Perpetua's Passion
The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman
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- $52.99
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- $52.99
Publisher Description
Perpetua's Passion studies the third-century martyrdom of a young woman and places it in the intellectual and social context of her age. Conflicting ideas of religion, family and gender are explored as Salisbury follows Perpetua from her youth in a wealthy Roman household to her imprisonment and death in the arena.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vibia Perpetua is remembered to this day as a saint and martyr of the early Christian church, who was "condemned to the beasts" in the amphitheater at Carthage in North Africa in 203 A.D. Drawing largely from Perpetua's well-preserved prison journal and an eyewitness account of her execution, University of Wisconsin professor of medieval history Salisbury (Church Fathers; Independent Virgins) reanimates this ancient history. How could a 22-year-old, well-educated, "respectably married" mother walk confidently into the arena to face a violent death? In a refreshing contrast with countless insipid hagiographies, Salisbury's well-annotated look at Perpetua's martyrdom is clear, thorough, insightful and less a portrait of the person than of the socio-politico-religious context in which she lived and died. The last chapter discusses how this martyrdom changed--or failed to change--the Carthaginian church and the Roman Empire itself. Of particular interest is the development of commentaries and apologetics around the text in later centuries; once Christians were no longer persecuted, theologians like Augustine did their own violence to the martyrs' legacies as they adapted the anti-imperial heroes to a pro-imperial church. Salisbury's sharp analysis strips away generations of patriarchal revisionism to let the young Roman matron speak for herself. What emerges from this thoroughly engrossing study is a sense of how radically different the early Christian experience was, and how that changed over time. Illustrated.
