ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the third century, two early Christian martyrs, Vibia Perpetua and her teacher Saturus, embarked on visionary otherworld journeys to paradise. Leaving behind the dark connes of the Carthaginian prison where they awaited their execution, they rose to the heavens and entered beautiful gardens where they were received by a divine gure, reunited with a community of the departed, and then refreshed and restored by heavenly food and divine fragrances. Not long after their return from paradise, both martyrs went condently to their deaths in the Carthage amphitheater. Yet, for centuries afterward, Perpetua and Saturus, along with the imaginal paradise they had experienced, lived on in Christian communities far and wide. North African martyrs in the mid-third century made their own visionary journeys to the paradisal realm Saturus and Perpetua had entered, returning with accounts of reunions with departed companions, wondrous landscapes, crystal springs and heavenly feasts. Nurtured by the reading of the martyrs’ visionary accounts, and by sermons and meals held around the tombs of the departed, the imaginal paradise evolved and grew, nding material expression in the decorated sarcophagi, marble plaques, and elaborate multi-color mosaics which dened and adorned the paradisal spaces of church, baptistery, and cemetery.
