St. Priscilla

Summary

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Catholic Saints – Saint Priscilla (St. Prisca)

Podcast by Augustine Institute
Episode Release Date: July 8, 2026
Host: Mary
Guest: Dr. James Prothero (Professor of Scripture and Theology, Augustine Institute)

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the enigmatic life of Saint Priscilla—also known as Saint Prisca. Host Mary and scripture scholar Dr. James Prothero discuss this figure whose memory bridges both historical martyrdom in Rome and active ministry in the New Testament alongside Saint Paul. The conversation centers on wrestling with scant historical details, exploring possibilities about her identity, and drawing inspiration from her life and legacy as a woman of faith, action, and, potentially, martyrdom.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who Was Saint Prisca/Priscilla?

• Double Naming Explained:

  • Dr. Prothero explains the variations—Prisca (Paul’s letters) vs. Priscilla (Acts)—are like “John and Johnny” or “Jim and James” ([01:33–02:17]).
  • The multiple names add complexity to tracing her precise biography.

• Two Historical Possibilities:

  1. Early 3rd-Century Roman Martyr:
     • Prisca associated with a senator’s family, possibly hosting Christian gatherings, and martyred during Roman persecutions ([04:04–04:39], [07:01]).
     • Her grave is listed in pilgrimage itineraries post–Constantine, but little detail remains.
  2. New Testament Figure:
     • Prisca/Priscilla, co-worker and companion of Paul, mentioned several times in the New Testament alongside her husband Aquila.

2. Saint Prisca/Priscilla in Scripture

• Close Ties to Paul:
  • First meets Paul in Corinth after being exiled from Rome due to the emperor's decree ([07:02–08:10]).
  • Both she and Aquila are “tent makers or leather workers” by trade ([08:10]).
• Remarkable Mentions:
  • Prisca Usually Listed First:
    • Notable that Paul mentions her before her husband—suggesting social status or leadership ([07:02], [11:05]).
  • Acts of Bold Faith:
    • Prisca and Aquila “risked their necks” for Paul and hosted a church in their home ([09:00–10:08]):

      “Greet Prisca and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I am grateful, but also all the churches of the Gentiles…” – Dr. Prothero quoting Romans 16:3–5 ([09:00])

  • Role as Teacher and Mentor:
    • Prisca “takes aside Apollos, a zealous new convert, to correct him on doctrine”—a significant womanly leadership moment in early Christianity ([08:23]).

3. Historical Limitations and Legacy

• Difficulty of Pinning Down Biography:
  • Sparse details, common names, and limited documentation leave much up for interpretation ([02:18–04:02]; [12:29–12:49]).
  • Even within New Testament accounts, personal background is unclear—her social status, upbringing, and the moment of her conversion to Christianity all subject to speculation ([11:05–11:59]).
• Married Life and Mission:
  • Priscilla and Aquila serve as an example of a married couple sharing a Christian mission ([13:02–13:28]):

    “They seem to be a cool example, too, of a married couple on mission together.” – Mary ([13:02])

4. Inspiration for Today

• The Value of the Hidden Life:
  • Dr. Prothero reflects on the beauty and holiness of saints whose lives are largely lost to history:

    “Saints that are a little less clear to us are still, I think, actually really good, in that they teach us that’s a life of sainthood, too, that doesn’t show up in big biography books.” ([15:12])

• Universal Sainthood:
  • The anonymity or confusion about details does not diminish sainthood; even obscure followers of Christ are honored by being remembered among the saints ([15:44–16:17]):

    “…to even be misspoken or misnamed, but to be included is still an honor.” – Mary ([15:52])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Prisca’s Status:

  “Prisca is always mentioned first. Interesting by Paul… which isn’t incredibly common. So it’s likely that the New Testament figure of Prisca Priscilla was either somewhat high born and was mentioned first ahead of her husband, or she was the one who was more actively involved.” – Dr. Prothero ([07:02])

• On Sainthood Without Fame:

  “I would be… blessed, eternally blessed, to have nobody remember which James they’re talking about, but to know that there’s a James… who’s in heaven interceding for them, in Prisca’s case, as a martyr who gave her life for the faith of Jesus.” – Dr. Prothero ([14:30])

• On Anonymity and Inclusion in the Faith:

  “To be a follower of Jesus. To be a follower of our Lord.” – Mary ([16:17])

• On Married Life in Mission:

