Introduction
The rejection of family is a rather common feature of early Christian literature. From the Pauline epistles onwards, marriage, especially, was abandoned in favor of participation in the Jesus movement with new Christian siblings.
In the early Christian martyr acts, this rejection of family is concretely realized in the martyr’s dramatic exit from the world. In dying, martyrs leave behind worldly possessions, earthly status, and biological family. The pathos of the martyr’s death is further amplified by a literary trope in which the martyrs reject the advice of their parents, the cries of their wives, and even their own children. Within both the literary conventions of the martyrdom account and the ideology of martyrdom, the female martyr’s death is often tied to the idea of rejecting one’s family. Rejecting one’s own husband and children - the defining roles of the ancient Roman woman - is in many ways a rejection of both family and self. It symbolizes the rejection of worldly concerns for heavenly ones. The female martyr, therefore, has become the example sine qua non of Christian rejection of family.This paper will use the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (henceforth, Perpetua) to re-examine the motif of familial abandonment in early martyr acts. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it will argue that scholarly treatment of women martyrs fails to consider the broader theme of the rejection of the family in martyrdom literature. Placed within this wider context, it becomes clear that the choices facing Perpetua and the actions she takes as a result are consonant with attitudes to the family in martyrdom literature focusing on men. The rejection of family motif, therefore, is part of the presentation of both male and female martyrs. While the rejection of family motif may serve to masculinize female martyrs, it is explicitly related to scriptural instructions and the example of Socrates. Second, the motif of familial rejection should not be read in isolation from the related idea of the Christian family. Upon closer examination, we will see that the martyr acts do not necessarily promote the rejection of the idea of family so much as they promote its reconfiguration. The biological family is rejected only so it may be replaced by a spiritual family of Christians.
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