Perpetua and Felicity: Faithful Unto Death
Short answer: Perpetua and Felicity were two young Christian women martyred in Carthage, in Roman North Africa, around AD 203. Perpetua was a noblewoman and nursing mother; Felicity was her slave and was pregnant when arrested. Both were catechumens preparing for baptism. They were executed with several companions for refusing to renounce Christ and sacrifice to the emperor. Their story is preserved in a prison diary kept by Perpetua herself, with a narrator finishing the account. Historically, their deaths belong to the era of the early church's sporadic persecution rather than a single empire-wide decree. Theologically, they belong to the line Hebrews 11 describes, those who were tortured and did not accept deliverance, looking for a better resurrection. Their witness is not a legend of superhuman courage but an example of ordinary believers sustained by grace under pressure.
What Hebrews 11:35-38 Says About the Martyrs
Hebrews 11 has just celebrated triumphant faith: walls fell, lions' mouths were shut, the dead were raised. Then the tone changes abruptly. Hebrews 11:35 says, "Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection." The same chapter that praises deliverance now praises those who were denied it and accepted that. The writer is not embarrassed by this. He places the tortured and the rescued side by side in one roll call of faith, without apology or explanation. Faith is not measured by the outcome of a trial but by faithfulness within it. That single sentence is the theological anchor for every martyr story the church has told since, including Perpetua and Felicity.
Notice the phrase the writer uses: they were tortured, not accepting their deliverance. The Greek behind deliverance carries the sense of a release, a way out. These believers had an exit available and refused it. The text does not say they were unable to escape; it says they did not accept the release. That is a deliberate, costly choice, made in advance of the pain and held onto inside it. The reason given is not stubbornness or a death wish but hope: that they might obtain a better resurrection. They weighed a temporary rescue against a permanent raising and chose the permanent one. This is the logic of martyrdom in the New Testament, and it is the logic Perpetua's diary repeatedly returns to.
The passage does not stop at one sentence. Hebrews 11:36-38 goes on to describe mockings, scourgings, chains, imprisonment, stoning, being sawn in two, being killed with the sword, wandering in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, and tormented, living in deserts and mountains and caves. The writer says plainly that the world was not worthy of them. These are not the celebrated heroes with visible victories; they are the ones whose obedience looked like failure to everyone watching. Yet God is not ashamed to be called their God. That is the astonishing claim of the chapter: the believers who seemed to lose everything are the ones God publicly honours, while the world that killed them is declared unworthy of their company.
This matters for how we read Perpetua and Felicity. Their story has sometimes been told as a spectacle, with attention fixed on the horror of the arena rather than on the faith that carried them into it. Hebrews 11:35-38 will not let us do that. The writer's interest is not the beast, the sword, or the crowd. His interest is the choice: they did not accept deliverance. He is teaching a church that was growing tired and tempted to shrink back, and he holds up the ones who did not shrink. Their refusal is presented as faith, not fanaticism. That distinction matters, and it shapes how their story should be taught.
The Historical Setting of Their Arrest
Perpetua and Felicity were arrested in Carthage, a major city on the North African coast, during the reign of Septimius Severus, around AD 203. Carthage had a strong Christian community by then, with a bishop and a growing body of believers. Persecution in this period was not the systematic, empire-wide machinery of later decades. It was local, provoked, and often dependent on the willingness of neighbours or officials to accuse Christians. The charge was generally refusal to participate in Roman civic religion, which included sacrifice to the emperor. For most Roman citizens, this was a formality, an act of loyalty rather than personal devotion. For Christians, it was idolatry, and they would not do it.
Perpetua's own account tells us she was of good family, well educated, and about twenty-two years old. She had an infant son still nursing. Her father visited her repeatedly in prison, pleading with her to renounce her faith and offering to take care of the family if she would. He wept, he argued, he even threw himself at her feet. Her refusal grieved her deeply, but it did not move her. She was a catechumen at the time of arrest, meaning she had not yet been baptised. The account records that she and her companions were baptised while in custody, understanding baptism as the beginning of the contest they were about to face rather than a way out of it.
Felicity is described as Perpetua's slave, and the two shared a cell. She was pregnant when arrested, and Roman law forbade executing a pregnant woman, so her execution was delayed until she gave birth. The diary records her labour as difficult, and when the guards mocked her pain, she is said to have replied that what she was suffering then was her own, but what was coming would be suffered for another. The child was born and raised by a Christian woman after her death. This detail, preserved in the account, matters because it keeps the story from being abstract. These were not symbols. They were women who suffered physically, grieved, and gave up children.
