ON THE HOLY ROMAN VIRGINS
PUDENTIANA OR POTENTIANA, AND PRAXEDIS, AND PUDENS THE SENATOR THEIR FATHER.
II CENTURY
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
On the twofold Pudens, the latter of whom was the father of the Saints: and on their Acts, age, cult, and Relics.
Pudentiana or Potentiana, Virgin Sister at Rome (S.)
Praxedis, Virgin Sister at Rome (S.)
Pudens the Senator, their father, at Rome (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
Among the Roman families, which in the times of the Apostles
embraced the faith of Christ,
there seems to have been the family of St. Pudens the Senator,
and of his mother St. Priscilla, and of his daughters
SS. Pudentiana or Potentiana and Praxedis the Virgins:
accordingly we scarcely doubt that St. Paul in the second
epistle to Timothy, which he wrote at Rome in chains,
designates either this Pudens, Mention of Pudens, and of Claudia in ep. 2 to Timothy: as the interpreters everywhere indicate;
or rather some one of the elder ones, when in chapter IV near
the end he adds these things: There salute thee Eubulus, and Pudens,
and Linus, and Claudia. Of St. Eubulus we have treated with the Greeks
on the XVIII day of February: Linus seems to be he, who as the Vicar of St. Peter
then, and afterward his successor in the Pontificate, is venerated
on the XXIII of September. But Pudens and Claudia are made spouses
by Franciscus Moncaeus, in a treatise printed at Tournai
under this title: The royal cradle of the ancient British Christian
Church. whether these were spouses and Claudia a Briton, The first argument of this
is taken from the epigrams of Valerius Martial, as if he had made this epigram XIII of
the second book, as an epithalamium on their nuptials,
beginning from this distich,
Claudia, O Rufus, my Pudens weds a foreign bride,
Be prosperous, O Hymenaeus, with thy torches.
Martial also inscribed various epigrams to the same Pudens:
and her whom above he calls a foreign Claudia,
he seems in book XI epigram 54 to call a Briton by origin in these
verses,
Since Claudia Rufina is sprung from the blue-painted Britons,
Why has she the heart of the Latian folk?
What grace of form! The Italian mothers can
Believe her Roman, the Attic ones believe her their own.
William Camden in his Britannia, where he treats of the manners
of the Britons, relates that this British Claudia was said by some
to have been married to the Pudens indicated above by the Apostle,
nor does the reckoning of time altogether refuse it,
although others think the contrary. Alford in the Annals
of the British Church at the year of Christ 53 number 5
would embrace the same with open arms, if it could be done with the honor
of other authors and of the sacred diptychs.
Further it could be, if Pudens and Claudia be said to be distinguished from
St. Pudens and his wife Savinilla, and another St. Pudens sprung from these, and the former be held
the grandfather, or at least the uncle, of the latter: grandfather, I say, if from the said
Pudens and Claudia St. Priscilla had been sprung, or her
husband the Carthaginian; but uncle or great-uncle, if he be set down
the brother of either. But be it so, let this be admitted; not at once
without further proof can it be said that one and the same
Pudens and Claudia are treated of in Paul and in Martial
the poet.
[2] The reckoning of time for distinguishing them would be this, that
the former Pudens mentioned by St. Paul is everywhere held the host of him
and of St. Peter, and that these are said in his dwellings
to have offered to God the Sacrifice of the Mass. the former Pudens in the I century Further this must necessarily have been done long
before the year LXV, when these suffered under Nero then
present at Rome. And this Pudens seems to be the same
whom the Greeks in the Menaea, Synaxaria, and Anthology,
Sirletus also in his Menology, celebrate on the XIV of April,
although there he is named Πούδα or Πούδης, a follower of Paul, and
after his death under Nero crowned with martyrdom. So
thinks Antonio Gallonio, Presbyter of the Congregation of the Oratory
and intimate of Baronius; and that from this one proceeded another
St. Pudens, who therefore is only said to have been instructed with his children by St. Paul
and a friend of the Apostles, because he was singularly
devoted to the memory of these; and the discipline, which the other
St. Pudens his grandfather or uncle had drawn from Paul, he preserved by domestic
tradition. Whatever be of this explanation,
which appears violent enough, and to which is preferable the reading,
by which Pudens is called the Brother and friend of Timothy, a worshipper of the Apostles, a receiver of pilgrims; and B. Paul,
who instructed him, can perhaps be understood as some Presbyter
very different from the Apostle, since in this name
all the MSS. agree. Whatever, I say, be of the explanation
of Gallonio, St. Pudens, the father of SS. Pudentiana and Praxedis,
flourished in the second century of Christ, in the time of St. Pius Bishop of Rome,
who from the year CXLVI was Vicar of Hyginus the Pontiff,
and afterward himself Supreme Pontiff, succeeding Anicetus in the year
CLIV, lived until the month of July of the year CLXI. He
consecrated the house of this Pudens under the title of the Shepherd: the latter in the 2nd century.
