrs”: 542.

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readers of the time.⁴⁹⁰ Saturus, therefore, speaks on behalf of all the martyrs⁴⁹¹ at their trial, and the proconsul, having separated the accused men from the women,⁴⁹² addresses him first during the interrogation. This separation by gender can again be understood as emphasising the standard and normalized hierarchy in which women occupy their “appropriate” place and which the original Passio calls into question. Those aspects of the original Passio to which the modern reader can perhaps most easily relate – the immediacy and individuality of the voice that comes across from Perpetua’s personal notes – are quite absent in the Acta. The individuality of the characters fades into the background. While in the Passio, Perpetua, prompted by her brother, asks for a vision and together they seek to decode its meaning, in the Acta, Perpetua becomes merely a passive medium through which God’s will is communicated to the group of believers.⁴⁹³ This is also apparent in her vision of the fight against the Egyptian. Whereas in the Passio Perpetuae the vision functions as a logical consequence of Perpetua’s self-awareness and spiritual transformation coupled to her simultaneous liberation from the existing social bonds, in the Acta this episode becomes quite an impersonal, marginal scene which concerns the whole community again, rather than the individual.⁴⁹⁴ The reason why both versions of the Acta omit Perpetua’s vision of Dinocrates may be the very personal character of the vision, which has little relevance from the perspective of the community.⁴⁹⁵ On the other hand, Perpetua’s self-as-

 The apocryphal Acta Pauli et Theclae can be seen as one of the few precedents in early Christian literature in which a woman has a central role in the narrative; see also above p. 40.  Cf. Acta Perp. A 4,2– 3: Proconsul dixit: “Pro te respondes an pro omnibus?” Saturus dixit: “Pro omnibus: una enim est in nobis voluntas.” For translation, see above note 475 on p. 102.  Cf. Acta Perp. A 4,5: Proconsul iussit viros a mulieribus separari et ad Saturum dixit […] (“The proconsul ordered that the women be separated from the men, and told Saturus […]”).  Cf. Acta Perp. A 3,1: Orantes vero et sine cessatione preces ad Dominum fundentes, cum essent multis diebus in carcere, quadam nocte videns visum sancta Perpetua alia die retulit sanctis commartyribus suis […] (“They were praying incessantly, imploring the Lord, for they had been in prison for a long time, and then one night, the blessed Perpetua had a vision of which she told her saintly comrades in martyrdom. […]”).  Cf. Acta Perp. A 7,2–3: […] iterum vidit visionem Perpetua: Aegyptium […] iacentem et volutantem se sub pedibus eorum, retulitque sanctis fratribus et conmartyribus suis […] illi gratias egerunt Domino, qui, prostrato inimico generis humani, eos laude martyrii dignos habuerit. (“[…] Perpetua had a second vision: she saw an Egyptian who threw himself to the ground and rolled at her feet […] She told of it to her brothers and fellow martyrs, and they […] gave thanks to the Lord that they were found worthy of martyrdom and that they had defeated the enemy of humankind”). Cf. also Acta Perp. B 7,2.  Thus concludes James W. Halporn, “Literary History”: 235.

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sured confidence that she can commute the posthumous punishment of her dead brother in the afterlife is theologically rather volatile, and should not therefore be ruled out as a possible reason for the omission. In view of Augustine’s efforts to neutralize the above-mentioned implications of Perpetua’s vision, both in his tracts on the soul and his sermons, in which he never mentions the vision, we may be justified in believing that the real reason for the omission from the Acta was its incompatibility with the church doctrine of the 5th century, at least in the eyes of the editor, who thus tacitly took on board the corresponding Augustinian view of the matter. Equally plausible, however, appears to be the hypothesis that the vision of Saturus was omitted by the editor of the Acta because of the references it contained to contemporary disputes between believers and the hierarchy⁴⁹⁶ of the North African church, a topic that had become irrelevant for later audiences. An even stronger reason may have been due to the way the church hierarchy is clearly put on trial in Saturus’ vision (the bishop and the priest are not allowed into paradise; the angels castigate them for poor leadership of their congregations; lay martyrs are held in higher regard than church dignitaries, who beseech the martyrs to reconcile them). This would all have been viewed as undermining the authority of the church as a whole. Apart from their problematic content, the editor’s choice to omit or radically abridge most of of the visions may have been informed by the fact that some had become an inspiration for Donatist martyr texts, much like the prologue of the Passio Perpetuae. Similarly to the Passio Perpetuae, Donatist martyrs too receive visions from God prior to their martyrdom, and these visions in some instances occupy an essential place in their texts, as they did in the Passio. Though direct indebtedness to some of Perpetua’s visions (or to the one of Saturus) can be detected at the level of motifs rather than in terms of the lexicon or individual formulations used,⁴⁹⁷ we can still consider these Donatist passiones to be direct successors to the North African martyr stories of the 3rd century in this respect.⁴⁹⁸  Cf. Pass. Perp. 13,5 – 8. The very omission of Saturus’ vision may indicate that this vision too was perceived as potentially subversive. This to an extent undermines the theory of Andreas Merkt (“Gewaltverarbeitung”: 85, 93) which proposed that Saturus’ vision worked as a sort of corrective within Pass. Perp. which posited the message of the entire text “in den kirchlichen Mainstream”.  Cf. e. g. the vision of Marculus in Pass. Marcul. 8,2‒4, Isaac’s vision in which he fights the emperor (similar to Perpetua’s fight against the Egyptian) in Pass. Is. Max. 8‒9, and Isaac’s ascent to heaven in Pass. Is. Max. 9 (which shares some common features with the vision of Saturus in Pass. Perp. 11), see Příběhy II, 272– 273 and 294– 295; cf. also Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ. Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press, 2005), 104; Jacqueline Amat, Songes et vi-

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The editor of the Acta Perpetuae must have been well aware of this and therefore tried to avoid parallels with the contemporary Donatist production as much as possible. Another conceivable reason for the deliberate minimization of the role of the visions may have been their similar marginalization at the hands of Augustine, who, in keeping with his anti-Donatist campaign, rarely mentions them in his sermons on the feast days of the saints. This holds true not only for Perpetua and Saturus but also other martyrs who were granted visions in the surviving martyr texts.⁴⁹⁹ The smoothing over of the problematic aspects of the Passio Perpetuae is also evident in the way the Acta “fills in the blanks” in the Passio by fabricating certain realities that are (suspiciously) absent from the text. As has been noted earlier, the contemporary audience must have found, for example, “the way in which [Perpetua and Felicity] feel free to move away from the normal constraints imposed by husbands, fathers and others” unsettling.⁵⁰⁰ While in the Passio Perpetuae the husbands simply do not feature at all, in the Acta, the editor normalizes this uncomfortable fact⁵⁰¹ by bringing them onto the scene. Felicity’s plebeian husband is only mentioned during her interrogation⁵⁰² in one of the variants

sions, 235 – 240; Francesco Scorza Barcellona, “Sogni e visioni nella letteratura martirologica africana posteriore al III secolo,” Aug 29 (1989): (193 – 212) 201– 202. See also Brent D. Shaw, “Postscript 2003”: 323.  Cf. Francesco Scorza Barcellona, “Sogni e visioni”: 210.  Cf. Elena Zocca, “Le visioni nei Sermones de sanctis agostiniani,” Aug 29 (1989): 393 – 409. On Augustine’s explicit rejection of visions invoked by Donatists, see e. g. Augustine, Ad catholicos de secta Donatistarum, 19,49 / CSEL 52,295: […] ut non dicat: “verum est, quia […] ille frater noster aut illa soror nostra tale visum vigilans vidit vel tale visum dormiens somniavit” Removeantur ista vel figmenta mendacium hominum vel portenta fallacium spirituum. (“[…] hence they should not say: ‘it is the truth, because […] this brother or sister of yours had this vision while she was awake or that prophetic dream while asleep’. These things should best be left aside, as they are either figments of imagination and lies, or fantasies of misguided minds.”) For a general overview of Augustine’s attitudes to visions cf. e. g. Martine Dulaey, Le rêve dans la vie et la pensée de saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1973).  Brent D. Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua”: 36.  A similar view is expressed e. g. by Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 266, and Danny Praet, “‘Meliore cupiditate detentus’”: 466.  Cf. Acta Perp. A 5,2– 5. This reference is the only hint of Felicity’s low social status. The supposition that Felicity might be Perpetua’s slave, which repeatedly comes up in various literature, has no justification, cf. Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 209, note 14; Michel Poirier, “Note sur la Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis: Félicité était-elle vraiment l’esclave de Perpétue?,” StPatr 10 (1970): 306 – 309. The fact that Felicity was a slave seems to be supported by Pass. Perp. 2,1, which reads Revocatus et Felicitas, conserva eius (according to TLL IV,422 the primary meaning of the word conserva is serva eiusdem familiae). Some scholars (cf. e. g. Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter, 209, note 14; Danny Praet, “‘Meliore cupiditate detentus’”:

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of the Acta; in Perpetua’s case, in both versions the husband is present in person alongside Perpetua’s father and other family members in order to try to convince her to make the pagan sacrifice and save her own life.⁵⁰³ Similarly, Perpetua’s unwillingness to bow to her father’s pleading is recounted with the contemporary recipient of the text in mind: Perpetua’s confrontations with her father lack the emotional charge they have in the Passio, and Perpetua herself does not show any signs of painful inner conflict. From the very beginning, her thoughts lie with God, and she brushes away the pleas of her family with quotes from the Gospels.⁵⁰⁴ Not for the first time in our story of the reinterpretation of the Passio Perpetuae, it appears that the editor’s aim in his literary staging of the Acta was primarily to offer to the Christian community a narrative that would not militate against the social and theological standards of the time. The editor’s choice of rhetorical resources⁵⁰⁵ was similarly geared towards making the text sound more attractive to the contemporary audiences. The innovative features of the original were partly eliminated by providing their “correct” interpretation (explaining them away), partly neutralized by the consistent idealization of the protagonists, whose acts are no longer to be imitated, as such behaviour might undermine the status quo, but rather to be admired from afar.⁵⁰⁶ Though in the past scholars have repeatedly suggested that the motivation behind the writing of the Acta Perpetuae was to cleanse the original Passio of

465, with note 35) interpret the word conserva to mean “wife”, even though this sense has not been documented in Latin (cf. TLL IV, 422– 423, s. v.). Tertullian uses the word figuratively to designate a “Christian woman, sister in Christ”, and also refers to his own Christian wife using this term (cf. Stephan W. J. Teeuwen, Sprachlicher Bedeutungswandel bei Tertullian. Ein Beitrag zum Studium der christlichen Sondersprache [Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1926], 127– 128). Since the editor of Pass. Perp. refers to the whole group of arrested Christians as adolescentes catechumeni (Pass. Perp. 2,1), it seems unlikely that he would subsequently emphasize Felicity’s Christian faith again. The most likely interpretation is that conserva eius simply means “that they [Revocatus and Felicity] were both slaves, as opposed to the other catechumens”, as noted by Danny Praet, “‘Meliore cupiditate detentus’”: 465 – 466; similarly also Jan N. Bremmer, “Felicitas”: 37.  Cf. e. g. Acta Perp. A 6,1; 6,2; 6,5; Acta Perp. B 6,1. See also François-Xavier Romanacce, “Construction et fonction du récit dans la littérature martyriale”: 248 – 251.  Cf. Acta Perp. A 6,6.  Cf. e. g. the pun already mentioned on the literal meaning of Perpetua’s name, see Acta Perp. A 5,9.  In his homilies, Augustine expresses similar sentiments, cf. Serm. 280,1 / PL 38,1281): Quid enim gloriosius his feminis, quas viri mirantur facilius, quam imitantur? (“What, after all, could be more glorious than these women, whom men can more easily admire than imitate?”; translation by Edmund Hill)

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its Montanist elements and present the believers with a Catholic version to be read on the feast days of the two martyrs,⁵⁰⁷ this hypothesis cannot be accepted. As I have shown earlier, the Passio Perpetuae is not a purely Montanist document in need of a Catholic revision.⁵⁰⁸ Furthermore, as documented by G. A. Guazzelli, the use of the Acta during the liturgy on the feast days of the martyrs in the first five centuries at least has not been proven. It is apparent from the content of their sermons that Augustine and his disciples delivered their sermons having read the original Passio and not the Acta. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily imply that the primary motivation behind the creation of the Acta was not the need to eliminate the Passio Perpetuae from church liturgy and substitute it with a cleansed version, but rather that the reasons and incentives for this purification must be sought elsewhere. Recent considerations by G. A. Guazzelli in which he relates the creation of the Acta to Augustine’s attempts at reinterpretation of the Passio Perpetuae may provide a plausible hypothesis to explain this purification.⁵⁰⁹ In his tract on the soul, Augustine sought to explain two uncomfortable aspects of Perpetua’s account in particular: her intervention on behalf of her dead brother, and her transformation into a man in her fourth vision, in which she fights the Egyptian. Both of these episodes are absent from the Acta: the vision of Dinocrates is omitted completely, while the combat against the Egyptian is merely mentioned in passing by the editor, without any further details.⁵¹⁰ In his sermons, Augustine attempted to portray the feminine side of the two martyrs, while interpreting their masculine characteristics as the work of the “manly spirit” of Christ. The same tendency is evident in the Acta too: on the one hand, the family situation of the two martyrs is normalized by the treatment it gets from the author, while on the other, the reversal of the social hierarchy as reflected in Perpetua’s confrontations with her father is partially maintained, as exemplified by the father’s antics and responses, which are clearly effeminate in the Acta as well. Perpetua’s dominant position is, however, interpreted in accord with the Augustinian tradition. Her repudiation of the family serves “the greater glory”,⁵¹¹ as Perpetua “whose eyes were already turned to heaven” (iam in caelis oculos suos habens),⁵¹² could not “consider as parents such who do not wish to

 Cf. e.g. Paul Monceaux, Historie littéraire, vol. 1, 82; Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy & “New Visions”, 103.  For a similar view, cf. Jacqueline Amat, “Introduction”: 269.  Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, “Gli ‘Acta brevia sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’”: 34‒35.  Cf. Acta Perp. A 7,2; cf. also Acta Perp. B 7,2.  Cf. Augustine, Serm. 281,2 / PL 38,1284.  Cf. Acta Perp. B 6,3.

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know the creator of all”;⁵¹³ such parents are merely “workers of iniquity” (Matt 7,23; Luke 13,27), whom Perpetua, following the example of the New Testament, had to banish.⁵¹⁴ Furthermore, the structural composition of the Acta, including the return to the trial-transcript style, the absence of the prologue, the minimization of the narrative components and visions in particular; this may all be viewed as the editor’s response to a possible (and undesirable) reading of the Passio Perpetuae in Donatist terms. Augustine was also aware of this threat and incorporated a number of anti-Donatist barbs in his sermons dedicated to Perpetua and Felicity. And finally, the Acta also echo one of the central tenets of Augustine’s homilies, which would be adopted by nearly the entire later tradition. When Perpetua answers her father that “she is a Christian and obeys the authority of her name to be perpetual” (Christiana sum, et nominis mei sequor auctoritatem, ut sim perpetua),⁵¹⁵ we can detect in this pun, which is a stock one in Augustine’s sermones,⁵¹⁶ the source of the later allegorical interpretation of the names of the women martyrs which Augustine and other homilists would strictly follow. Besides, as J. N. Bremmer has recently pointed out, in the newly discovered Augustine Sermo 282auct., there appear two additional phrases that are also contained in the text of the Acta. ⁵¹⁷ In view of the gravitas that the Augustinian interpretation of the Passio Perpetuae had (this authority is attested by the subsequent North African homilies on Perpetua and Felicity), the hypothesis comes to mind that the Acta Perpetuae may have been written in North Africa at some

 Ibidem: Non agnosco parentes, creatorem omnium ignorantes […].  Cf. Acta Perp. A 7,6.  Acta Perp. A 5,9; cf. also Acta Perp. B 5,5: Christiana sum, et ut merear esse perpetua, in Christi nominis confessione permaneo. For translation see above, note 477 on p. 102.  Cf. Christine Mohrmann, “Das Wortspiel in den augustinischen Sermones”: 327‒330. Given Augustine’s predilection for similar puns involving the meaning of proper names, we may be justified in believing that Augustine’s sermons were the editor’s inspiration behind the puns in the Acta Perpetuae. The converse, i. e. that Augustine borrowed the pun from the Acta Perpetuae seems unlikely, considering the further occurrences of puns in other Augustinian sermons (e.g. […] vincente Vincentio, ille quidem vincebat […]; […] primus Primus etc.; cf. Christine Mohrmann, “Das Wortspiel in den augustinischen Sermones”: 328‒329); cf. also Elena Martin, “Commemoratio, Representation”: 38 – 39. In a similar vein, cf. already Paul Monceaux, Histoire littéraire, vol. 1, 78. In contrast, Jan N. Bremmer, “Felicitas”: 38 – 39, favours the hypothesis that Augustine knew Acta Perp. and borrowed the pun from this work.  Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano, “Perpetua’s Passions: A Brief Introduction”: 5; Jan N. Bremmer, “Felicitas”: 38; cf. Augustine, Serm. 282auct. 6,2: in uteri onere = Acta Perp. B 9,2: post onus uteri coronam martyrii perceptura; Augustine, Serm. 282auct. 6,3: virilis virtus = Acta Perp. B 9,2: virili virtuti. Cf. also Isabella Schiller, Dorothea Weber and Clemens Weidmann, “Sechs neue Augustinuspredigten”: 253, note 65.

