Heffernan's study is easily recommended for libraries and for graduate students of early Christianity and hagiography.Opening page of The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity in St.
It is more technical than Joyce Salisbury's Perpetua's Passion, which treats the Roman and urban contexts Heffernan leaves the door open for new and needed explorations, such as a sustained treatment not just of the vocabulary but also of the theological differences between the Latin and Greek texts, something that he only hints at, and a full treatment of their different contexts. Appendices include treatments of manuscripts and editions, the Greek text (but no translation), an index verborum of the Passion and a selected but extensive bibliography.īeyond one-stop shopping on manuscripts and vocabulary, Heffernan's volume offers an original analysis of the genre, not diary or memoir but narrative of consolation, and a discussion of the eschatology of Perpetua's community. Do not look here for a rhetorical or feminist commentary, but do appreciate points where the author's interpretation is based on manuscript contexts. Next come the Latin text and English translation complemented by the bulk of the book, a line-by-line commentary largely confined to the meaning of the words in their late antique context, with especially good attention to military terminology. A careful commentary follows on the variations between the Latin and Greek versions, though unfortunately with no general comments on their overall importance. Next he questions the traditional dating of the execution, suspecting that usual evidence for 203 CE is an editorial interpolation, and offers 206-209 as more likely, with the editorial preface and conclusion in 209. He builds up major players into full-fledged characters before providing the story, one he presumes readers already know. Heffernan begins with an extended prosopography of all persons mentioned in the Passion, even those without proper names, including the anonymous editor/redactor. It is, according to some scholars, the longest Montanist document to have slipped through the sieve of orthodoxy that strained out all that did not adhere to its platform.īut why another book? What makes Heffernan's study worth reading? This thick volume collects what readers would otherwise have to cull or create from several sources.
Believed to be the first writing by a Christian woman to survive Late Antiquity, it provides a glimpse into the lives of persecuted North African Christians when charismatic agency still trumped hierarchical authority. The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity has fascinated many, and with good reason.
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