The Scillitan Martyrs are the seven men (Speratus, Nartzalus, Cittinus, Veturius, Felix, Aquilinus, Laetantius) and five women (Januaria, Generosa, Vestia, Donata, Secunda) of the small Roman North African town of Scilli who, on July 17, 180 AD, were tried before the Roman proconsul Vigellius Saturninus at Carthage and executed for refusing to renounce Christianity.
The Acta Martyrum Scillitanorum — the contemporary court transcript of their trial, written in Latin — survives intact and is the earliest extant Christian document in Latin (the entire pre-Tertullian Latin Christian literature had been composed in Greek; the Scillitan Acta are the first to be in Latin). The trial transcript records the exchange between the proconsul Saturninus and Speratus (the leading spokesperson of the group): Saturninus asks them to swear by the Genius of the Emperor; Speratus answers 'I have not stolen, and if I buy anything, I pay the tax, for I acknowledge my Lord, the Emperor of all kings and all peoples.' Saturninus asks what they have in their travel-bag; Speratus answers 'the books and the letters of Paul, a just man.'
The phrase identifies the Scillitan group as already in possession of a partial Christian canonical-textual collection (the four Gospels and the Pauline letters) in Latin translation — the earliest extant external attestation of any Latin Christian biblical canon. All twelve were beheaded that day. The Acta Martyrum Scillitanorum was the foundational martyrologial document of the entire North African Catholic tradition that would produce Tertullian (a generation later, also at Carthage), Cyprian, Lactantius, and ultimately Augustine.