BR195 .W6 C378 1995 Knox
BV5023 .C53 1999 Knox


Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 2006

E-ISSN: 1086-3184 Print ISSN: 1067-6341

DOI: 10.1353/earl.2006.0052
Rhetoric of Martyrs: Listening to Saints Perpetua and Felicitas

This exercise is more akin
to close reading than resistant reading and, beyond that, is perhaps best
characterized as an effort in what could be called attentive reading: that
is, not merely squinting harder and flipping more furiously between pages
to find—or make—meaning, but recognizing and, when possible, embrac-
ing historical approaches to read historical narrative

“primal document in the devel-
opment of the conventions which were to shape female sacred biography
for a millennium,” providing “medieval female sacred biography exquisite
models for the portrayal of female heroism along with the complex philo-
sophical matrix from which these biographies of saintly women were to
be cast.” Moreover, he asserts that the Passion “exercises an inestimable
influence . . . through the liturgy, popular preaching, and ecclesiastical art;
and contains as powerful an exemplification of these three categories as
we have in all of the medieval vitae sanctarum.” (11)


After a brief description of the animal encounters of Saturninus and Revocatus in the amphitheater and the failed attempt to kill Saturus with boar or bear (19), the scene shifts back to Perpetua and Felicitas together, then back to Saturus. [End Page 289] Once the focus returns to Perpetua, the others besides Saturus drop out of sight except in general terms. Only Perpetua and Saturus have farewell scenes, Perpetua with a hitherto unknown catechumen called Rusticus and with her brother (20), Saturus with the convert solider Pudens (21). There is no farewell scene between Perpetua and Saturus because they are not in the arena together until he is unconscious. He seems never to have regained consciousness before being finished with the sword, if that is the correct interpretation of the account that he "took the sword in silence and without moving" (21). In the final death scene, Saturus, first up the ladder in Perpetua's first vision, is the first to die, "once again waiting for Perpetua," who must still guide the hand of her executioner to her throat. (289)

Perpetua's Husband
Carolyn Osiek
Journal of Early Christian Studies 10.2 (2002) 287-290