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point after 420. If the Acta Perpetuae do also respond to some of the Donatist martyr texts with their echoes of the Passio Perpetuae (e. g. Passio Marculi, Passio Isaac et Maximiani) or, more generally, to the Donatist schism in North Africa, we could then narrow the dating down to circa 420 – 450. The author could have been someone well-versed in the Augustinian exegesis of the Passio Perpetuae, someone who, in composing the Acta Perpetuae, wanted to produce a text that would take into account the Augustinian normalization of the more problematic parts of the Passio Perpetuae, while replacing the original Passio with a version more compatible with the contemporary theological and social conventions, in accord with the interpretation of the Hipponian bishop. Even though this hypothesis may appear plausible, we are still in the dark as to the exact genesis of the Acta, the motivation behind both versions, and their function in general. Of the two versions, the one closer to the Augustinian accents (the repeated pun involving the names of the two martyrs; the remark that the passion of Perpetua and Felicity non solum femineo sexui, sed etiam virili virtuti praebebat exemplum; or the specific linguistic parallels with Augustine’s sermons) seems to be Acta Perpetuae B. However, this version is also more marked by various hagiographic clichés than its counterpart, and the titulature given to the martyrs (the repeated use of epithets beatus or sanctus)⁵¹⁸ also points to a later date of composition. In contrast, version A is the more austere in terms of content, and follows the pre-text more closely. Based on the above, it appears that the primary objective of Acta Perpetuae A was to normalize the contents of the original Passio Perpetuae, which the author of this version of the Acta was directly working from. Conversely, the author of Acta Perpetuae B likely used the already existing recension A as the pre-text in writing his adaptation, and his motivation may have been to embellish the text rhetorically and make both its language and its style more congruent with the literary conventions of the established hagiography. As to J. N. Bremmer’s repeatedly proposed hypothesis⁵¹⁹ that some of the details contained in the Acta but absent from the Passio Perpetuae (e. g. the interrogation of the martyrs described above) appear authentic and hence the Acta should not be denied historical authenticity, this theory cannot be ruled out but has a number of weak points. Looking closely at both versions, it is apparent

 See above, p. 104.  Cf. Jan N. Bremmer, “Het martelaarschap van Perpetua en Felicitas,” Hermeneus 78 (2006): 128‒137; idem, “rf. P. Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter oder Bilder des Bösen im frühem afrikanischen Christentum. Ein Versuch zur Passio sanctarum Perpetua et Felicitatis, Berlin – New York 20042,” Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2006.01.34 [on-line, quote from 16 April 2011]. Available at: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2006/2006 – 01– 34.html; idem, “Felicitas”.

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that the details or information that Bremmer refers to also appear fairly frequently in other martyr narratives but were not included in the hybrid structure of the Passio, whose composition was largely dictated by the “own words” of the martyrs. The interrogation of the martyrs before the Roman magistrate that Bremmer quotes is a good case in point. The questions of the interrogator as well as the answers of the future martyrs are so imbued with stereotype in the Acta, and so similar to the descriptions of interrogations that we can find in other martyr acts (which is one of the reasons why Bremmer can claim that they sound authentic),⁵²⁰ that the suspicion arises that this passage was a calculated insertion made by the compiler of the Acta, who did not want to deprive his audiences of this stock element of martyr acts to which they were accustomed. Also, the interrogation of Felicity, which takes up a considerable portion of recension A, gives rise to the impression that it may have been incorporated as a sort of counterpoise to rebalance the overall preoccupation of the Passio Perpetuae with Perpetua. This passage thus may have tried to accommodate the audience, who must have found it curious at least that Felicity should have so little of the Passio devoted to her. Why, the audiences must have asked, is the second protagonist, whose name is written in the very title of the narrative, so much marginalized in the text? Further still, the references to physical punishment that the martyrs were subjected to during the interrogation by the proconsul (the men were flogged; the women smacked in the face) can be understood as adhering to the conventions of the genre and as normalization of what was another blank space in the Passio Perpetuae – for such dramatic descriptions of torture meted out at interrogations often formed the core narrative part of martyr acts, and the audiences were accustomed to hearing them.⁵²¹ The efforts of the editor (or editors) of the Acta Perpetuae to suppress thoroughly all the innovative and unsettling features of the Passio Perpetuae, which in fact already began with the anonymous editor as early as the beginning of the 3rd century, reflect the tension which I characterized by the terms tradition and innovation at the heading of this chapter. The Passio Perpetuae was in itself an innovative text, since it was without precedent both in the context of its time and the later early Christian literature. Notwithstanding the efforts to normalize and explain away its innovative features, the popularity of this work within the early

 The interrogation of the martyrs before the Roman magistrate is the core passage common to almost all martyrological narratives, particularly those that were composed on the acta model (Acta Scillitanorum, Acta Iustini, etc.).  Of the earlier texts, let us at least mention the Passio Mariani et Iacobi; of the later texts, cf. for example the Passio Abitinensium or the Donatist passiones in general.

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church was such that the very innovativeness would give rise to a tradition in its own right and a paradigm for later martyr literature.

Conclusion The aim of this book was to trace the reinterpretations of the North African martyr text Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis in the literature of the early church from the time of its composition in the early decades of the 3rd century up to the 5th century, when the interest in this narrative culminated, inasfar as this can be judged from the extant sources. The outer limit of our investigation, the fifth century, closely associated with the figure of Augustine, delimits a symbolic point of break after which the memories of Perpetua, Felicity, and their fellow martyrs start to fade in the literary memory, only to re-emerge in the early Middle Ages, changed and reshaped, not only in various martyrologies,⁵²² but also later in Jacobus de Voragine’s the Golden Legend. ⁵²³ The first part of this book begins with an outline of the historical context of the earliest martyr literature and then examines the Passio Perpetuae as the pretext for its later adaptations, recapitulating the individual stages in the evolving understanding and interpretation of the text as these unfolded in the scholarship of the last century. Those facts that can be stated with some degree of probability can be summarised in the following points: 1) The Passio Perpetuae was written shortly after the events it recounts, perhaps between 203 and 205. 2) The text is made up of three linguistically and stylistically distinct parts. This in principle seems to confirm the claim of the anonymous editor that the narrative contains the very words of the martyrs Perpetua and Saturus, complemented by an account written by the editor himself. Although it is certain that the wording of the text as we have it now was modified by the anony-

 Cf. van Beek, 162*–166*; Jonathan P. Conant, “Europe and the African Cult of Saints”; on the reception of Pass. Perp. in medieval martyrologies in the British Isles see Erin A. Ronsse, Rhetoric of Martyrs. Transmission and Reception History of the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity. For a summary of essential points of Pass. Perp. that had a bearing on the later lives of saints cf. Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biographies, 197.  Cf. Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea vulgo Historia Lombardica dicta, 173 (De sancto Saturnino, Perpetua, Felicitate et aliis sociis). Another reworking of the story of Perpetua and Felicity is the remarkable Middle High German text Buoch von den heilgen megden und frowen, written in the Lichtenthal monastery about 1460, which survived as a manuscript only, see Julia Weitbrecht, “Maternity and Sainthood in the Medieval Perpetua Legend,” in Perpetua’s Passions: 150 – 166. Both the reworking in the Golden Legend and the Middle High German adaptation draw predominantly on the Acta Perpetuae, which was the preferred version of Perpetua story in the Middle Ages (cf. also 41 preserved manuscripts containing the Acta Perpetuae vs. 9 manuscripts containing the Passio Perpetuae, as indicated by Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 442).

