Perpetua Case Study

To begin, Perpetua grew up with a privileged existence. She was from a good family, newly married with a healthy baby. Even so, she was willing

The story of St. Hildegard of Bingen was unique from the any of the other saints. She started her life growing up with a holy woman as a mother who died when St. Hildegard was 38, and right after became an abbess. She was the head of an abbey of nuns and lead them into the arms of Jesus. She then started a daughter convent. St. Hildegard influenced the church through her countless devotions to God through the talents of seeing visions, seeing the individual love that God had for each of his creation and because of this, she had amazing stories to tell.

Perpetua was a Christian woman, age twenty-two with an infant son still nursing. Her servant was Felicitas who was also a Christian, and seven months pregnant. Perpetua’s brothers and mother were Christians, but her father was a Pagan. Perpetua, Felicitas and three other men were a group of catechumens from Carthage that was captured in 203 A.D. They were apprehended and jailed due to their religious beliefs. While in captivity and awaiting their martyrdom they were treated roughly and poorly by the soldiers who guarded them.

She inspires me because she had the courage to choose her own path and become Christian, at the age of 63, after her divorce with the Roman Emperor. She converted at the time when her son, Constantine, made Christianity the official Religion of Rome.

Perpetua was a true woman of faith. Perpetua was a twenty-two-year-old, a Christian, a mother, a daughter, and a martyr. The story of The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas is the story of the execution of Perpetua and her Christian companions. This story reveals the difficulty Christian’s went through during this time, the chasm between the Roman and Christian communities, and the experience of Christian persecution for going against the Roman cultural norms. Perpetua’s personal prison diary expresses her extremely deep faith in Christianity. Perpetua and her Christian companions were prepared to be tortured, publicly humiliated, and in the end, lose their lives for their faith. Perpetua had a young baby still nursing her and Felicitas was

Catherine of Siena was born in Italy in 1347 at a time when political and religious changes were affecting the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Dedicating her life to the Holy Spirit from a very young age, Catherine pursued a life of purity and simplicity that served as a background to her great literary work, The Dialogue of the Divine Providence . Her work focuses on the importance of prayer and its transcendent power in human life.

Perpetua’s background already highlights her significance in the Christian community and even among the Christian women. Since we now have her own narrative of her days in the prison, we as readers can conclude that she was very likely to be literate and maybe well educated. According to W.V. Harris, Perpetua knew Latin, and maybe Greek also. Brent D. Shaw says in his article that Vibia Perpetua’s family name indicates that this was a locally prestigious family that had obtained their Roman citizenship for generations. The high social status of Perpetua is an advocating point in reinforcing the unconditioned devotion to God among Christians, especially among Christian women. As a woman with Perpetua’s significant background, Perpetua became more powerful in delivering the message of her dramatic life experience and her faith. More women in the Christian

What Bynum demonstrates is that late medieval piety had become heavily idiosyncratic: the emphasis of spirituality was increasingly placed on the primacy of experience: on seeing, meeting, and most importantly for women, on eating and tasting God. Section II lays out ‘The Evidence’ supporting Bynum’s theory that fasting and food related symbolism played such a central role to women’s spirituality that it ultimately became a literary trope in the vitae of female saints and mystics. From the very outset of the chapter, the author proves her argument from a purely quantitative analysis of 864 saints from 1000-1700: although only 17.5% of those canonized as saints were women, women accounted for almost 29% of saints who practiced rigorous austerities which include extreme fasting. The lives of these women and their relationship with food are then laid out in detail. Hunger, thirst, desire, nourishment and satiety developed into quintessential symbols describing women’s relationships to God. Finally, in order to demonstrate comparatively how the role of Eucharistic devotion and extreme fasting was not nearly as prominent a theme among men as it was with women, Bynum also explores the presence (or lack thereof) of food-related motifs in the vitae of male saints.

