Sainte Prisque
Vierge
et martyre (✝ 270)
Prisca ou Priscille.
Les uns placent son martyre sous l'empereur Claude Tibère (54), d'autres sous
l'empereur Claude le Gothique (270). Dans tous les cas, les actes de son
martyre sont "très améliorés". Son culte, lui, est historique et très
ancien.
(Un internaute nous indique que la date de 270 est plus vraisemblable car le 1er Claude n'a régné que jusqu'en 54 et il n'est pas particulièrement connu comme persécuteur, contrairement à son successeur Néron qui, en 64, en prenant comme excuse l'incendie de Rome, a sacrifié les disciples du Christ.)
À Rome, commémoraison de sainte Prisque, au nom de qui une basilique fut dédiée à Dieu sur l’Aventin avant la fin du Ve siècle.
Martyrologe
romain
Prière
quotidienne, 18 janvier, sainte Prisque (Prisca la Romaine)
Vierge et
martyre (†270), Prisca la Romaine est une chrétienne des premiers
siècles de notre ère, martyrisée à Rome, ensevelie dans les
catacombes de Priscille, sur la Via Salaria, vénérée dès le IVe siècle dans l'église qui lui
est dédiée sur l'Aventin à Rome.
Prière à sainte Prisca
Sainte Prisca vous
avez témoigné jusqu’au sang votre amour du Seigneur.
Nous confions à vos
prières tous les jeunes de notre temps :
Qu’ils soient
touchés par le même amour de Jésus qui vous animait.
Qu’ils soient
animés par la même faim de pureté et de sainteté que vous aviez.
St. Prisca
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 martyrPrisca 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 Romanmartyr buried in the Catacomb of Priscilla. Her feast is observed on 18 January.
Sources
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 églises de
Rome (2nd ed., Rome, 1909), 180 sq.; BUTLER, Lives of the Saints, January, I, 83.
Kirsch,
Johann Peter. "St. Prisca." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert
Appleton Company, 1911. 2 Jun. 2018 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12428c.htm>.
Transcription. This article
was transcribed for New Advent by Robert B. Olson. Offered to
Almighty God for Mary Sue Wheeler.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D.,
Censor. Imprimatur. +John
Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
Église Santa Prisca (Chiesa di Santa Prisca) est un lieu de culte chrétien
Elle est dédiée à Sainte Prisca, une martyre du ier siècle.
L'église est le siège du titre cardinalice de Santa
Prisca
érigé par le pape Évariste en 112(Titulus
Priscae).
St. Prisca (Feast: January 18)
There are actually three St. Priscilla’s who
lived in the first few centuries of the Church – all of whom were martyrs – and
two of them share the same feast day of January 18! It is the virgin martyr St.
Prisca that the Church primarily celebrates today though.
Prisca was born of a noble family in Rome
during the reign of Claudius II. Most likely a Christian from birth, she was
arrested during the persecutions when she was a young teenager and brought
before the Emperor for questioning. Despite her youth, Prisca courageously
proclaimed and upheld her Catholic Faith, even though she knew that by doing so
in those days was ultimately the pronouncement of her own death sentence.
She suffered terrible tortures, one of which
was being taken to the arena to be devoured by wild beasts. Rather than devour
her though, the lions are said to have licked her feet! Finally, she was taken
outside the city walls and beheaded. Legend tells us that when she was
martyred, a great eagle appeared above her and protected her body for several
days until the Christians were able to retrieve it.
The young martyr was buried in the Catacomb
of St. Priscilla - the catacomb named after the St. Priscilla, wife of a Roman
senator, who shares the same feast day of January 18 with the child-martyr,
Prisca. She is said to have opened her home near the catacomb to Christians and
to have befriended St. Peter who used her home as his headquarters in Rome. She
was martyred during the reign of Emperor Domitian. As an interesting fact,
there is probable speculation that this St. Priscilla was a family relation of
the child-martyr St. Prisca, who is buried in her catacomb.
The third St. Priscilla was a disciple of St.
Paul and wife of the Jewish tentmaker, Aquila.
