Saint Prisca
It is natural – for the supernatural possesses an inexpressible attractive force that even skeptics, who oppose it, do not entirely escape – that the touching and radiant person of the young Saint Prisca, as well as the dramatic acts of her martyrdom, a marvelous prelude to an immortal halo, have captivated and held a great number of historians. They have written about her with an admiring complacency, and their praises unite to glorify her.
Chronological uncertainties.
They differ when it comes to the time of her brief but heroic passage on earth. If they agree that she suffered martyrdom under the emperor Claudius, there is no consensus on the identity of this emperor. Is it Claudius I, who ruled in the year 41 AD? Is it Claudius II, who succeeded Gallienus in the year 268? Many lean towards the latter. However, the question, deeply discussed, leads Cardinal Baronius not to rule out the possibility of considering the first, provided that instead of speaking of the third year of his empire, it is spoken of as the thirteenth. On their part, Baillet and Godescart opt for the reign of Claudius II.
But the differences or, at least, the legitimate hesitations do not end there. The age of Prisca also becomes a disputed subject. Some give her only 10 years, others 11, and most, following the Roman Breviary, 13. This means that a certain mystery remains around her, as if so many wonders of divine power wanted to encircle her with a halo inaccessible to human curiosity. Whatever the circumstances may be, it suffices to retain the reality of the substance of the story. Far from deserving the name of legend, it enriches, in its supernatural splendor, the annals of the early times, perhaps the most painfully sublime times of the Church.
The "pontifex maximus."
The pontifex maximus, at least the one who, at the time of this narrative, presents himself as the supreme pontiff and wants to assume its prestigious moral authority, exemplary in pretension and appearance, is none other than the emperor himself. He is the judge without appeal. His name is Claudius. For him, as the law states, Christians embody the terrifying image of the most dangerous political enemies. Not practicing in any way despite all threats, they do not hesitate to rise against the state religion, the religion of multiple gods, gods clothed in all the weaknesses and inclinations of humanity, represented in gold, marble, or bronze, and appeased or thanked with the blood of victims. Christians overturn the established order.
It is not that they do not show respect for authority. However, powerful and emperor he may be, Claudius would be ungracious to ignore, deep down, their scrupulous attention to render unto Caesar what is his. On the contrary, in his eyes, they have an unforgivable fault: they refuse to adopt any belief other than theirs in one God, whose Son, God and man, they affirm, was crucified for the redemption of the world. By this, they erect a barrier between the State, living and acting in the person and speaking through the mouth of the emperor, that is, Claudius, the guardian of the safeguard of the State, its absolute prerogatives, and its tyrannical intrusion into all domains.
Claudius will do what he deems his duty. Moreover, he adopts deliberate, carefully studied attitudes as a conscientious model. Champion of traditions and customs, here he is, sacrificing to the idols in the temple of Apollo. Eager to set an example, he intends that all follow and imitate him. The vain sacrifices completed, Claudius, in the litter that takes him back to the palace, turns over his imperious thoughts and designs. Did clemency brush or master the movements of his authoritative heart? Did he issue a permanent edict or an exceptional measure that immediately ordered the pursuit and punishment of Christians who opposed paying homage, like him and after him, to Apollo? No one, due to the uncertain period mentioned, can say. Nevertheless, the soldiery searches the corners and quarters of Rome as well as the countryside and seizes the Christians.
The Encounter of Claude with Saint Prisca – Covetousness and Initial Cruelties.
In a church where she is praying, Prisca, whose father had already been honored with the consulship three times, is found and arrested. Radiant and unparalleled is her perfect beauty, a candid and sublime image of her soul. Immediately, she is taken to the palace under a strong escort. When she appears before him, Claude is moved, amazed. His emotion, his admiring astonishment arise only from human desires. Immediately, in his mind and heart, he thinks of giving the accused the rank of empress. He intends to marry her only when she has first sacrificed to the deities. Prisca, with angelic and firm gentleness, replies to him:
– I will sacrifice without shedding blood to my God and Lord Jesus.
Very joyful because he does not yet understand, he orders the virgin to be taken to the temple of Apollo to worship this idol. The heroic child, in a more than ever fervent manner, continues to assert that she will not bend her knee except before the only true God who made heaven and earth, and before His only Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. As she says this, she raises her prayerful and loving eyes towards the sky, and at the moment she stops speaking, the earth trembles, the idol shatters, a quarter of the temple collapses, burying a large number of pagans and priests under its debris. The demon inhabiting the idol laments and flees into the air, spreading terror amid a horrible crash. Claude, mad with anger and fear, flees, then orders Prisca to be thrown into prison and harshly beaten, but it is his executioners who experience torments like the damned.
New and futile persuasions. – New wonders.
The next day, the emperor sat and summoned the servant of the Lord before him for the second time. Increasingly irritated because he found her, like a rock, always unyielding in her faith, he decreed that she be stripped of her clothes and beaten with lashes. He had counted, poor blinded pagan, without Him who adorns meadows with brilliant flowers. Prisca was adorned with a marvelous attire, an unparalleled radiance that made her shine like the sun. As the men charged with her punishment multiplied their lashings, her flesh blossomed with celestial whiteness. The eyes of the people, who had come for a gruesome and bloody spectacle, were suddenly blinded by so much ineffable light.