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mous editor and hence hardly contains the authentic ipsissima verba of the two martyrs as they wrote them down “in their own hand”, based on the evidence available to us, we cannot consider the text to be fictitious or forged. The visions in Perpetua’s and Saturus’ sections of the narrative also appear to be authentic. 3) The anonymous editor, who probably eyewitnessed the events, was not Tertullian of Carthage. That fact that the editor was an eyewitness does not necessarily imply that his passages of the text correspond verbatim to the actual events. 4) Of the two Greek and Latin versions that have survived, the Latin version is to be considered primary, and the Greek one to be a translation, which probably existed by the end of the third century already and may have not been based on the particular Latin version that is available to us today. 5) The Passio Perpetuae is not a Montanist document and cannot therefore be viewed through the lens of the subsequent schematic categorization into “orthodox” and “heretic” (Montanist). The Passio Perpetuae contains a number of elements which defied the contemporary social, gender, and theological hierarchies, and these potentially subversive features are dealt with in the second part of this book. In the text, Perpetua is accorded social and spiritual (theological) authority that on the one hand radically challenged the traditional status a young woman of that time would have had, as well as her anchoring in the network of social and familial bonds, especially as far as patria potestas was concerned. On the other hand, Perpetua exemplified the extraordinary power martyrs had within the still unrigid hierarchy of the church on its way to becoming institutionalized. Although similar examples of this power of martyrs can be found in the extant early Christian martyr narratives, and is also attested by several references in Tertullian’s works, in the Passio Perpetuae these examples appear both to an exceptional extent and are given a very clear articulation. The gamut of these spiritual gifts goes far beyond the charismata known from the previous tradition (prophetic visions; the presence of Christ in the martyrs and their close contact with him; or martyrs’ intercessory powers through which believers beg for the forgiveness of their own sins), and some of the aspects can be described as unprecedented. This applies not only to Perpetua’s implicitly indicated power to settle disputes between high church dignitaries, but above all to the fact that through the power of her intercessory prayers she was able to commute the posthumous punishment of her late pagan brother. The Passio Perpetuae thus simultaneously incorporated potentially revolutionary aspects from two areas. In the social realm, the Passio clearly articulated

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a Christian identity (Christianus sum), defining it at the same time through a radical repudiation of its non-Christian or earthly correlate, which essentially comprised all the traditional familial and social bonds that had to be dissolved if the Christian believer were to embrace the family of God’s faithful. Perpetua’s case also demonstrated that the heretofore strictly defined, society-imposed roles were no longer applicable to this community of believers in which death by martyrdom is seen as a rebirth into the true life. This reversal of traditional values is reflected in the realm of gender as well: a woman honoured by God with the crown of martyrdom could not act in a purely feminine fashion, i. e. as the standards of antiquity saw femininity, but through her actions such a heroine takes on characteristics traditionally thought to be male in the world of antiquity. Ultimately, it is the martyr herself who steers and controls her own life and acquires power over others, albeit this restoration of self-autonomy and self-definition comes at the cost of sacrificing her own life in the imitation of Christ. In the theological realm, the Passio Perpetuae asserted the special authority and power of God’s witnesses, proving that the active presence of the Holy Spirit was not confined to biblical times but was very much alive even then, distributing spiritual gifts, including those which seemed new and unusual. To believers, the Passio further served as proof of the posthumous fate of those who kept their faith till the end, as well as proof of the glory that awaits them in heaven after their martyrdom, by the right side of Christ himself. It was in the Passio Perpetuae that the popular concept of the martyr who becomes alter Christus ⁵²⁴ and whose spiritual power is superior to the institutional authority of churchmen found its clear articulation. Just as Perpetua was able to change the posthumous fate of her dead brother through her prayers, so can Christians, who regularly commemorate her passion during liturgy when her story is read, hope to receive similar grace through an imitation of her life and martyrdom, which is itself an imitation of the passion of Christ (imitatio Christi). This revolutionary potential of the Passio Perpetuae with its implied subversion of the social, gender, and theological patterns did not go unnoticed by the readers or listeners. This is apparent from the lengths to which the later interpreters, to whom the last part of this book is dedicated, went to demonstrate to the Christian believers how to understand the text “correctly”. In the course of the preceding pages, I have frequently used terms such as manipulation, rereading, reinterpretation and normalization with reference to the later reception of the Passio Perpetuae. These words are not be understood in terms of their negative connotations only – the works of the later authors who in one way or another

 Cf. particularly Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs.

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dealt with the theme of Perpetua, Felicity, and their companions could just as well have been termed rewritings or adaptations⁵²⁵ that helped the recontextualized story to survive in centuries to come. The reinterpretation of the original Passio was a natural consequence of the changing times, and the end of the persecution of Christians was of course a fundamental milestone in this respect. “The time when a martyr’s death ceased to be a real life choice for the orthodox Christian called for heroes of a new kind, who had deserved their laurel ‘wreath of justice’ (corona iustitiae) not through a single act of self-sacrifice but rather through daily martyrdom (martyrium cottidianum) that consisted in strict asceticism,” as Jiří Šubrt has succinctly noted.⁵²⁶ This gradual shift can be seen rather clearly in the first phase of the reception of the Passio Perpetuae, which occurred as early as the Decian, Valerian, and Gallienus persecutions of Christians around the middle of the 3rd century. This was a time when Tertullian’s doctrine asserting that a martyr’s death is the pinnacle and consummation of a Christian’s life and that his or her soul will directly enter heaven after martyrdom still resonated strongly – a doctrine that Tertullian also defends on the basis of the Passio Perpetuae. During this period, the Passio Perpetuae played a key role, at least in the history of North African hagiography. The extent of the influence and veneration our text enjoyed some fifty years after it was composed is indicated by the Passio Montani et Lucii and the Passio Mariani et Iacobi. Though these martyr accounts acknowledge the original text only tacite, they nevertheless follow the Passio Perpetuae closely in terms of their structure, content, and lexicon. However, this was also a time when we first hear voices trying to frame the cult of the martyrs in an institutional setting within the still-forming church hierarchy. Without (yet) addressing anyone in particular, these voices tried to regulate the veneration in which the believers held Perpetua and her story. In his Vita Cypriani, Pontius firmly clings to the principle formulated by Cyprian himself, namely that a bishop is superior to martyrs within the church hierarchy, particularly in consideration of the fact that Perpetua and the other Christians in whose honour the Passio Perpetuae was written were mere catechumens. While in the Greek East the esteem of both Perpetua, Felicity and their story in the fourth and early fifth centuries is clearly witnessed by the successful spreading of their cult without any traceable need to reinterpret their passio,

 Cf. e. g. Julia Weitbrecht, “Maternity and Sainthood”: 152, who speaks about “hagiographical réécriture”.  Jiří Šubrt, “Ecclesia martyrum”: 59 – 60.

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the change that the cult of martyrs underwent in the Latin West following the Constantinian turn is best exemplified in that phase of the reception of the Passio Perpetuae which is associated with Augustine and his successors. The chief issue for the Hipponian bishop is the fact that martyrdom is at this point no longer the perfect consummation of the life of a Christian believer (particularly in view of the Donatist martyrs), but the tradition of martyrdom of the first three centuries is still very much alive, as it is continually re-presented (repraesentatio from Pass. Perp. 1,1) at regular liturgical readings of the martyrs’ acta, and commemorated on the feast days of the martyrs. The original exemplary function of martyr narratives, however, had become counterproductive by Augustine’s times. Perpetua’s subversion of the traditional, and in many ways even more strictly defined or codified, hierarchies was at that time no less valid and hence the “message” of the text called for a reinterpretation that would make it conform to the new era and its changed ideal of sainthood. Augustine himself is troubled by two problematic and potentially subversive aspects of the Passio Perpetuae. These are Perpetua’s spiritual power, which allows her to intervene effectively on behalf of the dead, and her rejection of most standard social norms. Whereas the first aspect is, at least in Augustine’s understanding, a matter of subtle theological speculation (even though it touches on the more general theme of the relationship between an individual lay person and authority / church), the second aspect is one that primarily concerns ordinary believers. That is why in his erudite tract on the nature of the soul, Augustine, by means of a speculative interpretation of the relevant passage, tries to ward off the theological threat implied in Perpetua’s proclaimed power to change the posthumous fate of her dead brother. In his Sermones ad populum, on the other hand, he concerns himself with the normalization of the social issues of the Passio, and this subject area also provides him with a much wider scope for his reinterpretations. Though his sermons do not lack a polemic settling of scores with the Pelagians and Donatists, his chief aim is to remove martyrdom from the realm of the personal experience of a believer who is exceptionally close to God, to the more universal realm of theology, where it is of little relevance what special gifts this or that martyr was endowed with, but rather that this endowment happened in Christ and for his glory. Martyrdom was to Augustine a closed chapter of history, and the martyrs themselves are presented as peerless titans from a bygone era, whose acts the rest of us in our insignificance cannot emulate – all we can do is wonder in amazement and adore the martyrs’ acts from afar, for in these acts the power of Christ came to be manifested in extraordinary ways. Augustine’s authority influenced his North African disciples, who essentially reiterate the motifs Augustine had introduced in their own sermons dedicated to

