“Meanwhile the Emperor Antoninus, being informed of what was taking place, issued an edict commanding all Christians to dwell apart in their own houses, without mixing with the rest of the people; also forbidding them to go to the public shops or to frequent the baths. Praxedis and Pudentiana then gathered into their own house those whom they had led to the faith, and sheltered and nourished them for many days, all watching and praying. The blessed Bishop Pius himself frequently visited us with joy, and often offered the Sacrifice for us to the Saviour. “Then Pudentiana went to God. Her sister and I wrapped her in perfumes and kept her concealed in the oratory. Then, at the end of twenty-eight days, we carried her to the cemetery of Priscilla, and laid her near her father, Pudens. “Eleven months after, Novatus[11] died in his turn. He bequeathed all his goods to Praxedis, and she then begged of St. Pius to erect a Church in the baths of Novatus, which were no longer used and where there was a large and spacious hall. The Bishop made the dedication in the name of the blessed virgin Praxedis herself, and in the same place he consecrated a baptistery. “But at the end of two years a great persecution was declared against the Christians, and many received the crown of martyrdom. Praxedis concealed a great number of them in her oratory and nourished them with the food of this world and the Word of God. But the Emperor Antoninus, having learnt that these meetings took place in the oratory of Praxedis, caused it to be searched, and many Christians were taken, especially the Priest Simetrius and twenty-two others, and the blessed Praxedis collected their bodies by night, and buried them in the cemetery of Priscilla on the seventh day of the Kalends of June. Then the virgin of the Saviour, worn out with sorrow, only asked for death. Her tears and her prayers reached to Heaven, and fifty-four days after her brethren had suffered she passed to God. And I, Pastor the Priest, have buried her body near that of her father, Pudens.”[12] There is nothing that could be added to the Priest Pastor’s story. It is so complete, so loving, and so illuminating in the gentle charity with which it tells us that “Pudentiana passed to God.” Not a word of her cruel death—we know of that from other sources, no complaints about the rampant hatred which made it necessary to conceal her body for four weeks before it could be laid beside that of her father in the holy ground of the Appian Way. All is told without a spark of rancour or an exclamation of grief—yet when Pastor buried Praxedis beside her sister, the loving circle to which he had ministered in their house was broken up, every member of the family was dead, as well as most of the friends they gathered there; the home had been raided and desecrated, and he was a marked man, holding himself in readiness for his end.