The surrounding cultural pressures are important to grasp. Roman society expected obedience to family, to the paterfamilias, and to the state's religious observances. A woman who refused her father's pleading, who gave up her child, and who rejected the civic rite was seen as a destroyer of household and city order, not a hero. Christians were accused of atheism because they did not worship the Roman gods, and of antisocial behaviour because they kept apart from public festivals. The charge against Perpetua and Felicity was not that they disturbed the peace but that they would not give the gods their due. Their offence was worship: they would worship Christ alone.
The Prison Diary and Its Wording
What makes the account of Perpetua and Felicity unusual is that a substantial part of it is a first-person diary. Perpetua wrote while in prison, recording her fears, her dreams, and her prayers in plain, unadorned language. A narrator frames the diary and completes the story of the execution. This means we have one of the earliest surviving texts written by a Christian woman, and it reads like a real person, not a legend. She worries about her baby nursing and then stops worrying when the child stops needing her. She asks for a vision to know whether she will be released or killed, and receives one she interprets as a promise of suffering to come.
The diary's most striking feature is its ordinariness of tone. Perpetua does not describe herself as fearless. She describes herself as wrestling and slowly being worn down by her father's pleas, and then strengthened in prayer. She is troubled by the heat of the prison, the crowded conditions, and the cruelty of the guards, and she asks a fellow prisoner to intercede for her relief. When she and the others are granted better conditions, she describes them as a church cell, with visitors and prayer. The supernatural visions she records follow in the stream of Scriptural imagery rather than adding to it. She sees a ladder, a garden, a shepherd. She is not inventing new doctrine; she is drawing on what she has been taught.
Some of the visions are difficult for modern readers. One recorded dream uses imagery of a contest with an Egyptian opponent, which has been interpreted in several ways, and another concerns a departed brother. Evangelical readers should be cautious here. The diary is not Scripture, and the fact that a godly woman had a vivid dream does not make the dream a revelation from God. What the diary does reliably show is a believer formed by Scripture and by the church's teaching, facing a trial with the ordinary means of grace: prayer, fellowship, and the hope of resurrection. Those are the elements we should take from it, and they line up with what the New Testament actually promises.
There is also a pastoral honesty in the account. Perpetua's father is not a villain, and the narrator does not pretend he is. He is a grieving parent losing his daughter to a system he probably does not fully understand. Perpetua loves him and knows she is causing him pain. The text does not resolve that tension by saying she felt nothing, nor does it tell her readers that family ties are worthless. It shows a young woman who had to place the cost of discipleship above the wishes of someone she loved. Jesus himself warned that this would sometimes be required, and the early church knew it. This is one reason the account continues to be read devotionally, even though it is not inspired Scripture.
Faithful to Death and the Crown of Life
The promise that sustained these believers is stated in Revelation 2:10, where Jesus says to the church in Smyrna, "Don't be afraid of the things which you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested; and you will have oppression for ten days. Be faithful to death, and I will give you the crown of life." Every part of that sentence speaks to the situation Perpetua and Felicity faced. They were told not to be afraid, that suffering was coming, that it was permitted for a limited time, and that faithfulness to the point of death would be rewarded with life. Their account shows people taking that promise literally.
The phrase faithful to death carries the sense of faithfulness even unto death, not merely a lifelong faithfulness that stops short of dying. The same word for crown is used of the victor's wreath in the games held in arenas like the one at Carthage. The early church heard that image clearly because they lived near the amphitheatre. To be thrown to the beasts for refusing to worship the emperor, and then to be promised a victor's crown from the true Lord, was a direct reversal of what the crowd would see. The watching world saw a defeated criminal. The Lord promised a crowned conqueror. Faith, in that setting, is not a feeling. It is a decision to trust that reversal.
The promise is not that God will spare his people from suffering, and Revelation 2:10 explicitly says the opposite. Some of them will go to prison, some will be tested, and Jesus commands them to be faithful until death. This is the same pattern Hebrews 11:35-38 describes, and the same pattern the letters to the seven churches repeatedly address. Faithfulness does not guarantee release; it guarantees the crown. The great danger for the believer in Smyrna was not the pain of the ordeal but the temptation to avoid it, to say the words of sacrifice and go home alive. The Lord's warning addresses exactly that temptation. And it is good to remember that the church in Smyrna received this word from a risen Saviour who had himself been put to death and had overcome.
Perpetua's diary records her final days with the same restrained tone. She and her companions were given a final meal and held farewell gatherings with other believers. On the day of the games, the account says they went into the arena with faces that were calm, and the narrator reports that Perpetua sang a psalm, which some have connected to the language of the early church's singing in the face of death. Whatever the exact details, the picture is consistent: they went to their deaths not in despair but in hope. That is what it means to hold the promise of Revelation 2:10 in the moment it costs the most. Their deaths did not look like victory. It was claimed to be one.