The emperor, in turn, doubled his anger. His prey eluded him, but he hoped to finally master her. A woman, still a child, not yielding, in the end, to the invitations and commands of her absolute sovereign! Boldness, challenge, absurd audacity. The reason of the strongest would, must be the best. Did not the severity of more barbaric punishments, that is, more effective ones, impose itself? Claude, contemplating his vengeance, listened, charmed, to the advice of a certain Limenius, one of his relatives, a vile flatterer and courtier. Following this man's advice, he had Prisca's body coated with melted fat so that she would lose the luster and beauty that captivated the eyes that beheld her. The effect had a success contrary to the miserable man's thought and hope. Instead of a foul odor, this liniment emitted a very sweet fragrance that even the pagans perceived as an exquisite, unknown scent. One can imagine Claude's confusion. Losing all courage and self-control, he retreated like a fugitive. Then, his exasperated anger soon catching up with him, he entrusted his prefect with the task of tearing the girl's body with iron nails. Once done, Prisca, still surrounded by the same radiance, was led back to her prison in the insulting state of nudity in which she found herself.
Last Trials – Death of Saint Prisca.
Then the prefect went to report to the emperor on the mission he had received from him. The iron nails not only failed to extract from the patient even half a word of the expected consent, but they also left her fully unharmed and alive. Likewise, the added sword blows.
"Safe and sound," concluded the prefect, "I have just seen her sitting on a throne amidst a dazzling halo of light."
"Give her to the beasts," replied the emperor.
The next morning, after exhortations and always futile threats, she was taken from her cell to be exposed in the amphitheater to the monstrous fury of a hungry lion. Every day, according to custom, six sheep were thrown to this animal – and this, like what will follow, recalls the biblical story of Daniel in the lion's den. For three days, the beast had been deprived, in case of any retaliation against the Christians. It entered frothing and ferocious, but as soon as it saw its prey, it forgot its natural cruelty and lay at her feet with the tender docility of a lamb. It was too much. At a wildly angry signal from the emperor, Prisca was seized to be stretched on a rack, tortured with arms and legs, and thrown into a fire. The fire had no more effect on her than the other torments. She was then brought back to her cell, of which Claude himself sealed the door with his seal.
To inflict an additional degree of ignominy, perhaps also to remove a natural veil protecting her modesty, her hair had been shaved.
With her head completely shaved, Saint Prisca is delivered to the beasts. But they lavish their caresses upon her.
The end of the ordeal was near. Everyone could hear the songs of pious joy that the heroine of Christ sent up to the heavens from the depths of her seclusion. On the third day, the emperor ordered a grand sacrifice of bulls in a temple where Prisca was previously locked up. They found her sitting amidst angels, in the radiance of a superhuman and transfigured beauty. The idol they were about to worship crumbled into dust.
Faced with the ineffectiveness of his inhuman and barbaric power, Claude, to conclude this long page written in characters of blood, had the virgin's head cut off outside the gate of Ostia on January 19 in the year of Our Lord 54, as affirmed by certain authoritative authors.
The Origin of the Church of Saint Prisca.
In Rome, on the Aventine, stands the Church of Saint Prisca. If not confused, its origin has remained, in a way, a subject of research and profitable discussions. It is said that there was, in the early times of Roman history, an altar consecrated by Evander – a legendary figure who was believed to have civilized Latium – to Hercules, and that was later replaced by a temple of Diana that Father Berthier and other archaeologists wanted to place at the Church of Saint Sabina. Other authors, such as Borsari, Nardini, Canino, unequivocally support the opposite opinion. Be that as it may, the Aventine does not derive its renown and greatest glory from what imagination and pagan religion populated it with. Apart from the ingenious or sometimes even ingenious descriptions that their mythological existence may have inspired or suggested, little or no care is given to Diana, Hercules, satyrs, and fauns, even if Numa Pompilius, eager to know the secret of thunder, had succeeded, as the fable said, in captivating the latter to intoxicate them with nectar. Other, and much more moving memories, other traditions, other historical beliefs where real truth often prevails, meet, come together, and relive on this hill where Saint Peter lived, preached, baptized so many neophytes, and perhaps also the very young Prisca, the future martyr.
The "Title" of Saint Prisca.
The mention of the "title" or church of Prisca (titulus Priscae) appears, presumably for the first time, at the end of the 5th century, in the signatures of the Roman synod of 499, and around the same time, in the epitaph of a priest of this church named Adeodatus. That is why some critics claimed that the origin of the titulus seemed to be, according to these texts, attributed to some illustrious lady named Prisca. According to custom, she would have given her name to the foundation and would have been subsequently honored with the designation of saint, which would explain why the church became the titulus sanctae Priscae in the synod inscriptions of 595.
