Vibia Perpetua, born in 181, was a young widow, mother of an infant, and owner of several slaves, including Felicity and Revocatus. With two other young Carthaginians, Secundulus and Saturninus, they were all catechumens preparing together for baptism.

Early in the third century, Emperor Septimius Severus decreed that all persons should sacrifice to the emperor. Many Christians, confessing faith in the one Lord Jesus Christ, believed that they could not do this. Perpetua, Felicity, and the other catechumens were arrested and held in prison under miserable conditions. At the public hearing before the proconsul, Perpetua refused even the entreaties of her aged father. Pointing to a water pot, she asked him,“See that pot lying there? Can you call it by any other name than what it is?” Her father answered, “Of course not.” Perpetua responded, “Neither can I call myself by any name other than what I am - a Christian.”

Felicity was eight months pregnant at the time they were arrested. Because pregnant women could not be executed, she was anxious lest the others be executed apart from her, while she would be condemned to die at another time alone. Two days before the scheduled execution, however, she gave birth to a baby girl, who was adopted and raised by an anonymous Christian woman in Carthage.

A document that is attributed to Perpetua recounts the visions that she had while in prison. One was of a ladder to heaven, which she climbed to reach a large garden; another was of her brother who had died when young of a dreadful disease, but was now well and drinking the water of life; the last was of herself as a warrior battling the devil and defeating him to win entrance to the gate of life. “And I awoke, understanding that I should fight, not with beasts, but with the Devil.”

On March 7th, 203, Perpetua and Felicity, encouraging one another to bear bravely whatever pain they might suffer, were sentto the arena to be mangled by a leopard, a boar, a bear, and a savage cow. Perpetua and Felicity, tossed by the cow, were bruised and disheveled, but Perpetua, “lost in spirit and ecstasy,” hardly knew that anything had happened. To her companions she cried, “Stand fast in the faith and love one another. And do not let what we suffer be a stumbling block to you.”

Eventually, both Perpetua and Felicity were put to death by a stroke of a sword through the throat. The soldier who struck Perpetua was inept. His first blow merely pierced her throat between the bones. She shrieked with pain, then aided the man to guide the sword properly. The report of her death concludes, “Perhaps so great a woman, feared by the unclean spirit, could not have been killed unless she so willed it.”