Saint Prisca

We don’t know the actual birth or death dates of Saint Prisca. She was a young Roman woman tortured and executed for her Christian faith. Legend says that Saint Prisca was of a noble family. She was thirteen when she was accused of being a Christianity before Emperor Claudius. He ordered her to make a sacrifice to the god Apollo. She refused because of her Christian faith.  She was then beaten and sent to prison. After her release from prison, she kept her faith in Jesus Christ. This time her punishment included flogging, the pouring of boiling tallow on her, and second imprisonment. Finally, she was at last thrown to a lion in the amphitheater, but it quietly lay down at her feet.

She was starved for three days in a slaves’ prison-house and tortured on the rack. Pieces of flesh were torn from her body with iron hooks, and she was thrown on a burning pile.  She miraculously stayed alive but was beheaded at the tenth milestone on the road from Rome to Ostia. Christians buried her body in a catacomb where she died.  The church of St. Prisca now stands there.   She is honored as a child martyr.