The Church of Aventine is mentioned in the Liber Pontificalis, in the life of Pope Hadrian, who restored the roof, and in that of Pope Leo III, where the title of Saint Prisca receives the name of two titles, "Aquileia and Prisca," or "Priscilla." These are two Christian spouses, Greeks by nationality, and friends of Saint Paul, whom the Apostle mentions in the Epistle to the Romans and in the Second Epistle to Timothy. It would be a mistake to believe that the latter designation is the result of a simple confusion of names committed by some distracted scribe. Rather, it is important to seek the reason in what, as will be repeated, the house of Saint Prisca on the Aventine was inhabited in the 8th century by Greeks who introduced the worship of their compatriots into this church.
It cannot be emphasized enough that the residence of Saint Prisca or, at the very least, that of Aquileia and Prisca, who welcomed the first Bishop of Rome and the first Pope, served as a private assembly place (ecclesia domestica) during the persecutions. When peace returned, it was transformed into a basilica. This is what the oldest tradition teaches. In the catalog of Pietro Natale, it is reported that Pope Saint Eutychian, who governed the Church from 275 to 283, learned by revelation the place where young Prisca had been buried. With the faithful, he went to the Ostian road and brought back the precious remains to the Aventine. Prisca was then honored as the proto-martyr of the West.
Transformations and Embellishments – Profanation.
In 772, Pope Hadrian, as mentioned, restored the Church of Saint Prisca, and in the year 1003, this monument was embellished by John XVII or XVIII. This Pontiff placed the body of Saint Prisca there, previously deposited by Eutychian in the oratory.
At the dawn of the Middle Ages, it was surrounded by a famous abbey, as it was one of the twenty-two privileged abbeys. Greek Basilian monks were its hosts and caretakers until Alexander II, in 1063, gave the Benedictines of the Abbey of Vendôme as their successors. After many vicissitudes and changes of occupants, church and monastery were in ruins, deserted by 1414. It was Calixtus III who, in 1455, restored them and renewed the marble of the apse. Unfortunately, the time was no longer when the basilica had two entrances, was divided into three naves with fourteen ancient columns, which are now enclosed in the wall of pilasters.
Cardinal Benoît Giustiniani, a native of Genoa, repaired it in 1600, based on the designs of Charles Lombard of Arezzo, added the facade, and renewed the Confession and the underground altar, which was consecrated, it is believed, to Saint Peter.
Moreover, the same cardinal first erected a collegiate with six canons and an archpriest, but this did not last long; shortly after, he called the Augustinians of Santa Maria del Popolo to it, to whom he gave the church, the monastery, and its garden. The Augustinians were succeeded by the Augustinian Sisters of Santa Maria. Clement XII, in 1734, reduced the church to its current status.
In 1709, in the nearby small garden, a basalt plaque with hieroglyphs was found. Not far from there, under Pius VI, in 1776, an ancient Roman house adorned with paintings and other Christian ornaments was discovered.
Among the titular cardinals of Saint Prisca, two were elevated to the Sovereign Pontificate: Jacques Fournier, who became Benedict XII and reigned from 1334 to 1342, and Giovanni de' Medici, the future Pope Pius IV, who was Pope from 1559 to 1565.
At the same time as all the churches and palaces of Rome, starting with Saint Peter and the Vatican, Saint Prisca was profaned in 1798, by the soldiers of the Directorate, during the famous expedition commanded by General Berthier. Like in the times of the Barbarians or more recently in 1527, by the troops of the traitor constable Bourbon whom the dying Bayard condemned, the city was given over to abominable pillage; sacred vessels and valuable objects were taken away, priestly vestments were burned to extract the gold and silver.
The cult of Saint Prisca has endured through the centuries, and devotion to her is well established. Some of her relics were brought to France by Galon, the sixty-third bishop of Paris, in the year 1108. Jean, Count of Soissons and Lord of Chimay in Hainaut, also brought other bones in 1281, though these perished in the fire that consumed the city of Chimay when it was sacked by the French in 1552, at the beginning of the last campaign against Charles V.
The Acts of Saint Prisca bear striking similarities to those of Saint Martina, to the extent that she is also attributed the eagle that defends her body, the lion that lies at her feet, and the sword with which her head was severed.
Although the name of Saint Prisca is not found in the Hieronymian martyrology or in the authentic text of Bede's martyrology, it appears in the series of martyrologies of Florus, Adon, and in the Roman martyrology.
On January 18, 1934, Pope Pius XI erected the old sanctuary of Saint Prisca, recently restored, as a parish church, thereby suppressing the parishes of Saint Mary in Cosmedin and Saint Nicholas in Carcere. The Augustinian friars who already occupied the church and the nearby convent were entrusted with the pastoral ministry.
The parish of Saint Prisca was inaugurated on February 4. This occasion served to recall the religious memories of the Aventine, rich in churches, each of which could claim the title of a parish center.
The designation of Saint Prisca recognizes, as it were, the priority of the ancient tradition that places the dwelling of Saint Peter in this location.
Dominique Roland-Gosselin.
Sources consulted: Acta Sanctorum, vol. II of January (Paris and Rome, 1863). Mgr Paul Guérin, Les Petits Bollandistes, vol. I (Paris, 1897). Saint Prisca on the Aventine (in Osservatore Romano on January 18 and 31, 1934).
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