Rey, Sarah <br/><br/>
A saint arranges her hair: Permanence and overprints of emotional gestures 

 -  2023.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 23 
<br/><br/> ‪The story of one of the first saints of Roman Africa, Perpetua, martyred in Carthage in 203 Ad, reveals the overlapping effect of forms of sensibility. The tale of her martyrdom, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, is rich in episodes illustrating the confrontation of periods and regimes of historicity. The most convinced Christians, particularly those who appear in the martyrological sources, want to be part of a new sensibility, but continue to live in a society where they have learnt to behave as fathers or mothers, free citizens or slaves, civilians or soldiers. The story of Perpetua’s execution contains this kind of opposition between two ways of life that have become irreconcilable, particularly when the saint, knocked down by a furious cow, sees her tunic torn and her hair come loose. Perpetua pulls a piece of her garment over her bare thigh, then looks for a fibula to fix her hair. These gestures reveal the Christian demand for joyful martyrdom : the saint does not want to be taken for a mourner or a suppliant. An ethnological perspective can help us to better grasp the sensitive issues at stake in this tiny episode. Perpetua’s story can be read through the prism of “techniques of the body” and their shared knowledge. The long duration of gestures of emotion also corresponds to what Aby Warburg described as the resurgence or survival of very ancient practices, which can be seen in art as well as in the social world. Ernesto De Martino’s study of the prefiche of southern Italy extends this analysis even further : expected gestures precede collective emotion, generate it and sum it up.‪