"And I Was A Man":

The Power and Problem of Perpetua

by David M. Scholer
Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, by Ade Bethune

n the day of Pentecost, Peter quoted the promise from the book of Joel that in these last days the Spirit would be poured out on both women and men, and both sons and daughters would prophesy. Ever since then the church has struggled to understand how such apparent equality should actually be expressed. In a patriarchal, male-oriented society, how can a woman be empowered for leadership by the Spirit? How does gender affect a Christian's calling and behavior? The story of two martyrs from the early third century provides insight into how the maledominated Greco-Roman culture of that time interpreted the actions of courageous Christian women.

The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas Perpetua was a young woman of the early church, born around 180 A.D. She lived in Carthage in North Africa, where by this time there was a strong Christian community. She was one of the earliest, although not the first, female Christian martyr, dying in 203 A.D. at age 22. Her servant Felicitas was martyred with her. Our source for this story is the document, The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas. It is historically significant because it contains Perpetua's diary written while she was in prison, describing the four visions God gave her there. It is the first diary we have from any person, man or woman, from the early church.

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Some unknown editor, very possibly a woman, edited and published this text. Given its historical context, many scholars agree that the editor, besides wanting to honor martyrs, is arguing the cause of the Montanist movement. This movement arose in the church around 175 A.D., called itself The New Prophecy, and emphasized the continuing work of the Holy Spirit. The editor's introduction and conclusion stress how this document proves that the present activity of the Holy Spiritespecially as seen through Perpetua's visionsis just as significant as it was in the New Testament period. The Crisis of Perpetua's Sexuality The editor tells us that Perpetua had been recently married and shortly before her arrest had given birth to a boy. Her parents are still living, as is one brother, the other having died earlier from some disease. Perpetua and her brother are new Christians, as yet unbaptized, though their parents are pagan. The family is wealthy and of high social status. The diary begins (in chapter 3) with Perpetua's overwhelming anxiety about caring for her baby in prison and how he will fare. At one point she asks her mother to come and take her son. But she was still breastfeeding him, and later she requests permission from the authorities to get the baby back. They allow her to keep him in prison, and she nurses him again. She is so happy "the prison becomes a palace. " At this point she is rejoicing in her motherhood. But the tension mounts as her father twice visits her to get her to renounce her faith for the sake of her family and son. In chapter 6 she is taken out of prison for a hearing, after which she records in her diary, "My father appeared with my son, dragged me from the step, and said, 'Perform the sacrifice! Have pity on your baby!'" Perpetua refuses to do that, so her father then keeps the child against her will. Atfirstshe is upset, but then records in her diary, "As God wills, the baby had no more desire for the breast, and so I was

relieved of any anxiety for my child and of any discomfort in my breasts. " This is the last time the baby is mentioned. What has happened in Perpetua's pilgrimage from great anxiety about her baby to feeling totally confident that her baby isfinewithout her? In some sense she has left behind the traditional limiting role of motherhood, which in that culture would never give a woman an opportunity to be an empowered leader. She has now transcended her traditional female sexual role and is now able to play the role of an empowered martyred leader in the church. Her visions, especially the fourth one, further clarify this. In the first vision, Perpetua receives assurance from God that she will die as a martyr. The second vision shows her dead younger brother suffering in hell. She prays for him, and in the third vision he is drinking the water of life in heaven. This is one of the earliest texts we have about someone praying for the dead and that prayer affecting another's destiny in eternity. Although these second and third visions do not deal with her sexuality, they are further indications of her empowerment as a spiritual leader.

Perpetua transcends her traditional role and becomes a woman of great power and authority.
In the fourth vision, Perpetua is in gladitorial combat in the arena as a martyr. Her opponent is an Egyptian gladiator, who represents Satan. She wins, meaning that she defeats Satan and is faithful unto death. A curious line occurs during her account of this combat: Perpetua says, "And I was a man" (10:7). I see this statement as very significant. It represents Perpetua's new identity in that contextby which she transcends her own limiting sexuality to become an
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empowered leader in the church. That Perpetua has indeed become a woman of great authority is clear from the editor's praise of her and the care with which the diary was edited, published, and preserved. There is a second diary in this text, written by a man named Saturus (chapters 11-13), which records his vision of heaven. A bishop and an elder are having a dispute that no one can settle, and it is rending the church apart. Then Perpetua comes and settles the dispute. This can be interpreted not only on the level that martyrs were sometimes considered to have greater power than those in church office, but that in this case it is a woman martyr who has power over male leaders. The Significance of Women Becoming Men In the ancient world, women were generally considered inferior to men and were put in a subordinate place. Because of the patriarchalism and androcentrism in those cultures, often when women are described as empowered persons, especially in Jewish or Christian traditions, they are described as taking on the characteristics of a man. Was this a putdown, or was it one of the few ways in that context that empowered women could be described? I endorse the latter explanation. There are two slightly older Jewish texts which pick up on the same motif of a woman becoming a man. Fourth Maccabbees, written in the second half of
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the first century B.C., depicts a gruesome scene of a mother and her seven sons who were martyred during the Maccabbean War. The mother is forced to watch each son being brutally murdered one at a time, and then she is also martyred. The mother is discussed in IV Maccabbees 14:11-17:1. The text points out that mothers are the weaker sex, but then states: "But devout reason, giving her heart a man's courage in the very midst of her emotions, strengthened her to disregard her temporal love for her children" (15:23). This statement presupposes that a woman is basically a person of emotions, and that her prime role in life is to be devoted to her children. But this mother transcends that by having a man's courage and disregards her mother's love for her children, in order to be a faithful servant of God and the Law. Chapter 15:30 continues, "O more noble than males in steadfastness and more manly than men in endurance!" In 16:14 the author says, "In word and deed you have proved more powerful than a man," and concludes in 18:23 with "the sons of Abraham, with their victorious mother, are gathered together in the chorus of the fathers. " The only way that male-centered culture knew how to express ultimate courage was to call it manly. In this woman's case, she was seen to be even more manly than a man. The second example is the firstcentury Jewish text, Joseph and Asenaththe story of Joseph's Egyptian wife and her conversion to the true God Yahweh. An archangel appears to her to tell her she can marry Joseph since she believes in the true God. She is wearing a veil as any woman would in those days. The angel says to her, "'Remove the veil from your head, and for what purpose do you do this? For you are a chaste virgin today, and your head is like that of a young man.' And Asenath removed the veil from her head. " This woman has received empowerment from God, since a special emissary from God has come to speak to her. Her sexuality is transcended, symbolized in the text by her virginity and by the fact that she takes off her veil. Like a