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Perpetua and her fellow martyrs. This path of reinterpretation that the Passio travelled over nearly three centuries culminates in the text that is traditionally designated as the Acta Perpetuae, which has survived in two different versions. This text has not so far been systematically examined, and its function and the circumstances of its writing have been veiled in many unknowns. In the final chapters of this book, I tried to offer a possible approach to this text, as well as some answers to the questions above. The function of the Acta Perpetuae is, I believe, best illuminated in the course of a systematic examination of the literary reflection of the Passio Perpetuae. The individual texts that directly or indirectly reflect and acknowledge the Passio Perpetuae are, in my opinion, to be understood as partial stages of a dynamic process that is itself predominantly shaped by changes in historical and theological paradigms that these partial stages, in turn, try to mirror. The aim of each of these stages then was to present to the contemporary audiences a text that would not only meet their horizon of expectation but also conform to the ideal of sainthood at that time. From this perspective, the Acta Perpetuae can be seen as the culmination of these efforts, and its purpose as the integration of all previous attempts at reinterpretation or normalization of the Passio Perpetuae. Given that fact that the Acta Perpetuae were cleansed of all the aspects which were already deemed problematic by Augustine, and also given that they contained certain formulations which also appear in Augustine’s sermons, we may hypothesize that the Acta Perpetuae (at least recension A, which is certainly older than recension B) were written by a disciple or follower of Augustine, well acquainted with his mentor’s interpretation of the Passio Perpetuae, around the middle of the 5th century. The principal incentive behind such an adaptation was to produce a text conforming to the theological and social standards of its time – and to consign the story of Perpetua, Felicity, and their fellow martyrs once and for all to the realm of admiranda, non imitanda.

A chronological outline of the reception of the Passio Perpetuae until the end of the 5th century 203: Between  and : Between  and : Ca. /:

Ca.  (??) Ca. :

After :

After :

After : After : Around :

After : : End of the th century (?): Between  and  (?):

After : Before :

Perpetua, Felicity, and their companions are martyred in the Carthaginian amphitheatre. Latin version of the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis compiled. Tertullian (An. ,) is the first author to explicitly mention Perpetua and allude to the Passio Perpetuae. References to Perpetua and her companions (including lexical and motivic loans from the Passio Perpetuae) in the martyr narratives Passio Montani et Lucii and Passio Mariani et Iacobi; and in Pontius’ Vita Cypriani; all these texts originated in North Africa. Composition of the Greek translation of the Passio Perpetuae, possibly in Carthage. The names of Perpetua and Felicity appear in the Roman liturgical calendar Depositio martyrum; their cult spreads from Africa to Rome. Perpetua’s first vision (the ascent of the ladder) from the Passio Perpetuae depicted in the mural painting in the catacombs of Domitilla in Rome. Perpetua depicted on the sarcophagus of Quintana de Bureba (near the present-day Burgos, Spain); the knowledge of the Passio Perpetuae spreads to Hispania. Allusions to the Passio Perpetuae in the Donatist Passio Marculi. Allusions to the Passio Perpetuae in the Donatist Passio Isaac et Maximiani. Perpetua and Felicity mentioned in the Greek source of the Martyrologium Syriacum, their cult is firmly rooted in the Greek East. Explicit reference to Perpetua and her first vision in the Greek Passio Polyeucti, written in the East. Augustine’s mention of Perpetua and Felicity in his Sermo A (Sermo de honorandis vel contemnendis parentibus, ). A quote from the prologue of the Greek translation of the Passio Perpetuae appears in the Greek Passio Procopii. Augustine delivers three (extant) homilies dedicated to Perpetua and Felicity (Sermones  – auct. In natali Perpetuae et Felicitatis), in which he also comments on specific details from the Passio Perpetuae. Augustine mentions Perpetua and her martyrdom in his Enarrat. Ps. ,. Vincentius Victor’s (lost) tract quotes and interprets Perpetua’s vision of Dinocrates.

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After :

Ca. :

Ca. :

Ca.  (?): Ca. : After  (?): After  (?): th century: th century: End of the th century: End of the th century:

Augustine debates extensively with Vincentius Victor over the interpretation of Perpetua’s vision of Dinocrates in the extant tract De natura et origine animae. Quodvultdeus, influenced by Augustine, interprets selected episodes from the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity in his Sermo de tempore barbarico I, . Possidius lists three of Augustine’s “tracts” written on the occasion of the feast day of Perpetua and Felicity (De natale [sanctarum] Perpetuae et Felicitatis tractatus tres) in his compilation of Augustine’s published works (Indiculus) attached to his Vita Augustini. Anonymous short tract (Quodvultdeus’?) [Tractatus] De SS. Perpetua et Felicitate. Perpetua and Felicity feature in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum. Composition of the Acta Perpetuae (?). Pseudo-Augustinian sermon (extant) dedicated to Perpetua and Felicity (Sermo A). Pseudo-Augustinian sermon (extant) dedicated to Perpetua and Felicity (Sermo ). Prosper Tiro of Aquitaine mentions Perpetua and Felicity in his Epitoma chronicon. Victor of Vita (Hist. pers. I,,) mentions the burial of the bodies of Perpetua and Felicity in the Basilica maiorum at Carthage. Perpetua and Felicity are depicted on the wall mosaics in the Archbishop’s chapel in Ravenna, Italy.

A list of abbreviations of the books, journals and book series used AASS AASS Nov. AnBoll Aug AugStud BAGB BHG BHL CCSL CH CIL CNS CRAI CSEL GCS HTR JAAR JECS JRS JTS LF MGH, Auct. ant. NedTT NF NS Perpetua’s Passions

PL PLS Příběhy II

RBén REAug REL RHE RQ RSLR SacEr

Acta Sanctorum Acta Sanctorum Novembris Analecta Bollandiana Augustinianum Augustinian Studies Bulletin de l’association Guillaume Budé Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina Church History Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum Cristianesimo nella storia Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte Harvard Theological Review Journal of the American Academy of Religion Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal of Roman Studies Journal of Theological Studies Listy filologické Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi Nederlands theologisch tijdschrift Neue Folge New Series Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano, eds., Perpetua’s Passions. Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ). Patrologia Latina Patrologiae Latinae Supplementum Petr Kitzler, ed., Příběhy raně křesťanských mučedníků II. Výbor z latinské a řecké martyrologické literatury . a . století (Praha: Vyšehrad, ). Revue bénédictine Revue d’études augustiniennes (et patristiques) Revue des études latines Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa Sacris erudiri: Jaarboek voor Godsdienstwetenschappen

126

SC SMSR Spec StPatr TLL van Beek

VC WS ZPE

A list of abbreviations of the books, journals and book series used

Sources chrétiennes Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni Speculum Studia Patristica Thesaurus Linguae Latinae Cornelius I. M. I. van Beek, ed., Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. Volumen I: Textum Graecum et Latinum ad fidem codicum MSS. edidit C. I. M. I. van Beek. Accedunt Acta brevia SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Noviomagi: Dekker et Van De Vegt, ). Vigiliae Christianae Wiener Studien Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

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General index Achilles 49 Acta Iustini 4, 115 acta martyrum 3 – 6, 68, 102, 115 Acta Pauli et Theclae 22, 40, 108 acta proconsularia 3 Acta Scillitanorum 2 – 5, 27, 78, 105, 115 Adam 38 afterlife 67 f., 71 f., 109 Alexandria 15 alter Christus 32, 119 ancient novel 5, 40, 59 apocalyptic tradition 12, 72 Apuleius 39 A ᾿ ρτοτυρῖται 34 asceticism 87, 92, 120 Aspasius 39, 54 athletae Christi 1 Augustine 1, 11, 21 f., 39, 49, 62, 79 – 98, 105, 109 – 114, 117, 121 f. authenticity 6, 9 f., 13, 15, 17, 21 f., 27, 53, 84, 86, 93, 97, 114 f., 118 autobiography 7, 9 baptism 1, 33, 52, 82, 85 Basilica maiorum 23, 73 f., 91 Basnagius, Samuel 31 Bede, Saint 14, 94 f. Blandina 40 f. Book of Revelation 64 f., 71 f. Buoch von den heilgen megden und frowen 117 Burgos 76 Caecilius Capella 74 Callirhoe 59 Canon of the Mass 34 Caracalla 14 Carthage 7, 15, 17, 22 f., 26, 30, 33, 62, 73 – 75, 95, 118 Catholics 6, 30, 34, 82, 90 f., 106, 111 f. Celerinus 55 cento 97 Chaereas 59 Chariton 59

cheese 13, 33, 67 Christianus sum 4, 102, 119 Clement of Alexandria 13 commentarii 8 confessor 21, 51, 54 f. conserva 110 f. Council of Carthage in 397 11 Cyprian 1, 20 f., 23, 54 f., 65, 69 f., 75, 86, 120 Decius 65, 73, 106, 120 Delattre, Alfred-Louis 73 f. Depositio martyrum 14, 75 f., 78 Dermech 74 Devil 10, 45 f., 88, 97, 103, 106 dies natalis 11 Dinocrates 10, 22, 39, 45, 53, 67, 72, 82 – 85, 108, 112 Diocletian 106 Domitilla catacombs in Rome 75 Donatists 6, 75, 90 – 92, 106 f., 109 f., 113 – 115, 121 doxology 11 dreams 13, 32, 53, 66 – 68, 103, 110 ecstasy 30 f., 95 Edict of Milan 73 Egyptian 10, 26, 45 f., 50, 103, 108 f., 112 Epiphanius 34 Erfurt 82 eroticism 58 f. eschatology 57, 71 Eucharist 33, 55 Eulalia, Saint 86 Euripides 15, 59 Eusebius of Caesarea 78 Eve 89, 93 – 95 fabulari 33, 44 Falconilla 54 Fasti Vindobonenses priores 14 Felix of Thibiuca 79 femininity 39, 48 f., 60 – 62, 87, 89 f., 94, 96, 112, 119