While at the same time as exemplifying masculinity through chivalry this line also begins the subversion of gender roles by putting the woman in the more dominant position - she is now in control of this situation. In the following line it is stated that “all the others honored her and offered to serve her” (166). The use of the verbs honor and offer are direct effects of the way they “see” her which continues to implicate the importance of her beauty while also putting her in a dominant role. This is emphasized once again in lines 611-612 “When they had looked at her well, when they greatly praised her beauty” (166). This is another instance in which a verb, “praised,” is a direct result of seeing her beauty. This direct relation between such verbs and her presence helps to demonstrate her force and impact as a woman along with her characterization as a sovereign being. In lines 613-614 it is stated that “she spoke in this way, she didn’t want to wait”

Most times women were not taught how to read and write so the fact that Gliki took inspiration from her childhood and her father’s teachings she was able to become the woman that she was. Reading about this in our book made my view on the subject widen more than ever before, rather than just looking at one gender and how that one gender affected the seventeenth century. Women in the Jewish religion were able to do more than women who practiced other religions. One example, Catholic women could not do many things like for example, “Although every convent had to have a priest available to say Mass and hear confessions because the Catholic Church ruled these were functions that no woman could perform, all of the other administrative duties and much of the spiritual counseling of novices and residents were carried out by women” (209

The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas is classified as a hagiography on the martyrdom of two important Christian women. Though this source contains bias, being written by a supporter of the two martyrs, important information lies in the typical Roman Christian’s perspective on religious women. Perpetua, in contrast to Lysistrata, does not derive her power and

According to Merriam-Webster, “gender inequality, or in other words, gender discrimination refers to unfair rights between male and female based on different gender roles which leads to unequal treatment in life.” The term gender inequality has been a big problem in human history as it was in ancient Rome.  In Apuleius’s, The Golden Ass, there are specific examples and sets of imagery that show how women were discriminated against in Ancient Rome.The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept gender discrimination towards women in The Golden Ass, paying attention to how witchcraft  is used to do so, and how this is a reflection of Roman culture.

Artist and people viewing the art work have always had a fascination with the female nude. Even when I was a child my attention was captured by the nude art not because I was a kid and I saw a nude lady , but it forced me to wonder more about why the female nude was so amazing as a tool for art and why this is repeated so many times throughout the centuries. One female nude painting in particular was the subject of controversy and exposed the syncretism and or the power of the female nude painting.

Saint Philomena was the daughter of a Prince who governed one of the states in Greece and her Mother too was from the royal family. Unfortunately, her parents had no children, but they worshiped idols. However, they continue to offer sacrifices and prayers to their false gods. Certainly, there was a doctor from Rome named Publius, who lived next to them in order to check up her father. Publius was a Christian; seeing the suffering of her parents, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he spoke to them about Christianity and promised to pray for them when they accept Baptism. Clearly, the burning zeal of grace accompanied his words and enlightened they are perceptive and triumphed over their will. They became Christians and obtained their long desired contentment that Publius had assured them as the reward of their conversion. Eventually, Philomena was born; they gave her the name of "Luminous," an allusion to the light of Faith of which she had been, as it were, the fruit. The day of her Baptism her parents called her "Filumena," or "Daughter of Light," that means she was intuitive into the Faith. In addition, the love which her parents had for her was so great that they had her always with them. Philomena assured Jesus Christ that her virginity belongs to him. Meanwhile, her family had to go to Rome because her father had a problem with the Emperor concerning his province. Consequently, when Diocletian saw Philomena, he loved her and he wanted Philomena to be his wife. He seemed to

Saints are always different from everyday people, thus no one understands them in their lives, only a lot of years after their death. Joan of Arc was a saint like this as well, she was too far ahead of her times and was killed by her fellow men, because they didn’t know what else to do. She was canonized in 1920, after 489 years of her death. In my opinion, she was not only a saint, but meant to be an angel and showed a good example to all of us, how to behave ourselves in the name of honour, honesty, and glory.