Not Accepting Deliverance: How Their Deaths Worked
Hebrews 11:35 says the martyrs were tortured and did not accept their deliverance. In Perpetua's case, deliverance was offered more than once. Her father pleaded with her to recant and offered a practical way out: perform the sacrifice, come home. The proconsul examined her and gave her the standard opportunity to comply. The crowd, in some accounts, called for their release or for the women to be spared. Each of these was a door marked exit. They did not take it. The account's theology is that they looked past the door to what waited on the other side of it, which is precisely the reasoning of Hebrews 11:35. They refused release because they were seeking a better resurrection.
This is the point at which the account can be badly misused. Some tellings turn the martyrs into heroes of self-generated courage, as if their strength were all their own. Others turn their deaths into a template that every Christian under pressure must imitate by seeking conflict or provoking authorities. Neither reading fits. The New Testament does not command believers to seek arrest, and Jesus himself told his disciples to flee to another city when persecuted. What the passage commends is faithfulness when the choice is forced on you, not the manufacture of a crisis. Perpetua and Felicity did not hunt for martyrdom. They were arrested, examined, pressured, and released was available at the price of worship. That price they would not pay.
There is also a word here for the ordinary believer who will never see a Roman arena. The same temptation appears in quieter forms: the career that requires a compromise no one will notice, the friendship that cools if certain things are said, the family pressure to keep religion private and inoffensive. The choice is not always dramatic, but the logic is identical. Do I accept the deliverance offered by the world, on the world's terms, or do I hold to Christ and take what follows? Hebrews 11 places both the martyrs and the quiet faithful in one line, and it does not rank them. What it honours is loyalty to Christ above comfort. That is a lesson for every century, not just the third.
It is worth saying plainly that martyrdom does not earn salvation. Perpetua and Felicity did not die to pay for their sins; Christ did that. They died because they would not deny the one who paid for them. The New Testament consistently treats martyrdom as a consequence of belonging to Christ, not as the means of belonging. The crown of life is a gift promised to the faithful, not a wage earned by dying. If we read these accounts as a way of accumulating merit, we have misunderstood the gospel they died for. They were saved by grace, through faith, and their deaths were the fruit of that faith, not its foundation.
Paul's Departure and the Love That Cannot Be Separated
Near the end of his life, Paul wrote 2 Timothy 4:6-8, which begins, "For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure has come." The word offered is drawn from the language of sacrifice, and the word departure from the loosing of a ship from its moorings or a soldier striking camp. Paul is not bitter; he is resolute. He goes on to speak of having finished the race and kept the faith, and of a crown of righteousness laid up for him and for all who love Christ's appearing. This is the same confidence Perpetua's account claims for her and for her companions, and the same crown Revelation 2:10 promises. The New Testament's view of death for Christ is uniform: it is a departure into the presence of the Lord, not an extinction.
Paul's confidence rests on a love that cannot be lost, and Romans 8:35-39 makes the case at length. It begins with the question, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" The list is drawn from the hardships of real believers, not hypothetical dangers, and Paul answers it by insisting that in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. The point is not that believers will escape these things but that none of them can sever the believer from Christ's love. Persecution can take property, freedom, and life. It cannot take the love of God in Christ.
This is exactly what a persecuted Christian needs to hear, and it is exactly what Perpetua and Felicity heard in their cell. Their situation included oppression, anguish, and the sword, and none of it was a sign that God had abandoned them. The thought that suffering proves God's absence is a lie the New Testament constantly rejects. Hebrews 11 says these believers were affirmed by God, and Paul says nothing can separate them from his love. The arena was not evidence that Christ had withdrawn but the setting in which his love was trusted most. The comfort of Romans 8 is not that the trial will be short but that the bond with Christ is unbreakable. Nothing in the list, and nothing outside it, can break it.
It is important not to overstate what such texts promise. Romans 8 does not say every believer will be spared or that the outcome will be visibly good. It says the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord is secure, and that death itself cannot sever it. That is a narrow promise, and it is enough. Perpetua and Felicity were not rescued from the arena. They were held by a love that the arena could not touch. Their story, read alongside Paul's words, is not a story of tragedy narrowly averted but of a bond proven unbreakable. And that same bond is offered, without any martyrdom required, to everyone who belongs to Christ.
Enduring the Fiery Trial Without Astonishment
First Peter was written to believers scattered across Asia Minor who were facing hostility for their faith, and 1 Peter 4:12-16 opens with a direct command: "Beloved, don't be astonished at the fiery trial which has come upon you to test you, as though a strange thing happened to you." The assumption behind this is that suffering for Christ is normal, not an anomaly that signals something has gone wrong with God's plan. Peter is not telling his readers to be stoic; he is telling them not to be surprised. The fiery trial has come to test them, and testing is a category they should expect. Perpetua and Felicity's generation learned this the hard way, and so, in different forms, must every generation after them.