he, when he had died, at the request of the daughters established a baptistery in the same:
he then, when she had died, comforted Pudentiana, when she had only completed
the XVI year of her age, her sister Praxedis.
When Novatus likewise had died after a year and twenty-eight days, at the request of the same
Praxedis he consecrated the Baths, which that man had given to the Church,
under the name of St. Pudentiana. How much time then
intervened until the house of St. Praxedis herself was consecrated into a church
with a Title, we do not find expressed.
It is credible nevertheless that this dedication also was performed by
Pius: since two years after it the persecution was made;
and the Emperor Antoninus, understanding that in the Title of Praxedis
assemblies of Christians were held, ordered Symmetrius the Presbyter
with twenty-two others, the cause not pleaded, to be punished by the sword; whom
when Praxedis had buried, she herself, consumed with grief, died
on the XXI of July; certainly while Antoninus was still living, who first
in the year CLX on the VII day of March died, under Pope Pius. and so while Pope
Pius was still living. That Antoninus had indeed permitted Christians
to live privately in their own houses, such as was reckoned
the house of Pudens, even after it had been consecrated into a Title,
nor did he ever by public edict proclaim persecution.
Why nevertheless should not the delations of the Gentiles, concerning the excessive increase
of the Christians and the formidable frequency of the assemblies,
two new churches now dedicated, at length have made savage a Prince otherwise mild?
just as not long afterward his two sons and
successors are said to have renewed the persecution. Praxedis died in the year 159. Certainly the long
vacancy of the Apostolic See, after the death of Pius until
the ordination of Soter, made on the XXI of January of the year CLXII,
gives sufficient indication, that those confines of both the Empire and the Pontificate
were by no means peaceful for the Christians; but
the persecution first begun popularly under the father is therefore
imputed to the sons, because they approved it by their edicts. But this
being posited, the Chronology could be so ordered, that St. Praxedis
died about the year CLIX, Pudentiana four or five
years before her sister: but Pudens, their father, could
by living have reached to the beginning of the Pontificate taken up by Pius:
yet so that we say his house was consecrated by Pius,
while still the Vicar of Hyginus or Anicetus.
[3] The chronology being ordered in this manner, and the two
Pudentes being distinguished from one another, lest it should otherwise be necessary to make our Virgins,
St. Pastor wrote the Acts. and much more their father, more than a hundred years old,
the Acts will proceed conveniently enough, such as are believed
to have been composed by the aforesaid Pastor. These moreover we give from
a notable parchment MS. Passional of the month of May, preserved in
the monastery of Bödeken of the Order of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine
in the diocese of Paderborn, copied there by John Gamans:
where this title was prefixed: Here begins the Life
of the holy sister Virgins, Potentiana, which
is on the XIV Kalends of June, and Praxedis whose feast is
on the XII Kalends of August. The same things, but a little more contracted,
are had in our notable MS. In other MSS. these same are
divided into two parts, that each might be read on the birthdays of these Sisters,
and thus we have the same from the MS. of Trier
of St. Martin, and the former things concerning St. Potentiana from the MSS. of Trier
of St. Maximin, and another ancient codex of ours, likewise another of Christina Queen of Sweden marked number 482: but the latter things