150

General index

feminization 46, 49, 60 f. Flavianus 20, 66 forgery 22 Gallienus 27, 65, 100 f., 120 gender studies 36, 38 Geta 14 gladiators 16, 50 f., 62, 67, 103 Golden Legend 117 Greek translation of the Passio Perpetuae 16, 24 – 29, 33, 64, 78 f., 99 f., 118 Hades 52, 64 Hadrumetum 74 Henchir-Thina 74 heresy 29 Hermas’ The Shepherd 13, 71 Hilarianus 16 Holstenius, Lucas 17, 23, 35 Holy Spirit 7, 11 f., 17, 28, 30 f., 51, 56 f., 60, 65, 69, 92, 119 Homer 49, 53 honey 33 hypomnemata 8 Iacob (martyr) 66 f. Ignatius of Antioch 21 imitatio Christi 32, 72, 119 Isaac (martyr) 109 Italy 75 Jerome 14, 20 John, Saint 65, 72 Judas Maccabaeus 83 Justin 4, 13 Lactantius 1 lapsi 53 Last Judgement 52, 64, 82 Lawrence of Rome 86 Leonidas 15 Lichtenthal 117 literary representation 36 liturgy 8, 11, 23, 54 f., 57 f., 91, 93, 100, 112, 119, 121 Maccabaean martyrs

5 f.

Manichaeans 90 Marcion 42 Marianus 66 f. Martyrium Carpi, Papyli et Agathonicae 27 Martyrium Lugdunensium 3, 13 Martyrium Polycarpi 3, 5, 13, 33 Martyrologium Bedae 14, 94 Martyrologium Hieronymianum 14, 74, 78 Martyrologium Syriacum 77 f. masculinity 37, 40, 47 – 51, 60– 62, 89 f., 112 masculinization 47 – 51, 60 – 62, 89 matrona Christi 10, 41 Mavilus / Maiulus 74 Maximilla 30 Mçidfa 23, 73 Melitene 77 metrical clausulae 18, 20, 22, 25 milk 13, 33, 46, 68, 96 Minicius Opimianus 16 Montanism 8, 17, 28 – 34, 38, 57, 62, 69, 90, 95, 105 f., 111 f., 118 Montanus 30, 66, 68 f. Monte Cassino 23 Morin, Germain 96 mos maiorum 8 Nartzalus 1 New Jerusalem 30 New Testament 5, 10, 13, 17, 21, 38, 113 Nicomedia 77 “noble death” 5 North Africa 1 – 3, 11, 15, 30, 34, 39, 42, 54, 56, 65 f., 68, 72, 76 – 79, 91, 93, 98 – 100, 105 f., 109, 113 f., 117, 120 Old Testament 51 ὁμιλέω 33 Optatus 39, 54 Origen 15 original sin 82, 92 f., 95 paradise 10, 52, 54, 62 – 66, 68, 71, 82, 92, 109 Παράκλητος 30 Passio Abitinensium 115 Passio Eupli 27

General index

Passio Isaac et Maximiani 114 Passio Marculi 114 Passio Mariani et Iacobi 3, 65, 72, 115, 120 Passio Montani et Lucii 20, 65, 72, 120 passiones 5 f., 11, 68 f., 71 f., 106 Passio Polyeucti 26, 77 f. Passio Procopii 26, 78 Paul, Saint 1, 21 f. Pelagians 90, 92, 121 persecution 6, 13, 15 f., 27, 38, 55, 65, 72 f., 101, 120 persuasion 48, 50 Phrygia 30 Pionios 21 Plautianus 14 Polycarp 13 Polyeuctus 77 f. Polyxena 59 Pomponius 20, 67 Pontius 20, 70, 72, 120 Possidius 82 potestas 43, 45, 118 Priam 49 Prisca 30 Procopius of Scythopolis 78 prophecy 13, 28, 30 – 32, 51, 53, 57, 95, 103, 110, 118 Prosper Tiro of Aquitaine 77 pseudo-Augustine 81, 93, 97 psychoanalysis 36 purgatory 83 Pythian Games 26 Quartillosia 66, 68 Quintana de Bureba 76 Quodvultdeus 93, 95 f. refrigeria 91 religio 4 repraesentatio 57 f., 121 Revocatus 8, 79, 101, 104, 110 f. Rome 8, 21, 23, 30, 75 f., 79, 97 Ruinart, Thierry 17 Saturninus 104

8, 63, 74, 77, 79, 101,

151

Saturus 10, 18, 20 f., 25 f., 39, 54, 56, 61, 63 f., 66 – 68, 70, 72 – 76, 79, 94, 101 f., 104, 107 – 110, 117 Sayda 74 Scilli 2 Scriptures 8, 11, 65, 83 – 85 Secundulus 8 Septimius Severus 14 f. sermo humilis 60 Severan persecution 15 sexuality 59, 87 Sfax 74 sine manu 43 social anthropology 36 soul 52, 64 f., 82, 86, 88, 109, 112, 120 f. Spain 75 f. Speratus 79 Stephen, Saint 5, 13, 74, 86 Synaxarium ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae 79 Synod of Hippo in 393 11, 91 termini technici 25 f. Tertullian 1 f., 15 – 19, 22 f., 26, 30 f., 33 f., 36, 40, 42, 51 f., 57, 62 – 65, 72, 74, 82, 99, 104, 111, 118, 120 Thaenae 74 f. Thecla 22 f., 40, 54, 77 Thuburbo Minus 79, 99 topoi 58, 60, 67, 104 [Tractatus] De SS. Perpetua et Felicitate 93, 96 f. Valerian 27, 65, 73, 99 f., 120 Valesius, Henricus 24, 30 Victoria, Saint 97 Victor of Vita 23, 75 Vigellius Saturninus 2 Vincentius Victor 82 f. visions 10, 12f., 16 – 18, 20f., 25 f., 28, 31–33, 35, 39, 41, 43–46, 50, 53 f., 56 f., 61– 68, 70 – 72, 76 – 78, 82 – 85, 88, 94 – 97, 101, 103, 108– 110, 112 f., 118 Vita Cypriani 3, 20, 65 f., 69 – 72, 120 voluntary martyrdom 72 f. voyeurism 58 Wolfenbüttel

96

Index locorum Bible Gen – 3,15 88 Joel – 3,1 – 2 18 Matt – 7,23 103, 113 Luke – 13,27 112 John – 16,24 18 Acts – 2,17 – 18 18, 32 1Cor – 9,24 – 27 1 Gal – 3,28 87, 95

Eph – 4,13 88, 95 Phil – 1,13 21 1Tim – 4,7 – 10 1 – 6,12 1 2Tim – 2,4 – 5 1 Phlm – 1 21 1John – 1,1.3 72 Rev – 6,9 65 – 7,9 – 14 64

Martyr Texts Acta Cypr. – 1 101 Acta Iust. – 1 101 Acta Max. – 2,4 1 Acta P. et Th. – 28 – 31 54 Acta Perp. A – 1 99 – 2,2 101 – 3,1 108 – 4,2 – 3 102, 108 – 4,5 108 – 5,2 – 5 110 – 5,3 102 – 5,7 102 – 5,8 102 – 5,9 102, 111, 113 – 6,1 103, 111 – 6,2 111

– 6,3 103 – 6,5 103, 111 – 6,6 103, 111 – 7,1 103 – 7,2 103, 112 – 7,2 – 3 108 – 7,3 103 – 7,6 113 – 9,2 103 – 9,3 104 Acta Perp. B – 1 99 – 2,2 101 – 3,6 – 7 101 – 4,2 – 3 102 – 5,3 102 – 5,5 102, 113 – 6,1 111 – 6,3 112 – 6,5 103 – 6,6 103