January 18
St. Prisca, Virgin and Martyr
SHE was a noble Roman lady, and after many
torments finished her triumph by the sword, about the year 275. Her relics are
preserved in the ancient church which bears her name in Rome, and gives title
to a cardinal. She is mentioned in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, and in
almost all western Martyrologies. The acts of her martyrdom deserve no regard:
St. Paul, in the last chapter of his epistle to the Romans, salutes Aquila, a
person of Pontus, of Jewish extraction, and Priscilla, whom he and all churches
thanked, because they had exposed themselves for his sake. He mentions the
church which assembled in their house, which he attributes to no other among
the twenty-five Christians whom he saluted, and were then at Rome. This agrees
with the immemorial tradition at Rome, that St. Peter consecrated an altar, and
baptized there in an urn of stone, which is now kept in the church of St.
Prisca. Aquila and Priscilla are still honoured in this church, as titular
patrons with our saint, and a considerable part of their relics lies under the
altar. Aquila and Priscilla were tent makers, and lived at Corinth, when they
were banished from Rome under Claudius: she who is called Priscilla in the Acts
of the Apostles, the Epistles to the Romans, and first to the Corinthians, is
named Prisca in the second to Timothy. See the Roman Martyrology on the 18th of
January and the 8th of July; also Chatelain, not. p. 333
Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73). Volume
I: January. The Lives of the Saints. 1866
Santa Prisca Martire
sec. III
Subì il
martirio sotto Claudio II, nel III secolo, venne sepolta sulla Via Ostiense e
traslata sull’Aventino. E’ probabile che sia stata la fondatrice di un’antica
chiesa sull’Aventino. Tutto ciò che si racconta su di lei, sono leggende, e le
informazioni che si hanno sono contraddittorio e ci rimandano a tre persone
diverse.
Etimologia:
Prisca = primitiva, di un'altra età, dal latino
Emblema: Palma
Martirologio
Romano: A Roma, commemorazione di santa Prisca, nel cui nome è dedicata a Dio
una basilica sull’Aventino.
E’
difficile stabilire la vera identità di questa martire romana, nonostante i
numerosi documenti antichi, poiché le varie notizie che la riguardano si
riferiscono probabilmente a tre persone diverse. La celebrazione odierna vuole
comunque onorare la fondatrice della chiesa titolare sull'Aventino, alla quale
si riferisce l'epigrafe funeraria del V secolo, conservata nel chiostro di S.
Paolo fuori le mura. L'antica chiesa, cara a chi ama riscoprire gli angoli
intatti dell'antica Roma, nell'ombra discreta e riposante delle sue navate,
sorge sulle fondamenta di una grande casa romana del II secolo, come hanno
provato recenti scavi archeologici.
Ma gli Acta S. Priscae, che ne fissano il martirio sotto Claudio II (268-270) e la sepoltura sulla via Ostiense, donde poi il suo corpo sarebbe stato portato sull'Aventino, non hanno maggiori titoli di credibilità della suggestiva leggenda, che colloca S. Prisca nell'epoca in cui S. Pietro svolse il suo lavoro missionario a Roma.
Secondo questa leggenda, la santa sarebbe stata battezzata all'età di tredici anni dallo stesso Principe degli apostoli e avrebbe coronato il suo amore a Cristo con la palma del martirio, stabilendo al tempo stesso un primato, suggerito anche dal nome romano, che significa "prima": ella sarebbe stata infatti la prima donna in Occidente a testimoniare col martirio la sua fede in Cristo. La protomartire romana sarebbe stata decapitata durante la persecuzione di Claudio, verso la metà del primo secolo. Il corpo della giovinetta venne sepolto, sempre secondo questa tradizione, nelle catacombe di Priscilla, le più antiche di Roma.
Nel secolo VIII si cominciò ad identificare la martire romana con Prisca, moglie di Aquila, di cui parla S. Paolo: "Salutate Prisca e Aquila, miei collaboratori in Gesù Cristo, i quali hanno esposto la loro testa per salvarmi la vita. Ad essi devo rendere grazie non solo io, ma anche tutte le chiese dei gentili" (Rm 16,3). Si cominciò così a parlare del "titulus Aquilae et Priscae" modificando il primitivo titolo di cui si ha notizia già nel sinodo romano del 499. Il titolo cardinalizio con cui si è voluto onorare la chiesa di S. Prisca, una santa oggi quasi dimenticata dai calendari, sta a testimoniare la devozione che fin dai primi secoli di vita cristiana riscuoteva questa "primizia" dell'umile pescatore di Galilea. La chiesa di S. Prisca, sorta sul luogo di una casa romana che secondo la leggenda avrebbe ospitato S. Pietro, conserva nella cripta un capitello cavo, usato dallo stesso apostolo, per battezzare i catecumeni.
