Female Ministers & Shapers of Theology from the Early and Medieval Church Part 2: Martyrs

This beautiful Ravenna mosaic depicts Perpetua and Felicitas.

Image source: Shala Graham, Visual Museum of Women in Christianity

Female Martyrs

 The historical record demonstrates ample evidence that early Christian women died as martyrs. Claiming her work to be written by her own hand, elite mother of a young son Perpetua penned her story in “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas” as she prepared to die in the arena for her faith. In her story, Perpetua claims to have spiritual visions as she prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice for Christ. She lived in a pre-Constantinian era containing waves of persecution for Christ-followers. North Africa had many violent years targeting new converts, and Perpetua, Felicitas, and their companions did not recant their faith even to protect their own lives.

The account also contains the story of Felicitas, eight months pregnant and enslaved, praying to have her child early that she might still die for Christ in the arena since the Romans did not allow pregnant women to be killed there. She miraculously gives birth early and dies in the arena covered in blood and her own breast milk. The two women were martyred on March 7, 203.[1]

Perpetua and Felicitas represent just two female martyrs in the days of the early church. There are other historical records such as that of Blandina, an enslaved woman martyred in Lyons, whose story was told by the famous church historian Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History.[2]

The stories of the martyrs, female and male, were important to Christ followers at the time, and for the generations that came after. V. K. McCarty notes that

“Perpetua was acknowledged as an authoritative figure in Early Christian history and elaborately memorialized on the anniversary of the death. As her Passion-story was rehearsed and remembered, she was lifted up as a role model for courageous Christian behavior.”[3]

Her visions, theology, and martyrdom mattered to a persecuted church and inspired future generations even though she’s not remembered well by protestants today.

References

[1] Lynn H. Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes, Christian Women in the Patristic World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 27.

[2] Cohick and Hughes, Women, 27.

[3] V.K. McCarty, From Their Lips: Voices of Early Christian Women (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2021), 69.