St Prisca

Martyr. Not a great deal is known about this early Roman saint, but that she came from a noble Roman family and was very young when she died for her faith. Legends sometimes identify her as the same Priscilla named in the Acts of the Apostles as the wife of Aquila.

She is sometimes represented by two lions, who are said to have refused to attack her at the Coliseum in Rome. Prisca suffered many tortures before she was finally beheaded on the Via Aventine. The Christians buried her body in a catacomb at the place of her death.

There still exists on the Aventine in Rome a church of St Prisca. It stands on the site of a much earlier church, the Titulus Priscoe, mentioned in the fifth century and built probably in the fourth.