Index locorum

– 7,1 103 – 7,2 103, 108, 112 – 7,3 103 – 8,1 103 – 9,2 104, 113 Acta Scill. – 1 101 – 15 1 Acta Sebast. – 3,9 1 Mart. Apol. – 1 101 Mart. Carp. B – 3,5 – 6 33 Mart. Lugd. – V,1,17 1 – V,1,18.41 41 – V,1,23.27.41 33 – V,1,51.56 33 – V,1,53 – 56 41 – V,2,2 – 3 51 Mart. Pion. – 1,2 21 – 10,5 21 – 18,13 21 Mart. Polyc. – 2,2 33 – 4 36, 73 – 5,2 13 Pass. Donat. – 1 107 – 3 106 – 14 106 Pass. Is. Max. – 5 33 – 8 – 9 109 – 9 109 Pass. Mar. Iac. – 6,5 – 14 66 – 6,7 67 – 6,15 67 – 7,3 67 – 7,4 67 Pass. Marcul. – 1,1.3 107 – 5,5 106 – 8,2 – 4 109

Pass. Montan. – 1,1 69 – 3,4 31, 69 – 8,4 – 5 68 – 12,1 21 – 21,1 20 – 23,7 31, 69 Pass. Perp. –1 7 – 1,1 5, 12, 58, 121 – 1,2 69 – 1,3 31, 57 – 1,4 18 – 1,5 28, 31 – 1,6 12 – 1,15 72 –2 8 – 2,1 9, 110 f. – 2,1 (Greek version) – 2,1 – 3 8 – 2,2 9, 85 – 2,3 9, 20 – 3 – 10 8 – 3,2 49 – 3,3 43, 48 – 3,4 43 – 3,5 – 6 42 – 3,6 – 9 48 – 3,6 48 – 3,7 20 – 3,7 – 9 42 – 3,8 48 – 3,9 43, 45, 48 – 4,1 32, 53 – 4,2 33, 44, 53 – 4,3 – 4 66 – 4,3 – 7 88 – 4,5 10, 21, 73 – 4,8 63, 67 – 4,9 – 10 33 – 4,10 67 – 5 49 – 5,2 49 – 5,3 49 – 5,5 – 6 44 – 5,6 43, 85 – 6,3 16

79, 99

153

154

Index locorum

– 6,7 20 – 6,7 – 8 43 – 7,2 – 3 53 – 7,9 14, 45, 53 – 8,1 – 4 45 – 8,2 – 4 67 – 8,4 45, 54 – 9,1 52 – 9,2 44, 49 – 9,3 44, 50 – 10 50 – 10,1 20 – 10,2 67 – 10,7 45 f. – 10,8 68 – 10,14 46 – 10,15 11, 60 – 11 109 – 11,1 10, 20 – 11,9 63 – 12,3 68 – 13 54 – 13,1 – 5 39

– 13,4 25 – 13,5 – 8 109 – 13,8 63 – 15 42 – 15,6 33 – 16 19 – 16,1 50, 60 – 16,2 – 4 40 – 16,3 14 – 18,2 10, 41, 59 – 18,3 42, 52 – 18,4 – 7 40 – 18,5 50 – 18,6 51 – 19,1 18 – 20,1 – 9 95 – 20,2 59 – 20,4 59 – 20,8 95 – 21,2 52 – 21,9 – 10 70 – 21,10 51 – 21,11 11 f., 28, 69

Ancient, patristic and medieval texts and authors Ambrose of Milan – Off. – I,36,183 1 – Aux. [Ep. 75a] – 15 1 Augustine – Ad catholicos de secta Donatistarum – 19,49 110 – Enarrat. Ps. – 47,13 81 – Nat. orig. – I,10,12 22, 83 – 85 – II,10,14 82 f. – III,9,12 82 f. – IV,18,26 88 – Retract. – II,56 82 – Serm. 159 A (= Sermo de honorandis vel contemnendis parentibus) – 11 81

– Serm. 280 – 282 81 – Serm. 280 – 282auct. – Serm. 280 – 1 11, 87 f., 111 – 4 92, 95 – 6 91 f. – Serm. 281 – 1 87, 90 – 2 88 – 90, 112 – 3 89 – Serm. 282 – 2 89 – 3 86 – Serm. 282auct. – 2 89 – 6 86 – 6,2 113 – 6,3 113 – Serm. 313G 86

39, 82, 86

Index locorum

Chariton – Chaer. et Call. – V,3,9 59 CIL – VIII,4, 25037 74 – VIII,4, 25038 74 Concilium Carthaginiense a. 397 – CCSL 249,46 11 Concilium Hipponense a. 393 – CCSL 249,21 11 Cyprian – Ep. – 12,2 54 – 13,1 55 – 28,2,1 21 – 39,1 – 2 55 – 39,3 54 Depositio martyrum MGH Auct. ant. IX, Chronica Minora 1, 71 76 Euripides – Hec. – 568 – 570 59 Eusebius – Hist. eccl. – VI,1,1 15 Homer – Il. XXIV,477 – 479 49 Jacobus de Voragine – Legenda aurea vulgo Historia Lombardica dicta – 173 117 Jerome – Vir. ill. – 68 20 Martyrologium Hieronymianum – AASS Nov. II,1, 29 79 – AASS Nov. II,2, 132 79 Martyrologium Syriacum – AASS Nov. II,1, LIV 77 Pontius – Vita Cypr. – 1,1 70 – 1,2 69 f. – 12,3 – 9 70 – 18,4 70 – 19,1 69

155

Possidius – Operum sancti Augustini elenchus, 10,6 82 Prosper Tiro – Epit. chron., MGH Auct. ant. IX, 434 77 Pseudo-Augustine – Serm. 394 81, 93, 123 – Serm. 394A 81, 93 – 95, 97 – 1 94 – 3 94 – Serm. Mai 66 97 – 1 97 Quodvultdeus – De tempore barbarico I 93, 95 – 5 93 – 5,2 95 – 5,3 96 Spartianus – Sept. Sev. 17,1 15 Synaxarium ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae – AASS Prop. ad Nov., 440 79 – AASS Prop. ad Nov., 536 79 Tertullian – An. 17 f., 62 – 65 – 5 – 9 82 – 7,3 – 4 64 – 55,4 52, 62 – 55,5 71 – Apol. – 15,5 62 – 50,16 53 – Bapt. – 17,5 22, 40 – Marc. – V,8,6 18 – Mart. 51, 62 – 1,2 52 – 1,6 52 – 3,3 1 – Nat. – I,8,1 4 – Or. – 10,3 18 – Scap. – 3,1 16 – 3,5 74

156

Index locorum

– Praescr. – 8,11 18 – Prax. – 1,5.7 57 – Res. – 63,7 18 – Scorp. 65 – 12,9 – 10 65

– Spect. – 30 2 [Tractatus] De SS. Perp. et Fel. – 1 96 – 2 96 – 6 96 Victor of Vita – Hist. pers. I,3,9 23, 75

93, 96, 123

Index of modern names Aigrain, René 79 Amat, Jacqueline 2, 10, 13, 15, 18, 23 f., 27, 32, 66, 68, 98 – 100, 104 f., 107, 109 f., 112 Ameling, Walter 8, 10, 21, 71 Arjava, Antti 43 Aronen, Jakko 26, 66, 69 f. Aubé, Benjamin 77 Auerbach, Erich 60 Bähnk, Wiebke 1, 19, 62, 64 Barnes, Timothy D. 4, 14 – 17, 19, 31, 62, 72 f. Barton, Carlin A. 50 Bastiaensen, Antoon A. R. 2 f., 18, 44, 63 – 65 Baumeister, Theofried 34, 70, 76 van Bavel, Tarcisius J. 91 f. van Beek, Cornelius I. M. I. 2 f., 14, 17 f., 23 f., 56, 77, 79, 99, 105, 107, 117 Beretta, Chiara 54 Berger, Teresa 33 Berschin, Walter 70 Biale, David 52 Binder, Timon 1 Birley, Anthony R. 15, 73 Bisbee, Garry A. 4 Blank, Josef 29 den Boeft, Jan 8, 19, 39, 49, 53, 84, 99 Børresen, Kari Elisabeth 90 Braun, René 18, 20, 35 Bremmer, Jan N. 4, 9 f., 14 – 16, 19, 21, 23, 26 f., 33, 35, 37, 39 f., 49, 53 f., 58 f., 64, 66, 68, 71, 84, 98 – 100, 107, 111, 113 – 115 Brent, Allen 21 Burini, Clara 33, 44 Burkitt, Francis Crawford 34 Burrus, Virginia 59 Butler, Rex D. 10, 19, 29 – 32, 34, 56 f., 84, 90, 95, 98, 112 Byron, Gay L. 45 Cacitti, Remo

