Wealth and contra-culture in the "Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis"

Abstract

The prison diary ascribed to Vibia Perpetua, who presumably died a martyr’s death in Carthage in 203, contains the tenets of an early North African Christian identity. The article investigates this identity as the formation of a culture contrary to the wealth and values of Carthage. This contra-culture valued communion higher than the purple and gold for which Carthage was known, and replaced the child sacrifice practised in Carthage with mutual care between people of faith. It is argued that the notion of “communion as wealth” is conveyed in the text, with “food” and “body” as intertext. The cheese received by Perpetua from heavenly hands counters the blood and meat culture of Carthage. This value is highlighted by her bloodless victory over the Egyptian in the fourth vision. The celebration of her body as that of a nursing mother is posed as contraculture to the sacrificing of children in Carthage.