What to do when you have a saint with no back story? Well, we have one today–Saint Petronilla, Virgin. Supposedly, she was either the physical daughter of Peter, disciple of Christ (Scripture tells us Peter had a mother-in-law, and so was married; the Catholic Church assures us that he was sexually continent after his call by Christ–and so it’s possible he fathered a child before meeting Jesus), or that she was Peter’s spiritual daughter. This connection is made based solely on the fact that today’s saint’s name is a feminine diminutive of Peter (Petros), the Greek and Coptic equivalent of the Aramaic name כֵּיפָא‎ (kēp̄ā) rendered in the Bible as Cephas, all of which mean “rock.”

So all the reasoning is of the back-formation variety. We have a saint from early Christianity known as Petronilla (“Pebbles,” as it were). Of her, we have no other record. Being a female and a saint, she must have been a virgin. And given her name, she must have had some connection (physical or spiritual) to Peter. Right?

So now why is it we have no other record of her? Butler supplies the following eloquent (if facile) answer:

She lived when Christians were more solicitous to live well than to write much: they knew how to die for Christ; but did not compile long books or disputations, in which vanity has often a greater share than charity. Hence no particular account of her actions hath been transmitted down to us.

All of the reasoning offered is “pudding and jello”–it has some shape and substance but is impossible to grasp. Yet even setting aside whatever skepticism one might hold about the entire enterprise of having an unknown Petronilla on a perpetual calendar of saints, she does, if we allow her to, stand in for those many, many people whose lives were not in fact recorded, and who indeed chose being loving over being famous.

Almost like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Petronilla is, for me, the Saint of the Unknown Women–those whose lives have touched, healed, cared for, led, challenged, birthed, and inspired countless others, and whose names and stories have been lost…but whose influence can never be.