Today (7 March) the Church celebrates the lives and ministries of Perpetua, Felicity and Companions.

The moving, contemporary account of these early third-century African martyrs proved to be of great significance in the life of the early Church.

Vibia Perpetua was a young, married noblewoman of Carthage and Felicity was her personal slave.

Saturus was possibly a priest and there were two other men, Saturninus and Revocatus, the latter also a slave.

Felicity was pregnant. It seems most of them were catechumens when arrested and only baptised later in prison, where Perpetua had a vision in which she climbed a great ladder into paradise.

They were condemned as Christians by the Roman authorities and dispatched to the public arena, there to be mauled by wild animals.

They all survived and were then taken to be executed by the sword. Before this, they exchanged the Kiss of Peace and affirmed their faith in Christ, the Son of God.

The account of their martyrdom was widely circulated in secret throughout the Christian congregations and proved both to give renown to their courage and to give encouragement to their fellow Christians in the face of adversity.

They were martyred for their faith on this day in the year 203.