She was a martyr of the Roman Church, whose dates are unknown. The
name Prisca or Priscilla is often mentioned by early authorities of the
history of the Church of Rome. The wife of Aquila, the pupil of St.
Paul, bore this name. The grave of a martyr Prisca was venerated in the
Roman Catacomb of Priscilla on the Via Salaria. The place of interment
is explicitly mentioned in all the seventh-century itineraries to the
graves of the Roman martyrs (De Rossi, "Roma sotterranea", I, 176, 177).
The epitaph of a Roman Christian named Priscilla was found in the
"larger Catacomb", the Coemeterium maius, on the Via Nomentana,
not far from the Catacomb of St. Agnes [De Rossi, Bull. di arch. crist.
(1888-1889), 130, note 5]. There still exists on the Aventine a church
of St. Prisca. It stands on the site of a very early title church, the Titulus Priscoe,
mentioned in the fifth century and built probably in the fourth. In the
eighteenth century there was found near this church a bronze tablet
with an inscription of the year 224, by which a senator named Caius
Marius Pudens Cornelianus was granted citizenship in a Spanish city. As
such tablets were generally put up in the house of the person so
honoured, it is possible that the senator's palace stood on the spot
where the church was built later. The assumption is probable that the
Prisca who founded this title church, or who, perhaps as early as the
third century, gave the use of a part of the house standing there for
the Christian church services, belonged to the family of Pudens
Cornelianus. Whether the martyr buried in the Catacomb of Priscilla
belonged to the same family or was identical with the founder of the
title church cannot be proved. Still some family relationship is
probable, because the name Priscilla appears also in the senatorial
family of the Acilii Glabriones, whose burial-place was in the Catacomb
of Priscilla on the Via Salaria. The "Martyrologium Hieronymianum"
mentions under 18 January a martyr Priscilla on the Via Salaria (ed. De
Rossi-Duchesne, 10). This Priscilla is evidently identical with the
Prisca whose grave was in the Catacomb of Priscilla and who is mentioned
in the itineraries of the seventh century. Later legendary traditions
identified the founder of the Titulus Priscoe with St. Paul's
friend, Priscilla, whose home would have occupied the spot on which the
church was later erected. It was from here that St. Paul sent a greeting
in his Epistle to the Romans. Another legend relates the martyrdom of a
Prisca who was beheaded at the tenth milestone on the Via Ostiensis,
and whose body Pope Eutychianus is said to have translated to the church
of Prisca on the Aventine. The whole narrative is unhistorical and its
details impossible. As 18 January is also assigned as the day of the
execution of this Priscilla, she is probably the same as the Roman
martyr buried in the Catacomb of Priscilla. Her feast is observed on 18
January.
Acta SS., January, II, 184 sqq.; DUFOURCQ, Les Gesta
martyrum romains, I (Paris, 1900), 169 sq.; GORRES, D. Martyrium d. hl.
Prisca in Jahrbuch fur protest. Theologie (1892), 108 sq.; CARINI, Sul
titolo presbiterale di S. Prisca (Palermo, 1885); DE ROSSI, Della casa
d'Aquila e Prisca sull' Aventino in Bull. d'arch. crist. (1867), 44 sq.;
IDEM, Aquila e Prisca e gli Acilii Glabriones, ibid. (1888-9), 128 sq.;
MARUCCHI, Les basiliques et eglises de Rome (2nd ed., Rome, 1909), 180
sq.; BUTLER, Lives of the Saints, January, I, 83.
J.P. KIRSCH (Catholic Encyclopedia)
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