The Nachleben of Perpetua

This chapter explores the legacy of Perpetua and her text in later versions of the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis and in later authors, and the ways in which Perpetua was transformed according to the worldviews of the writers who wrote about her and molded her character. It first discusses the Acta (the later and shorter versions of Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis), then church writers such as Augustine, Quodvultdeus, and Notker. It explores the male characters in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis with whom Perpetua interacts, writers up to our own day who have shaped and reshaped Perpetua’s character, behavior, and significance; and women as a site of feminized virility or virilized femininity.