March 07 — Perpetua and Felicity are the martyrs of Roman Africa, whose account of their killing was the first to be preserved. Perpetua is a patrician while Felicity is a slave. They asked the bishop of Carthage to baptize them.

At that time, Emperor Septimius Severus banned the Christian religion. Many were the catechumens with Felicity and Perpetua, arrested in the company of Sature, Saturnine, Revocat and Secondule. Thrown into prison and tortured, they were then taken to Teburba. Felicity was then expecting a child and Perpetua had an infant whom she continued to breastfeed in spite of the chains and her stay in the prison of Byrsa. Perpetua's father begged her to renounce her faith for her child not to be an orphan, but she refused and continued her prayers.

Felicity gave birth to her child in prison because the law dictated that she could not be put to death before her child was born. Three days after the birth of Félicité's child, they were sentenced to be thrown to the animals. They were brought into the arena in the midst of a mob that insulted them. They were exposed, wrapped in a net at the mercy of a wild cow that did not dare to touch them. Men had to do what the beasts did not dare to do. That was on March 7, 203. According to eyewitnesses, during their martyrdom, their faces lit up and dressed in beauty, there was no fear but joy instead.

Shortly after their martyrdom the faithful began to venerate Perpetua and Felicity for their youth, for the fact that they were mothers and above all for the example of Christian faith and courage. The relics of Saint Perpetua were transferred to Rome in 439 and then moved by the Archbishop of Bourges to the monastery of Saint-Georges-sur-la-Prée in Sèvres in 843, which was plundered by the Mormons in 926. Since then, these relics were moved and kept in the church of Notre-Dame de Vierzon. Perpetua is the patron saint of Vierzon, and every year, on the Sunday close to March 7th, a pilgrimage organized by the Fraternity of Saint Perpetua takes place there.