Saints Aquila and Priscilla
The Book of Acts (18:2-3) says that, in his visit to Corinth, Paul “found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.” Historians have dated Claudius’s expulsion of Roman Jews to the year 49 and estimate that Paul lived with the couple for about a year and a half. Priscilla and Aquila are further mentioned in Acts as accompanying Paul on a trip to Syria, and Priscilla appears to have corrected the theology of the preacher Apollos. The couple is also sent greetings in I Corinthians, Romans and II Timothy.
Modern theologians have made much of the authority that Paul seems to have granted a woman (despite his injunctions against women speaking in church). Some have gone so far as to identify Priscilla as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the only New testament book without a named author. Ruth Hoppin in Priscilla’s Letter: Finding the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, (1997) and A Feminist Companion to the Catholic Epistles and Hebrews (2004), claims that in Priscilla “we have a candidate for the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews who meets every qualification, matches every clue, and looms ubiquitous in every line of investigation.” Priscilla’s connection with the letter, Hoppin speculates, may have been suppressed so as not to discourage the authority and persuasiveness of the work. (Hoppin also claims that her own work has been mysteriously suppressed.)
After their stay in Corinth Priscilla and Aquila moved to Ephesus, Rome and back to Ephesus. Legend says they were martyred either in Asia Minor or Rome. The tent-making couple have been honoured in both Eastern and Latin Christianity and are considered as patron saints of married couples.