We were left no original papyrus, vellum no parchment.
Though a redactor soon after 203 CE, date of her martyrdom,
is certain: “she wrote in her own hand and from her own
experience.”
Felicitas––
Perpetua’s Egyptian slave servant/rumored lover––they
are both described
in prison with disheveled hair as though
let loose like Latin’s subordinate
clauses––
“I was languishing because I had seen languishing” was one of
Perpetua’s phrases
ferrying us through time––
Soon before she receives a vision.
“A golden ladder of marvelous light
“Very narrow” only one person at a time could ascend
each side fixed
“ with swords, lances, hooks, daggers”
so if one slipped
one’s flesh “would cleave to the iron”
Her brother––among other catechumens––pagans converted to
Christianity but not yet
baptized–– was first to climb.
He called back down, come, Perpetua, but watch for the
dragon’s bite.
So she calls on God (who she has come to trust) for help, and
slowly, not to scare––
the dragon lifts his head
to serve as the lowest rung on the ladder
on which she steadies her first step
“I trod upon his head”
To garden of “immense extent”
And four angels who lift with no
touch
A white haired “shepherd of a large
stature
who gave me cheese as it were a little
cake“
“I received it with folded hands
and understood that it was to be a passion, not an escape,
and ceased to have any hope in this world.”
"Perpetua's Diary" first appeared in Notes from the
Passenger by Gillian Conoley, Nightboat Books, New York,
2023.
"Perpetua's Diary": Saint Perpetua invented the diary in 203 CE
in a Roman prison in Carthage while awaiting execution. Her
writings are considered one of the earliest Christian texts. The
diary is believed to have been edited and redacted by her
contemporary Tertullian who claims to have been an eyewitness
to her martyrdom, though there remains no definitive scholarly
evidence.