Saint Felicity and Her Seven Sons

Martyrs of Rome
(died c. 165)

Saint Felicity and her seven sons are among the most celebrated martyrs of the early Roman Church, and their memory has been kept in the Roman Martyrology from the most ancient times. Their names appear in the oldest lists of Roman martyrs, and though the precise historical details of their passion are difficult to establish with certainty, the devotion paid to them by the Roman Church from the second century onward is itself powerful testimony to their historical reality and their heroic witness to the faith.

Felicity was a Roman widow of noble family and, according to her Acts, a woman of outstanding faith and piety whose example and teaching had led many of her acquaintance to embrace Christianity. When the pagan priests and soothsayers blamed the anger of the gods for a series of public calamities, they denounced Felicity and her sons as impious enemies of the traditional religion, and the matter was brought before the prefect Publius and then before the Emperor Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius.

Felicity was examined separately from her sons, so that each might be more easily persuaded to apostatise. The prefect urged her with promises and threats, but she remained immovable, declaring that she would not abandon her God whether in fear or in hope. She was then compelled to witness the martyrdom of her sons one by one, so that the sight of their suffering might break her resolution. But her faith and her maternal courage proved stronger than the cruelty of her persecutors, and she exhorted each of her sons in turn to remain steadfast.

Her sons, whose names are given as Januarius, Felix, Philip, Sylvanus, Alexander, Vitalis, and Martial, were executed by various methods, and Felicity herself was beheaded last of all. The Church has always seen in her passion a figure of the Old Testament mother of the Maccabees, who also witnessed the deaths of her seven sons and encouraged each of them to die rather than deny God. The feast of Felicity and her sons is observed on July 10th.