The Other Woman: Felicitas in Late Antiquity

The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas narrates the stories of four men and two women. Late ancient homilies regularly address the relative unimportance of the male martyrs in the church's celebrations of the Carthaginian martyrs. For the late ancient church, the Passion was primarily the story of Perpetua's and Felicitas's heroic witness to their faith. Modern scholarship has further restricted the characters of interest by focusing attention on only one of the Christians: Perpetua. Relegating Felicitas to the margins of the narrative is a wholly modern phenomenon. This article traces Felicitas's importance in the late ancient church and examines some of the reasons why scholars have undervalued her role in this martyr text.