  “Both great examples of followers of Jesus and the Saint Priscilla and Aquila, they seem to be a cool example, too, of a married couple on mission together.” – Mary ([13:02])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• The Name Prisca/Priscilla: [01:33–02:18]
• Historical Options for Prisca: [04:02–05:13]
• Visitations and Martyrdom: [06:02–07:01]
• Prisca’s Scriptural Role and Paul’s Letters: [07:02–10:08]
• Risks and Sacrifices: [10:08–10:30]
• Priscilla’s Status, Conversion, and Marriage: [11:05–12:21]
• Reflection on the “Hidden Life” of Saints: [13:53–15:45]
• Final Reflections & Takeaways: [15:44–16:21]

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Practical Takeaways & Reflection

• Saint Prisca/Priscilla reminds listeners that sainthood can be both prominent and hidden, with spiritual heroism sometimes unfolding away from the spotlight.
• Her example as a collaborator, host of the early Church, and a possible martyr invites Christians to value steadfast devotion, service, and even obscurity as paths to holiness.
• She and Aquila serve as role models for married couples active in ministry together.
• Faithfulness, even without recognition or historical clarity, is honored and valuable in the eyes of the Church and God.

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Further Exploration:

• Readings: Acts 18, Romans 16, 1 Corinthians
• Feast Day: January 18

Closing Note:
This episode welcomes listeners to see sainthood as accessible, reminding us that even the hidden saints—like Prisca—intercede for us from heaven, offering humble and courageous examples for our own walk in faith.

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Transcript

[A]

You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

[B]

Hello, welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Mary and I am with Dr. James Prothero. Doctor, thanks for joining us on this episode. Today we are gonna talk about Saint Prisca, also known as Saint Priscilla. So let's get started. First of all, Dr. Prothero, how are you doing?

[A]

I'm doing all right.

[B]

Got a little dance. Dance in your seat right now. Good. Well, thank you.

[A]

I don't have to be on the video on these anymore, so, you know, I could be. These folks don't know what I'm doing. I could be doing a strange dance.

[B]

Yeah, it's very, very distracting in the best way.

[A]

I'm doing moose ears. No, it's all. It's. It's really great to be here and to talk about some of God's holy people.

[B]

Absolutely. No. Thank you. And can you remind our listeners what you specialize in the graduate school at the Augustine Institute?

[A]

Oh, yeah. So I'm a professor of scripture and theology here at the graduate school and I teach mostly in Bible, doing New Testament and doing ancient languages.

[B]

Okay, awesome. Great. Well, you are the man then, to dive into some of these saints. So let's get started with Saint Prisca Priscilla. Let's start with why does she have two names? Which is she more known by?

[A]

So Saint Prisca or Saint Priscilla? So she's in the. It's kind of like John and Johnny or John and Jonathan. They're just sort of two variations of the same name. And so it depends on who you're talking about. So in the New Testament, there's a character. We'll talk about it in a minute. Who is a co worker of Paul along with her husband Aquila. And Paul always calls her Prisca, but in the Book of Acts, Luke always calls her Priscilla.

[B]

Oh, interesting. Okay.

[A]

And it's the same person. It's just like Luke always calls Silas Silas, but Paul always calls him Silvanus. One of them's just a sort of shorter Jim's.

[B]

James. Jim.

[A]

James, exactly. Right, Exactly.

[B]

Different nicknames. Okay.

[A]

Yeah. But frustratingly, with Saint Priscilla or Saint Prisca, the fact that there's more than one name for the same person, any person by this name in the ancient Roman world means that we have kind of a harder trail to track down to figure out details about the saint's biography.

[B]

Just because it's. We just have the first name, Is that what you mean? We don't Necessarily.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. So we don't have further names for this, for this saint. So in the Roman catacombs, there is a grave of one Prisca. And later on in the itinerary, is that like after the period of the catacombs? Right. When Christians were worshiping underground and being martyred in Rome for their faith after Constantine, after Christianity was legalized, we have lists, like pilgrimage lists, of all the different important graves to go to in the Roman catacombs from the ancient world, where they made these up when pilgrims would come to Rome. And they say, okay, go and visit all of these graves. And one of them was always Saint Prisca. And so there's a Prisca who was martyred for her faith and is remembered as a holy woman and a martyr in Rome. But we don't have further details in that itinerary about who she was or when she died. And so we have to kind of look around it, like, well, what are the options? And because of the double name and because we don't have a whole lot more to track down, there's more than one option.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So in probably the early 200s, there was a Priscilla Prisca who seems to have been associated with a senator's family. So, like more elite Roman who seems to have kind of hosted or encouraged a church to meet at the senator's family house. So maybe she was the daughter, maybe she was the wife, maybe we don't know. And then was martyred in a big persecution in the 200s. And that could be the same Prisca.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that would put her a little bit still early for us, but a little bit later in terms of early martyrs in the early 200s. And if it's much earlier, though, the other big option for Saint Prisca or Priscilla is the Saint Prisca of the New Testament, who is a companion of Paul. And we don't hear anything about her death in the New Testament, but we do hear some of the things about what she and her husband did as New Christians and as supporters of the faith.