man, she is receiving the direct message of God through the archangel.

Examples from Christian Texts

It is not clear whether the Coptic Gospel of Thomas came from the first or second century. It contains 114 sayings of Jesus. The very last one depicts Mary (Magdalene?) coming to Jesus and the male disciples. Peter tries to keep her away and says there is no place for a woman in the kingdom. Jesus rebukes Peter and invites Mary to become a disciple if she would become like a man. Again, I believe this text does not mean to put down Mary. This is her empowerment to be a disciple. In that cultural context she has transcended her negative female sexualitymeaning her inferiority, subordination, and her limitations to domestic life and motherhood only. A popular story in the second century was The Acts of Paul and Thecla. Thecla converts to the Christian faith and follows Paul and wants to preach like him. He tells her she's not ready yet. Eventually she is baptized, cuts her hair short like a man, and wears a man's clothing. Then Paul allows her to join him, and later she goes on her own successful preaching mission. Thecla becomes very prominent in the ancient church. People make pilgrimages to visit holy places where she had been, and churches are built in her honor. (This is, incidentally, the earliest Christian text we have about crossdressing. There are many medieval examples of nuns cross-dressing to show their empowerment.) That this document was written not to put down women, but rather to empower them can be seen in the reaction of one contemporary church father, Tertullian. He did not think women had therightto teach, and he explicitly condemns this document on the grounds that it does support the right of women to teach and preach. My last examples are from the four sermons of St. Augustine on Perpetua, preached on her feast days. Augustine did not miss the significance of Perpetua's declaration that she became "like a man. " In hisfirstsermon, he says, "They

[Perpetua and Felicitas] are indeed according to the inward man neither male nor female, so that even in them that are women in body, the manliness of their soul hides the sex of theirflesh." From the second sermon: "For where the sex was more frail, there is the crown more glorious. Truly toward these women a manly courage did work a marvel, when beneath so great a burden their womanly weakness failed not. . . .[Christ] made these women to die in manly and faithful fashion who for their sakes did mercifully vouchsafe to be born of a woman. It rejoices a godly soul to look on such a sight as the blessed Perpetua, who told us her own vision, how she became a man and strove with the devil. " Though Augustine's view of women was fairly misogynous, he is expressing very well this understanding of the early church that women were women on the outside but could become men on the inside.

Significance of These Texts for Feminist Reflection

Some scholars have interpreted Perpetua's storyas well as other material about women being like men in antiquityin a very negative way. One example is Sue Maitland, from her essay, "Passionate Prayer: Masochistic Images in The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas: Selected English Translations Musurilio, H. The Acts of the Christi Martyrs: Introduction, Texte and Translations. Oxford Early Christian Texts, Oxford: Clarendon, 1972, Pp. 106-31 (includes Latin text). Owen, E. G E Some Authentic Acts of the Early Martyrs- Oxford: Clarendon, 1927. Pp. 78-92, Petroff, E. A. Medieval Women's Visionary Literature, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, Pp. 70-77 (a reprint of H. Musurillo's translation). Wilson-Kstner, R A Lost Tradition: Women Writers of the Early Church. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981. Pp. 19-30 (translation by R Rader),
September/October 1989

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Women's Experience" (Sex and God: Some Varieties of Women's Religious Experience, [ed. L. Hurcombe; Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987]). Maitland sees this as capitulation, and that these women have ultimately given in to sexism and misogyny and cannot be heroes for 20th century feminist women. However, a number of feminist scholars, such as Rosemary Ruether, Ross Kraemer, and Virginia Burrus, have spoken of Perpetua as a hero. I would agree with them that Perpetua is a positive example of women's empowerment in the early church. This empowerment was usually expressed, in the Jewish and Christian tradition, in terms of these women becoming "like a man. " I might add, though, that because the ascetic tradition was so strong at that time, men also were often perceived as empowered when they renounced sexuality. In the case of a man, this was due not to androcentrism, but to a general negative view of sexuality, sometimes taking extreme forms in Gnostic and ascetic movements. In the New Testament, however, such sexual renunciation is not pursued vigorously at all. Perpetua illustrates how empowered women were often described in the ancient church, which was very patriarchal and androcentric. From our 20th century perspective, such descriptions violate our sense of the integrity of one's sexuality. For Christians today, the question we face is, what is the relationship between empowerment and sexuality for us? My vision would be true to Paul as stated in Galatians 3:28 and elsewhere: the Spirit can empower both women and men without the need to deny one's human sexuality. A man doesn't have to become a woman, and a woman doesn't have to become a man in order to be empowered to speak for God. ? DAVID M. SCHOLER teaches New Testament at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. He wrote about feminist biblical hermeneutics in our May/June 1989 issue.

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