The multidisciplinary approach is not without its share of difficulties, however. First, it must be said that this volume is rewarding to read for the numerous classical comparanda and gems like a thinly veiled Bob Marley reference in Giulia Sissa’s essay (248). Instead, the volume’s overall aims, manifested in the various essays, merit attention. The details of such a study are obviously too numerous to engage here in point-by-point fashion. In short, the strengths of this volume are legion, and although the editors reject the “Handbook” genre, it deserves some equivalent status in future studies of Perpetua and her fellow martyrs. 4 Christoph Markschies’s excellent essay (277–90) is on the alleged Montanism found in this martyrdom (Markschies’s conclusions will be further discussed below when it is placed in dialogue with Heffernan’s work). Farrell and Craig Williams have provided a new translation of the Passio, as well as a new Latin text based on Van Beek’s.
Classicists in particular are criticized as myopic in their discipline (12), and so postmodern theories ranging from feminism to psychoanalysis are invoked as supplementary (9–11).īremmer and Formisano co-author an introductory essay, which in the first half provides an excellent summary of the key issues. it does not assert common views but rather challenges them” (8). Rather than being a “Handbook” or “Companion,” the editors claim that this volume is the “opposite. Thus, it is better to say that “this volume two souls: a historical one and a literary one” (7). Most essayists did engage traditional historical questions, but they did so from non-traditional frameworks, such as philosophy, literary studies, and political science. by emphasizing its broader literary and cultural aspects” (v).
The essays were originally delivered at Humboldt University in 2007 on the Passio and aimed to “detach the text. This contribution illustrates the importance of the volume. 3 To be sure, the use of the Acta will remain an open question, but Bremmer and Formisano have now made the question one which cannot be legitimately ignored. While largely finding the text historically reliable, 2 Bremmer contends that in light of recently discovered sermons of Augustine, the two versions of the Acta also retain historical memories-namely, the court proceedings and the provenance of the martyrs (i.e. Rather than speaking of the Passio of Perpetua (et al.), the contributors to Perpetua’s Passions speak of the martyrdom as distinct from the “story.” Bremmer and Formisano’s rationale for decentering the Passio itself in our understanding of these martyrs is as follows.
Bremmer and Formisano, Perpetua’s Passions
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