Sts. Priscilla and Aquila, St. Paul's Co-Workers

Who were Sts. Priscilla and Aquila?

Sts. Priscilla and Aquila were a married couple of the first century, Jewish Christians and tentmakers, who opened their home to St. Paul and to the young Church. They are named six times in the New Testament, always together. St. Paul lived with them, worked beside them at the same trade, and wrote that they had risked their own necks for his life. The Roman Martyrology keeps their feast on July 8.

Their names are Latin, but both were Jews. Aquila came from Pontus, on the Black Sea coast of what is now Turkey. Priscilla, whom Paul calls by the shorter name Prisca, was probably a Jewish woman of Rome, as Pope Benedict XVI noted in a 2007 audience devoted to them.

Their story in Scripture

Exiles from Rome

St. Luke tells us that Aquila had "lately come from Italy with his wife Priscilla," because the Emperor Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome (Acts 18:2; Scripture on this page is quoted from the Revised Standard Version). The Roman historian Suetonius says the Jews were expelled for "rioting due to someone named Chrestus." Pope Benedict read this as a garbled report of quarrels within the Jewish community over whether Jesus was the Christ, and concluded that Priscilla and Aquila had probably embraced the faith already in the 40s. The Catholic Encyclopedia dates the expulsion to 49 or 50.

Paul at their table in Corinth

When Paul arrived in Corinth from Athens, he found them, "and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them, and they worked, for by trade they were tentmakers" (Acts 18:3). For about a year and a half the apostle preached in the synagogue and the city while he stitched tents in their shop. We can picture the three of them at one bench, talking of Christ over the cloth.

Teachers of Apollos at Ephesus

The couple sailed with Paul to Ephesus and stayed on when he went ahead. There they heard Apollos, an eloquent Jew from Alexandria who knew only the baptism of John. They did not correct him in public. "They took him and expounded to him the way of God more accurately" (Acts 18:26). Apollos went on to strengthen the Church in Corinth.

A church in their house

Writing from Ephesus, Paul sent the Corinthians greetings from "Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house" (1 Corinthians 16:19). Later, when they had gone back to Rome, he wrote:

Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I but also all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks; greet also the church in their house (Rom 16: 3-5).

Pope Benedict suggested that "risked their necks" may refer to help they gave Paul during an imprisonment, perhaps at Ephesus. The last greeting comes in 2 Timothy 4:19, which places them again at Ephesus near the end of Paul's life.

Their death, history and tradition

Scripture tells us nothing of how they died. The Orthodox Church in America gives the Eastern tradition: that Paul made Aquila a bishop in Asia, that he preached in Asia, Achaia and Heraclea with Priscilla always at his side, and that pagans killed him, with Priscilla "killed together with him." We hold that as traditional.

In Rome, the very old church of Santa Prisca on the Aventine Hill keeps her name. Pope Benedict noted that "the problem of identifying her with the martyr Priscilla remains," since Rome also honors a young martyr named Prisca. The church is a reminder, he said, "of a woman who has certainly been an active person and of great value in the history of Roman Christianity."

Why Sts. Priscilla and Aquila are patrons of married couples

No ancient decree names them patrons of anything. Christians have long turned to them as a model for married life, because Scripture never shows one without the other, and because their marriage was given over to the Gospel. Benedict XVI drew the lesson plainly: "every home can transform itself in a little church." He concluded:

Therefore, we honour Aquila and Priscilla as models of conjugal life responsibly committed to the service of the entire Christian community.

See more on our patron saints page.

Symbols of Sts. Priscilla and Aquila in art

Images of the couple are rare, and painters have mostly shown them at work.

• Tent and tentmaker's tools: their trade, and the trade they shared with Paul. Jacques Callot's little etching for July 8 shows them working beside a tent.
• Needle, cloth and spindle: Flemish artists turned the shop into a busy textile workshop, with Priscilla at a spinning wheel.
• St. Paul at the table: the most common scene is Paul writing or teaching in their house, the couple nearby.
• A gathering in a home: the church that met under their roof.

In Byzantine art Aquila sometimes appears alone as one of the Seventy Apostles.

Feast day

We keep their feast on July 8, the date the Catholic Encyclopedia gives from the Roman Martyrology. The Greek calendar honors them together on February 13, and the Orthodox Church in America keeps a feast of the Apostle Aquila on July 14. See more saints of July on our feast days page.

Prayer to Sts. Priscilla and Aquila

There is no widely used traditional Western prayer to the couple. The Orthodox Church sings this troparion for the Apostle Aquila (Tone 1, as the Orthodox Church in America gives it):

As a disciple and companion of Paul / you received in your soul the grace of preaching. / You shone in the night of error and struggled for the Lord's glory. / Sacred minister of the Savior, Aquila, we all acclaim you.

Let us ask Sts. Priscilla and Aquila to pray for married couples who want to serve God together, for families who open their homes to others, and for all who teach the faith gently and well.