ON ST. PRISCILLA, ROMAN MATRON.
I. CENTURY.
CommentaryPriscilla, Roman matron (St.)
[1] At Rome, the feast of St. Priscilla, who devoted herself and her possessions to the service of the Martyrs, is celebrated on the 16th of January, as the Roman Martyrology records. Concerning her: Bellini, the feast of St. Priscilla, Molanus, the manuscript Florarium, Maurolycus, and many manuscript and printed Martyrologies under the name of Usuard: At Rome, St. Priscilla. It is a paradox, indeed an error, that the Cologne Carthusians in their Additions to Usuard and the Cologne Martyrology have: At Rome, St. Priscilla the Virgin. The manuscript Martyrology of St. Jerome, 18th of January: At Rome, on the Salarian Way, Priscilla.
[2] This is not the Priscilla, or Prisca, of whom and of whose husband Aquila mention is made in the Acts of the Apostles and elsewhere; for she is venerated on the 8th of July. But this is the mother of St. Pudens the Senator, father of Saints Praxedes and Pudentiana, son, granddaughters, host and disciple of St. Peter the Apostle, as Baronius relates in his Annals and in his Notes on the Martyrology, and Hermas Pastor in the life of St. Pudentiana on the 19th of May. She too, as Ferrari writes in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, received the Apostles Peter and Paul into her home when they came to Rome, and continually distributed alms to the poor. She is said to have built the famous cemetery on the Salarian Way at her own expense. cemetery.
[3] Anastasius the Librarian in the life of St. Marcellus mentions another Priscilla, Whether there was another, younger Priscilla, in these words: He (Marcellus) requested a certain matron named Priscilla, and built a cemetery on the Salarian Way. But, as Baronius notes here in his Notes on the Martyrology, those words are not found in many codices. Certainly in the Bertinian manuscript codex, with which our Rosweyde had collated the book on the Roman Pontiffs attributed to Anastasius, the passage about the cemetery read thus: He built cemeteries on the Salarian Way, with no mention of Priscilla; as if Marcellus himself had either constructed some cemeteries, or restored those that had fallen into decay through age or other mishap. And where it says cemeteries, not a single cemetery, Octavius Panciroli writes that four Christian cemeteries are enumerated on the Salarian Way.
[4] Canisius and Galesini assert that the Priscilla who is venerated today built a cemetery at the urging of Pope Marcellus; they make no mention of the elder Priscilla, the mother of St. Pudens. Galesini adds that her life was written by St. Honoratus, Bishop of Arles, but does not reveal whence he received this information. This is not approved. Rather, the notes of the most learned Galesini seem to have been confused here by a copyist, so that what was said about the life of St. Honoratus written by St. Hilary was attributed to Priscilla. Molanus believes the Priscilla listed here to be the one whom Paul mentions, yet adds in the margin: perhaps concerning the Acts of Marcellus. Ferrari in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy says that the cemetery of Priscilla, originally built by that Priscilla who was the mother of Pudens, restorer of the same cemetery, having perhaps collapsed, was repaired by the younger woman at the urging of St. Marcellus; for it was easy, he says, to persuade a pious woman to restore what had been built by another matron of the same name. These things are said with some probability. We incline rather, however, to the view that, apart from the one in the Acts of the Apostles (of whom there is no question here), there was but a single Priscilla, the foundress of the cemetery; and that the other, more recent one, who is said to have lived in the time of St. Marcellus, was invented by copyists, perhaps in place of Lucina the younger, of whom mention is made in the Acts of St. Marcellus. Of cemeteries we shall often speak elsewhere. The Salarian Way, so called because salt was carried along it into the Sabine country, began at the Colline Gate, which was also called the Agonal, the Quirinal, and finally the Salarian, from the road itself.