The Martyr Who Would Not Return

In March of 203 AD, a young Carthaginian noblewoman named Vibia Perpetua sat in a dank North African prison, nursing her infant son. Her father — a man of wealth and standing — came to her cell repeatedly, weeping. He pulled at his beard. He kissed her hands. He called her not "daughter" but "lady," debasing himself before her. "Think of your father's gray hairs," he pleaded. "Do not hand me over to the scorn of men."

All Perpetua had to do was offer a pinch of incense to the emperor and walk free — back to her father's estate, back to her comfortable life, back to everything she had known.

She refused. Not with contempt for her father, but with a settled devotion to a greater King. "I cannot call myself by any other name than what I am — a Christian," she told the court. She had heard the voice of her Lord and could not turn back.

Perpetua was martyred in the arena at Carthage. She was twenty-two years old.