St. Petronilla

St. Petronilla was an early Roman virgin venerated from ancient times, whose tomb in the catacomb of Domitilla on the Via Ardeatina was a place of devotion in the early Church. A fourth-century fresco there names her, and later legend, drawn from apocryphal Acts, made her a daughter or spiritual daughter of the Apostle Peter — an association that arose partly from the similarity of their names — and told of her death after choosing consecrated virginity over marriage.

However much of her story is legendary, her cult was real and prominent: her relics were translated in the eighth century to a chapel beside Old St. Peter's Basilica, which became associated with the kingdom of the Franks and later with France. She has long been honored as a patroness of France and invoked against fever. Modern scholarship treats the details of her life as uncertain, but her ancient veneration is well attested.