Tag Archives: First Crusade

Priscilla & Aquila Greet You

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This icon shows SS. Paul, Priscilla, and Aquila working together as tentmakers and leatherworkers. Apollos is depicted as a child on Priscilla’s lap because she taught him everything he knew about the Faith (Acts 18, Romans 16).


The churches of Asia greet you. Aquila and Priscilla, together with the church in their house, send you warm greetings in the Lord. All the brothers and sisters greet you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. (1 Cor. 16:19-20)

Most letters in AD 1st century closed with a series of greetings. Almost all the epistles of the New Testament close with a series of greetings to those among whom the letter was read. The greetings at the end of 1 Corinthians are the most complex series of greetings at the end of any of St. Paul’s letters. St. Paul greets various people personally and sends greetings from various communities, such as “the churches of Asia” and the parish which meets in the house of Priscilla and Aquila.

Priscilla and Aquila are mentioned several times in the New Testament, in the Acts of the Apostles and in St. Paul’s letters. They were a Jewish-Christian couple and two of the first Christians in the capital city of Rome. When the emperor Claudius expelled the Jews form Rome because of the unrest and riots about Christ, Priscilla and Aquila went to Corinth. Then they moved to Ephesus and lived there, allowing a parish to meet in their home. After Ephesus, they were able to move back to Rome and hosted another parish in their home.

Priscilla is almost always mentioned before her husband, Aquila. This suggests that she was the more socially prominent member of the couple and that her family was more prominent than Aquila’s; yet he does not seem jealous of her prominence. She is often mentioned by early Christians as the probable author of “the Epistle to the Hebrews.” (The other possible author, Apollos, had been her student; she taught Apollos “everything he knew” about Christianity, according to St. Paul. Either way, she was–directly or indirectly–responsible for Hebrews.)

The “holy kiss” exchanged among Christians at the Eucharist was a scandal because people were not supposed to kiss anyone who was not a relative. Rumors of Christians kissing each other made non-Christians think incest and adultery were common Christian practices.

SS. Priscilla and Aquila hosted the Eucharist in their home. During the Eucharist, strangers–or at least, non-relatives–kissed each other. Priscilla and Aquila most have been known for allowing such scandalous and provocative behavior in their home; neighbors probably thought they were encouraging loose morals and sexual immorality and were hosting orgies on a regular basis.

Priscilla taught men the Faith. She and Aquila hosted strangers who kissed each other. Both activities were scandalous. Yet she and Aquila bravely persevered, working with St. Paul to spread and nurture the Church. They remain among the most important people of 1st-generation Christians. Through their teaching and leadership, they—especially Priscilla—have shaped a large part of what we now consider mainstream Christianity.

See my video discussion of St. Priscilla here. be sure to use the password: 3s=c03I=

St. Nicholas is Coming to Town!

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An icon of St. Nicholas with scenes from his life around the edge. Christ and the Mother of God are shown returning his vestments to him, based on a dream-vision he had while he was in prison, deprived of serving his flock because the emperor disagreed with his theology.

St. Nicholas was a bishop in 4th-century Turkey but is commonly known as “Santa Claus” in much of the Western World. He brings gifts to good children on his feast day (December 6) or on Christmas Day; in some places, he is said to take away bad children in his empty gift bag. He is sometimes accompanied by a servant or devil who takes away the bad children or leaves switches for their parents to beat them.

His tomb is in Myra (a small town in modern Turkey) but many of the remains were stolen by Italian sailors and taken to Bari in 1087. The sailors from Bari only took the main bones of Nicholas’s skeleton, leaving all the minor fragments in the grave. The city of Venice had interest in obtaining the remaining fragments of his skeleton and, in 1100, a fleet of Venetian ships sailed past Myra on their way to Palestine for the First Crusade. The Venetians took the remaining bones of Saint Nicholas, and brought them to Venice. This story was lent credence in two scientific investigations of the relics in Bari and Venice, which confirmed that the relics in the two cities are anatomically compatible and may belong to the same person.

In the late 1950s, while the crypt was undergoing much-needed restoration, the bones were removed from it for the first time since their interment in 1089. A special Pontifical Commission permitted Luigi Martino, a professor of human anatomy at the University of Bari, to examine the bones under the Commission’s supervision. Martino took thousands of measurements, detailed scientific drawings, photographs, and x-rays. These examinations revealed the saint to have died at over seventy years of age and to have been of average height and slender-to-average build. He also suffered from severe chronic arthritis in his spine and pelvis.

Another test in 2017 in Oxford involved radiocarbon dating, which confirmed that the bones date to the fourth century AD, around the same time that Saint Nicholas would have died, and are not a medieval forgery.