Perpetua of Carthage

Vibia Perpetua was a young noblewoman of Carthage, newly a mother and newly a believer, when the emperor's edict made her faith a capital crime. Her father came to the prison again and again to beg her to recant; she answered that she could no more be called anything but what she was — a Christian. The diary she kept in prison, finished by an eyewitness after her death, is one of the earliest pieces of Christian writing we have from a woman's own hand. On the day of the games she and her servant Felicity, who had given birth in prison days before, went into the arena together and died together. The account was read aloud in North African churches for centuries.