[B]

Okay, that is very helpful. Is it safe to assume then for Saint Priscilla or Saint Prisca, I believe the feast day is January 18th. If we. We could. We could be either. Either Priscilla we could be honoring on that day.

[A]

Yeah, I think so. The church commemorates the Saint Prisca who is in the catacombs on January 18, and that can be enough for us. Right. To say there is a woman who was a holy woman in Rome nearly 2,000 years ago. We're not exactly certain of the Date, but she gave her life for Jesus. And, you know, we.

[B]

Have you been to the catacombs there?

[A]

I haven't, actually, no. Have you?

[B]

I have not. Not there.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I'm just curious if you've seen her.

[A]

And that can be enough for us. Right. The church commemorates her, even though there are a few other details to REM in a list. She's not a saint who left a diary that we have or something else, but she very much made her mark on the world while she was here. And she makes her mark still by interceding for the church with the Lord in heaven. And so that's a wonderful thing. And sometimes we want all of the details, but either person that we're looking at based on these two kind of broad options. So either is this person from a more upper class family who supported the Church. Right. And was a faithful Christian and then was martyred. Right. That's quite possible. And she's a great example in that case. Even if that's all we know about her.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

In the New Testament, we have lots of mentions of Prisca and her husband Aquila. Interestingly, Prisca is always mentioned first. Interesting by Paul. Yeah. So he always says Prisca first and then her husband, which isn't incredibly common. So it's likely that the New Testament figure of Prisca Priscilla was either somewhat high born and was mentioned first ahead of her husband, or that she was the one who was more actively involved. But here's what Paul says. So Paul meets them in Acts chapter 18 because he and Aquila both share a trade and they're both Jews. And Aquila and Prisca are there because in the late 40s, early 50s, the emperor expelled Jews from the city of Rome. And so they leave and they come to Corinth. Later on, they make it back to their home in Rome, but they leave and they come to Corinth. They meet Paul and they join up with his mission. And Paul and Aquila are both tent makers or leather workers. They work in canvas. Right. And leather.

[B]

When I've seen an image of the Saint Priscilla from the New Testament, Saint Priscilla with Paul, her husband, I think in almost like a garage, but like some space where they're, you know, building.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And that's how we meet them at the beginning of Acts 18. But then after that, if you follow through. So in the Book of Acts, they're with Paul, they go to. They're in Corinth. Later on, at some point, they're in Ephesus with him. And Prisca even takes aside a new convert who is zealously preaching, named Apollos, who we find mention of in 1st Corinthians and in Acts. And she even takes him aside to kind of to help correct him on a couple of points, right? She's much like. She's sort of one of the mothers in Israel, as they say in the Old Testament, right. She's a strong, strong woman and a strong, good wife. And she, along with her husband are co workers, Paul says, in his mission. So when he writes to Rome in the late 50s, Prisca and Aquila are apparently back in Rome. And Paul writes to the Romans and says this in Romans 16, 3, 5, he says, greet Prisca and Aquila. So he's writing to the Romans, so they're clearly there in Rome, right? So the Romans can greet them. He says, greet Prisca and Aquila, my co workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I am grateful, but also all the churches of the Gentiles and greet also the church at their house. So Prisca and Aquila are, you know, they host. Right, Close friends with Paul. Yeah, they're close friends with Paul. They've been his co workers. They haven't just been like acquaintances of his. They have really been part of his mission team. Right.

[B]

In different ways, risking their necks. I wonder what that was referring to. Something, some form of, I don't know, risk.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. Whether they're risking cash or social status or whether they risk their necks physically with threats to their lives, they put it on the line.

[B]

Yes. Did you mention, was Priscilla a convert from. Was she a convert? Is that clear in the New Testament?