Peter goes on to say that believers should rejoice insofar as they share Christ's sufferings, and that they should not suffer as evildoers. The distinction matters for reading martyr accounts. The early Christians were not punished for being disruptive. They were punished for the name of Christ, which Peter says is no disgrace. This is why the charges at Carthage centred on worship and not on criminal behaviour, and why the believers there could face the arena with a clear conscience. When the New Testament speaks of suffering for Christ, it means suffering because of loyalty to him, not suffering brought on by moral failure or needless provocation. That distinction should guide how we apply these texts today.
Peter also says the Spirit of glory and of God rests on those who are reproached for the name of Christ. That is a striking image, and it fits the tone of the martyr accounts, which describe believers strengthened in ways that onlookers found difficult to explain. The texts do not promise a painless experience or a visible glow. They promise the presence of the Spirit with the suffering believer. That is the provision the New Testament offers: not escape, but company. Perpetua's diary records her receiving strength in prayer for the ordeal ahead, and while we should not build doctrine on her dreams, we can recognise the shape of what Peter promised. God does not send his people into the trial alone.
Putting Hebrews 11, Revelation 2, 2 Timothy, Romans 8, and 1 Peter 4 together, the New Testament's teaching on persecution is remarkably consistent. Believers will face opposition; it is not a sign of abandonment; they are called to faithfulness even unto death; they cannot be separated from the love of Christ; and they are promised a crown of life. Perpetua and Felicity are not additions to that teaching but illustrations of it. Their story matters because it shows ordinary people, with real families and real fears, taking the New Testament at its word when the stakes were highest. That is worth remembering, and it is worth imitating in whatever form faithfulness takes in our own setting.
Biblical fidelity check
Hebrews 11:35-38 establishes that faith sometimes ends in torture and death rather than rescue, and that those who endure are honoured by God. Revelation 2:10 establishes that Christ commands faithfulness even unto death and promises the crown of life to those who are faithful. These texts do not establish that God always spares the faithful, that martyrdom is required of every believer, that suffering is a sign of divine displeasure, or that the details recorded in the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity carry the authority of Scripture. That document is a historical and devotional account from the early church, not an inspired book. It should be read with respect and with discernment, and it should never be placed alongside the Bible as a source of doctrine.
The most common misreading treats these passages as a command to seek suffering. It is not. Jesus told his followers to flee persecution when they could, and Paul repeatedly escaped danger. What Hebrews 11:35 commends is not the pursuit of martyrdom but the refusal to deny Christ when the choice is forced. Another common misreading treats the martyrs' courage as a natural human achievement, ignoring the New Testament's insistence that such faithfulness is sustained by grace and the Spirit. The right reading holds both: these were real people with real weakness, and God kept them. Their strength was not in themselves, and neither is ours.
Other passages that speak to Hebrews 11:35-38
The themes of endurance, holiness, and hope under pressure run through the New Testament letters. Paul's call to set hope fully on future grace appears in What Does 1 Peter 1:13 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application, while the call to be holy in all conduct is treated in What Does 1 Peter 1:15 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. The costly redemption that grounds the believer's confidence is examined in What Does 1 Peter 1:18 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application, and the electing, sanctifying work of God that makes such endurance possible is unfolded in What Does 1 Peter 1:2 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. Together these passages show why believers who face loss for Christ can stand firm.
Frequently asked questions
Who were Perpetua and Felicity?
Perpetua was a young noblewoman and nursing mother in Carthage; Felicity was her slave, pregnant at the time of arrest. Both were Christians preparing for baptism when they were imprisoned around AD 203 for refusing to participate in Roman sacrifice. They were executed with companions in the amphitheatre. Perpetua kept a prison diary that forms part of the surviving account of their martyrdom.
Are Perpetua and Felicity in the Bible?
No. They are not named in Scripture and lived roughly a century after the New Testament was written. Their story is preserved in an early church document, often called the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity. It is historically valuable and has been read devotionally for centuries, but it is not inspired Scripture and carries no doctrinal authority. Hebrews 11:35-38 provides the biblical framework for understanding such deaths.
What does Hebrews 11:35-38 teach about martyrdom?
It teaches that faith is not always rewarded with rescue in this life. Some believers were tortured and did not accept the deliverance offered to them, because they were looking for a better resurrection. The passage places them in the same roll call of faith as those who saw visible victories, and it says the world was not worthy of them. It honours endurance without making a rule that every believer must die for Christ.
