PUDENS AND PUDENTIANA (Pudens, Poúdēs or Spoudēs). - A member of the Roman community, mentioned by St. Paul in II Tim. 4:21, during his second Roman imprisonment; Pudens, together with Eubulus (v.), Linus (v.), Claudia and all the brethren, greets Timothy.
Pudens was a surname in use at the time when the Pudens of II Tim. lived, as attested by inscriptions (CIL. VI, 15066; VII, 17), and by authors such as Tacitus (Hist., I, 24), Flavius Josephus (Bell. Jud., VI, 2, 10), and Martial (IV, 13; XI, 53). Pudens was also the name of freedmen: Vibius Pudens was a workshop owner in 100; Q. Servilius Pudens in 123 was the owner of the figlinae Nevianae, and in 124 of those of Narni and the villa known as delle Vignacce near the Aqueduct of the Marcia seems to have belonged to him (Th. Ashby and G. Lugli, La villa dei Flavi cristiani « ad duas lauros », in Mem. Pont. accad. rom. di arch., 3rd series, 2 [1928], pp. 183-92). Arria Fadilla, mother of Antoninus Pius, had among her officinatores L. Gellius Pudens (H. Bloch, I bolli laterizi e la storia dell'edilizia rom., in Bull. comm. arch. com. di Roma, 65 [1937], p. 163). L. Arrius Pudens was consul in 165; Q. Servilius Pudens, son of Quintus, in 166; C. Valerius Pudens was consul suffectus at the beginning of the 3rd century. A martyr Pudens is indicated at the III Kal. maias (April 29) in the calendar of the Church of Carthage; another, noted on July 28 by the Jeronymian Martyrology, seems to belong to the group of Laodicea, commemorated on that day. Of the senator Pudens buried in Priscilla near his two daughters Pudentiana and Praxedes (passio s. Pudentianae in BHL, 6988-91) there is no trace either in the Jeronymian Martyrology or in the Sacramentaries: he appears only in the Martyrology of Ado, who made use of the passio Pudentianae; and from the same it passed into the Roman Martyrology on May 19, the day on which in the Tamlachtense, Monacense and Richenoviense codices of the Jeronymian Martyrology s. Pudentiana is noted, as in the capitulare evangeliorum of Würzburg. One may ask whether such a day is not that of the "dedication" of the "ecclesia Pudentianae" or "titulus Pudentis". A "lector de Pudentiana" is given by an inscription of the year 384 (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. christ., I, Rome 1857-61, no. 347). The basilica of the Vicus Patricius was built on a bath building between 387-90 and 398, as could be read in the open pages of the book held by St. Paul in the apse mosaic, in which there is still the inscription "Dominus conservator ecclesiae Pudentianae" (Wilpert, Mosaiken, pls. 42-44). Two epitaphs recall a priest "tituli Pudentianae" of the year 489 and a lector of "tituli Pudentis" of the year 528; in the acts of the Synod of 499 two priests "tituli Pudentis" subscribe, while in 595 there is a "presbyter tituli Sancti Pudentis"; in the Lib. Pont. the title is called "Pudentis id est ecclesia sanctae Pudentianae" in the biography of Adrian I (772-95)
and "titulus sanctae o beatae Pudentianae" and also "Pudentis" in the life of Leo III (I, p. 508; II, pp. 11, 34, 24). Pudentiana is also called Potenciana or Potentiana in the itineraries of the 7th century (R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, pp. 78, 116, 144). In a chapel of St. Pudentiana scenes from the legends of St. Paul, of Pudens, Pudentiana and Praxedes are painted (Wilpert, op. cit., pl. 262). The two female figures in the mosaic of the basilica of St. Pudentiana do not represent Pudentiana and Praxedes as G. B. De Rossi held (Musaici cristiani, Rome 1872, sheet 9; J. P. Kirsch, Die römischen Titelkirchen im Altertum, Paderborn 1918, pp. 65-66, and Wilpert, op. cit., pp. 1066-68), but the two churches, ex gentibus and ex circumcisione (v. CHIESA, III, col. 1468).
H. Delehaye published a Vita Sancti Pastoris in which this man, instructed together with Timothy by St. Paul, would have been ordained a priest by the Apostle, would have lived until the time of Antoninus, and at the request of Pudens, father of Pudentiana and Praxedes, would have built a church in vico Latericio still called titulus Pastoris at the time of the redactor of the life and remembered until the 13th century near St. Clement (Etude sur la légende romain, Brussels 1936, pp. 139, 264-66). H. Delehaye proposed to identify with the same Pastor the martyr Pimenius or Pymenius or Παυξίν (op. cit., pp. 137-40), remembered in the Jeronymian Martyrology and in the Neapolitan marble calendar on Feb. 18, on March 18 and better on Dec. 2. His Passio indicates him as a priest tituli Pastoris who lived at the time of the emperor Julian (id., op. cit., pp. 259-63). The martyr Pimenius was buried in the cemetery of Pontian, as is indicated by the notitia ecclesiarum and the de locis (R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, pp. 92-107) and there represented together with the martyrs Milix and Pollion (Wilpert, Pitture, pp. 453-520 and pl. 255, 1).
Enrico Josi