[A]

Well, she's definitely a Christian. And in the first generation, nobody's born. Nobody's. Nobody's born a Christian or baptized as a baby. Right. It takes. It takes the next generation for that.

[B]

Was she a woman of status in, like, the political world or, you know, was she a presbyter? Was she a wealthy woman? What do we know about her before she became in Paul's circle?

[A]

We don't know much. Again, based on the fact that her name is consistently mentioned first ahead of her husband, we can reasonably guess that she probably is a woman of status. And because she has married Aquila and they've been exiled from Rome, when the Jews were exiled from Rome, at the very least, Aquila is ethnically Jewish. To be able to be exiled and then she would have, prior to meeting Paul, adopted her husband's religion. This is the normal thing. This is why Christian women who converted, whose husbands didn't convert were in such a pickle and need sort of special words from, say, Paul or Peter in the New Testament. Right. Because it was expected that wives took on the religion of their husbands.

[B]

Okay, interesting.

[A]

Right. So if you had a pagan husband and you converted to Christianity. Right. Paul, Peter. Other people kind of address this in the New Testament. And so Prisco would have been a follower of the God of Abraham before meeting Paul and then after that was still a follower of the God of Abraham, but fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Right. And with the knowledge of his son revealed.

[B]

Okay, okay, that is really helpful. Do we know if her husband is a saint or can we refer to him as Saint Aquila or. We're unsure.

[A]

You know, I. I'm not sure if we're unsure like the church, but I am unsure myself. I did not. I did not sort of look up to see, once again, we're. We're venerating the martyr Saint Prisca. And then the question is whether or not it's this Prisca or another Prisca.

[B]

Right. The mystery there.

[A]

Yeah. But it doesn't seem to me to be a dumb idea to think of both of these as heroes in heaven right now. We just don't have quite the same kind of stamp.

[B]

Yes. Both great examples of followers of Jesus and the Saint Priscilla and Aquila, they seem to be a cool example, too, of a married couple on mission together.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

There's a. Those are always exciting to see throughout the New Testament. Yeah. Just that married couple on mission with Paul and that early Christian community and what their particular role was is cool to ponder.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

[B]

Well, that's great. Well, is there anything, you know, when we're looking to. To Saint Prisca that we can, you know, bring with us today or look to her for inspiration. Yeah. For application in our own lives. She lived so many years ago, you know, so it's such a long time. Yeah. How can we look to her for inspiration for today?

[A]

I mean, so on the one hand, right, if you, if you look at. If you, if you, if you try to figure out which Prisca it is, and you're like, oh, this is. Here's who she was or here's her biography. Right. And you kind of pick one, then. Then you can think about those things. Right. We can think about the lay vocation of Prisca and Aquila as supporters of Paul. We can think about her as both a wife and an important figure in Paul's ministry and in the early church. Honestly, when I come to saints like this, where we have uncertainties about their biography, but we know that we need to remember and memorialize them. One of the things, I take a lot of consolation in that. And I just think to myself, you know what? I would be lucky. No, sorry, not lucky strike that. Blessed, eternally blessed. To have nobody remember which James they're talking about. But to know that there's a James from Denver or someday soon, St. Louis who's in heaven interceding for them, in Prisca's case, as a martyr who gave her life for the faith of Jesus. And that, on the one hand, sometimes it's not enough for us because we always want a little bit more. We want more. We want the story, we want the. And that's good, right? And we have that for so many saints. But saints that are kind of. That are a little bit less clear to us are still, I think, actually really good in that they teach us that that's a life of sainthood, too, that doesn't show up in big biography books, maybe, and doesn't have journals with it and doesn't have anything more than. Right.

[B]

You know, a hidden life.

[A]

Prisca was here. Yeah, Right. This is the hidden life. And she was here, and she is here now praying for us. Right.

[B]

No, that's a great, great reflection. It makes me think of sometimes in the Gospels where they're listing out the names of all the apostles, you know, they're written a little differently. You're like, wait, is it this person or that person? And then, you know, at the end, like, you're saying almost that anonymity is also just to even be misspoken or misnamed, but to be included is still an honor.

[A]

Yeah, that's right.

[B]

To be a follower of Jesus. To be a follower of our Lord. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, thank you so much for this reflection about Saint Prisca and Saint Priscilla. And I will be diving more into those stories in the New Testament that you mentioned. And thank you all for listening. We'll see you next time.