75, 106

Campos, Julio 20 Cantarella, Eva 38, 41, 43 Castelli, Elisabeth A. 37, 43, 46, 53, 58 Ciccarese, Maria Pia 71, 83 Clark, Elizabeth Ann 38 Clark, Gillian 38 Cloke, Gillian 47 Cobb, Stephanie L. 36 f., 47 f., 50, 60 f., 89 Coleman, Kathleen M. 40 Conant, Jonathan P. 75 f., 78 f., 117 Cooper, Kate 41 Corsini, Eugenio 12, 46, 54 Cox Miller, Patricia 33 Dassmann, Ernst 52 Davies, Stephen J. 40 Dehandschutter, Boudewijn 6 Dekkers, Eligius 27 Delehaye, Hippolyte 3, 74, 78 f., 98, 100, 104 Delierneux, Nathalie 47 Divjak, Johannes 23 Dodds, Eric Robertson 9, 13 Dolbeau, François 2 f., 14, 29, 81, 93 – 97 Dölger, Franz Joseph 46, 64, 82 f., 88 von Dörnberg, Burkhard 13, 16, 68 Dronke, Peter 21, 41 – 43, 83, 85 Duchesne, Louis 24 f. Dulaey, Martine 110 Dunn, Geoffrey D. 16 Duval, Yvette 23, 74 Edwards, Mark 29 Ehrman, Bart D. 22 Elm von der Osten, Dorothee van den Eynde, Sabine 12

90 – 93

Farrell, Joseph 3, 7, 9, 34, 37, 55, 64, 98, 100 Fontaine, Jacques 18, 60 Formisano, Marco 9 f., 14 f., 22 – 24, 27, 35, 37, 41, 113 Franchi de’Cavalieri, Pio 25, 28, 66 Frankfurter, David 59

158

Index of modern names

von Franz, Marie-Louise 36 Fredouille, Jean-Claude 2 Frend, William H. C. 2, 41, 54 f., 106 Freudenberger, Rudolf 15 Fridh, Åke 18, 20, 25 f. Gaddis, Michael 109 de Gaiffier, Baoudouin 11 Garbarino, Collin 92 Gärtner, Hans-Armin 5 Gieseler, Johann Karl Ludwig 31 Gillette, Gertrude 88 Gonzalez, Eliezer 71 Gounelle, Rémi 27 Graf, Fritz 67 Grasmück, Ernst Ludwig 106 Grig, Lucy 11 Guazzelli, Giuseppe Antonio 56, 76, 85, 95, 98, 100, 112 Habermehl, Peter 10, 20, 22, 35, 41, 43, 45 f., 58, 100, 110, 114 Halporn, James W. 12, 32 f., 57, 98 – 100, 108 von Harnack, Adolf 15 Harris, Rendel J. 24 Harris, William V. 53 Harrison, Verna E. F. 47 Hauschild, Theodor 76 Heffernan, Thomas J. 3, 8 f., 14, 16, 22 – 24, 28, 32, 35, 37, 40, 43, 45, 56, 59, 64, 85, 117 van Henten, Jan Willem 6 Hernández Lobato, Jesús 58 Hill, Edmund 11, 87 – 92, 111 Hirschmann, Vera-Elisabeth 30, 38 Hofmann, Johannes 21, 38 Hogrefe, Arne 106 Hoppenbrouwers, Henricus A. M. 51, 104 Hunink, Vincent 10, 84 Irwin, Eleanor 46 Iser, Wolfgang IX Janssen, Harry 51 Jensen, Michael P. 50 f. Jurissevich, Elena 66, 71

Kaczmarkowski, Michał 66 Karfíková, Lenka 80, 82 Kimber Buell, Denise 4 Kitzler, Petr 1, 6, 16, 19, 29, 52, 64, 81 f. Klawiter, Frederick C. 38 Kleinberg, Aviad 7, 12, 17, 21, 41, 43, 96 Klostergaard Petersen, Anders 48 Konstan, David 5 Kotula, Tadeusz 39 Kraemer, Ross S. 9 Lamirande, Émilien 7 Lampe, Peter 30 Lanata, Giuliana 4 Lander, Shira L. 9 Laporte, Jean 38 Le Goff, Jacques 83 Leal, Jerónimo 19, 54 Lefkowitz, Mary R. 46 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm Lods, Marc 51 Lomanto, Valeria 66 Lotman, Jurij M. 36

35

Margoni-Kögler, Michael 86 Mariani, Bonaventura 78 f. Marjanen, Antti 47 f. Markschies, Christoph 29, 31, 34 Martin, Elena 87, 113 Maspero, Giulio 19 Matthews, Shelly 5 Mazzucco, Clementina 27, 38 f., 47, 50 f. McGowan, Andrew 4, 33, 52 McKechnie, Paul 21 Mechlinsky, Lutz 86 Merkelbach, Reinhold 1 Merkt, Andreas 9, 12, 17, 26, 39, 54, 64, 83, 109 Mertens, Cées 68 Meslin, Michel 68 Mohrmann, Christine 86, 113 Monaci Castagno, Adele 3 Monceaux, Paul 98, 112 f. Moriarty, Rachel 8 Moss, Candida R. 3, 5 f., 27, 32, 40 f., 48, 59, 63, 73, 119 Musurillo, Herbert 1, 67 – 69

Index of modern names

Nathan, Geoffrey

49

Orbán, Arpad P. 71 f. Orsi, Josephus Augustinus Osiek, Carolyn 41

31

Paciorkowski, Ryszard 4, 35 Perkins, Judith 9, 33, 37, 40, 42, 46, 51 Perraymond, Myla 76 Petraglio, Renzo 18, 20 Pettersen, Alvyn 33 Pfitzner, Victor C. 1 Pizzolato, Luigi Franco 19 Plant, Ian Michael 37 Poirier, Michel 110 Pomeroy, Sarah B. 38 Praet, Danny 41, 44, 72, 110 f. Rader, Rosemary 46 Rankin, David 30 Reichmann, Victor 28 Rives, James 16 Robeck, Cecil M. 13 Robert, Louis 26 Robinson, Joseph Armitage 25, 72, 99 Romanacce, François-Xavier 6, 99, 111 Ronsse, Erin A. 9, 35, 117 Rowland, Christopher 13 Rupprecht, Ernst 25 Salisbury, Joyce E. 43, 55 f. Salonius, Aarne Henrik 25 Sardella, Teresa 8 Sauget, Joseph-Marie 77 Saxer, Victor 3, 8, 11, 18, 86, 91 f. Schiller, Isabella 82, 96, 113 Schlunk, Helmut 76 Schöllgen, Georg 16 Schwarte, Karl-Heinz 15 Scorza Barcellona, Francesco 110 Shaw, Brent D. 7, 23 f., 39, 41, 61, 86, 96, 106, 110 Shelton, James E. 45 Shewring, Walter H. 20, 25 Sigismund-Nielsen, Hanne 10

Sirridge, Mary 88 Solevåg, Anna Rebecca 48 Speyer, Wolfgang 22 f. Ste. Croix, Geoffrey E. M. de 73 Steinhauser, Kenneth B. 90 Streete, Gail Corrington 56, 61, 91 Strobl, Wolfgang 95 Šubrt, Jiří 73, 91, 106, 120 Sullivan, Lisa M. 46 Tabbernee, William 15 f., 23, 30, 34, 74 Teeuwen, Stephan W. J. 111 Testard, Maurice 35, 50 Tilley, Maureen A. 6, 43, 61, 106 f. Torjesen, Karen Jo 38 Tränkle, Hermann 17, 62 Trevett, Christine 30 f., 34, 38, 105 Trumbower, Jeffrey A. 21, 39, 54, 82 Uhlhorn, Gerhard 15 Uspenskij, Boris A. 36 Varner, Eric R. 14 de Veer, Albert C. 80, 82 Verkerk, Philippe 20 Verschoren, Marleen 90 Vierow, Heidi 9, 58 Ville, Georges 50 de Waal, Anton 53, 83 Waldner, Katharina 12, 33, 58 Waszink, Jan H. 17, 62 Weber, Dorothea 82, 96, 113 Weidmann, Clemens 82, 96 f., 113 Weitbrecht, Julia 117, 120 Wiles, Maurice 29 Wilhite, David E. 36 Williams, Craig 3, 46 f., 59 – 61, 64 Wilpert, Joseph 76 Wilson-Kastner, Patricia 37 Wlosok, Antonie 3, 5, 15, 19, 24 Ziegler, Mario 20 Zocca, Elena 33, 81, 94, 110

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