Based on Shūsaku Endō’s 1966 novel, Scorsese’s film stars Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver as Rodrigues and Garupe, two Portuguese Jesuit missionaries secretly dispatched to isolationist, Christian-prohibiting 17th century Japan to ferret out their long-missing mentor, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson). Versions of this scenario recur across “Silence,” Martin Scorsese’s latest film. Like, “Just do it! Just cross your fingers and repudiate Christ! You have a kid! It’s not worth it! Apostatize! C’mon!” Offer the sacrifice for the welfare of the emperors.”Ī modern reader may share this bafflement. As she recalls in her diary, the procurator pleaded, “Have pity on your father's grey head have pity on your infant son. Her prosecutor was seemingly confounded by her decision to die for her faith, desperately urging her to recant. When asked point-blank if she was a Christian, Vibia Perpetua signed her own death sentence, asserting, Christiana sum.

She was given every opportunity to recant her faith. Perpetua squared off against the Roman procurator - a mid-level government bureaucrat, playing the role of Christian-hunting Inquisitor - and a small assembly of gawkers.

Her name was Vibia Perpetua, and her crime was belonging to the emerging cult of Christianity. In 203 CE in Roman Carthage, a 22-year-old woman, still breastfeeding her infant child, was brought before the local administrator.

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