Peter at Rome

That the Apostle Peter labored at Rome and was martyred there is accepted by the Orthodox tradition and by the great majority of historians — not on the basis of any one decisive proof, but on the convergence of several early and independent witnesses. This file weighs that evidence: the testimony of Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Gaius; the cryptic “Babylon” of 1 Peter; the Quo Vadis tradition and the apocryphal acts; and the Vatican excavations. It distinguishes what is historically secure — Peter’s presence and death at Rome — from the inferences that the later primacy claims draw from it.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Convergence of Early Witnesses

There is no New Testament narrative of Peter going to Rome, but the early Christian witness to it is remarkably early, broad, and independent. The first is Clement of Rome (c. A.D. 96), who, writing from Rome itself within a generation of the apostle’s death, names Peter and Paul together as the “pillars” who “contended unto death,” recounting Peter’s many labors and his “witness” (1 Clement 5.2–4; trans. Holmes 2007). Clement does not state explicitly that this happened at Rome, but he writes as the Roman church recalling its own martyrs, and the implication is plain. St. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 110), writing to the Romans, invokes Peter and Paul as those who had a special authority over the Roman church — “I do not command you as Peter and Paul did” (To the Romans 4.3; Holmes 2007) — again presupposing the apostles’ Roman connection. St. Irenaeus (c. 180) states it directly: the church of Rome was “founded and organized by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul,” who there “preached” and “handed over” the episcopate to Linus (Against Heresies 3.3.2–3; trans. ANF Vol. 1; see St. Irenaeus of Lyons). And at the turn of the third century the Roman presbyter Gaius, quoted by Eusebius, points to the apostles’ graves: “I can show the trophies (tropaia) of the apostles. For if you go to the Vatican or to the Ostian Way, you will find the trophies of those who founded this church” — Peter on the Vatican hill, Paul on the road to Ostia (Gaius, in Eusebius, HE 2.25.7; trans. NPNF II/1). Eusebius gathers and affirms the whole tradition, dating Peter’s death to the persecution of Nero (HE 2.25.5–8; 3.1.2).

This convergence — Rome itself (Clement, Gaius), Antioch (Ignatius), Asia/Gaul (Irenaeus), all within roughly a century of the event and from different centers — is the ground on which the Orthodox tradition and most historians accept that Peter was at Rome and died there. There is no rival tradition placing his death elsewhere.

The “Babylon” of 1 Peter

A further witness is internal to Scripture. The First Epistle of Peter closes with greetings from “she who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen” (1 Pet 5:13). “Babylon” is read, by the broad consensus of the early Church and of modern scholarship alike, as a coded name for Rome — the imperial capital figured as the new Babylon, the great oppressor of God’s exiled people (the same usage as in Revelation 17–18). Eusebius makes the identification explicitly and connects it with Peter’s Roman residence (HE 2.15.2; trans. NPNF II/1). On this reading, 1 Peter itself locates the apostle, with Mark, at Rome (see First Peter). A minority have argued for a literal Babylon in Mesopotamia or for Babylon in Egypt, but these have little support; the symbolic reading is standard.

The Quo Vadis Tradition and the Apocryphal Acts

Around the historical core grew a body of legend, which Orthodox method pins to its sources rather than asserting as fact (METHODOLOGY §3.5). The most famous is the Quo Vadis episode, found in the apocryphal Acts of Peter (a late-second-century text). As Peter flees Rome to escape Nero’s persecution, he meets the risen Christ on the Appian Way and asks, “Lord, where are you going?” (Domine, quo vadis?); Christ answers, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” Ashamed, Peter turns back to meet his own death (Acts of Peter [Vercelli Acts] 35; trans. in M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament, 1924). The same apocryphon supplies the tradition of Peter’s crucifixion head downward at his own request, treated in The Martyrdom. These are the claims of the Acts of Peter, a work of edifying legend, not of history; they are reported here as such. They are beloved and old, but they cannot be used as historical evidence in the way Clement, Irenaeus, and Gaius can.

The Vatican Excavations

The modern excavations beneath St. Peter’s Basilica (the Scavi, conducted from 1939) uncovered, beneath the high altar and the second-century memorial known as the aedicula or “Trophy of Gaius,” a Roman necropolis and a grave-site venerated from the second century as the burial place of Peter — confirming at least that the Vatican-hill veneration to which Gaius pointed (HE 2.25.7) is genuinely ancient. [Disputed: the identification of the specific bones recovered in the Vatican excavations as the relics of Peter is contested. The excavation revealed a venerated second-century memorial over a first-century grave; bones found nearby were declared by Pope Paul VI in 1968, following the study of Margherita Guarducci, to be "identified in a way we can hold to be convincing" as those of Peter, on the basis of the *Petros eni* ("Peter is here/within") graffito and the context. Many archaeologists regard the antiquity of the veneration-site as well established but the identification of the particular bones as unproven and methodologically disputed. The veneration of the site as Peter's grave from the second century is, however, secure (Gaius in Eusebius, *HE* 2.25.7).]

What Is Secure and What Is Inference

It is important, in Orthodox method, to separate the layers of the evidence. Historically secure (on the convergence of independent early witnesses): Peter labored at Rome, was martyred there under Nero (c. A.D. 64–67), and was venerated at a grave on the Vatican hill from the second century. Probable but inferential: the precise manner of his death (crucifixion, on the apocryphal acts and the prophecy of John 21:18). Legendary, pinned to its source: the Quo Vadis encounter and the inverted crucifixion (the Acts of Peter). And — crucially for the dispute between the Churches — the historical fact of Peter at Rome does not by itself establish any of the contested inferences later drawn from it: that Peter was the first “pope” in the developed sense, that he transmitted a unique office of universal jurisdiction to the bishops of Rome, or that the Roman see therefore holds supremacy over the whole Church. Those inferences belong to the theological argument over primacy, not to the historical question of Peter’s residence — and they are treated, with the conciliar and patristic data and the readings of both traditions, in the companion file. The Orthodox tradition grants Peter at Rome freely; it disputes what Rome built upon it (see Primacy and the Orthodox Reading).

See Also

References

  • 1 Clement 5.2–7. Trans. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers (2007); ANF Vol. 1.
  • Ignatius of Antioch. To the Romans 4.3. Trans. Holmes (2007); ANF Vol. 1.
  • Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies 3.3.2–3. Trans. ANF Vol. 1.
  • Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History 2.14–15; 2.25.5–8; 3.1.2. Trans. NPNF II/1. (Peter at Rome; Gaius’s “trophies”; “Babylon” as Rome; the Neronian death.)
  • The Acts of Peter (Vercelli Acts) 35. Trans. M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon, 1924. (The Quo Vadis episode; the inverted crucifixion.)
  • Guarducci, Margherita. The Tomb of St. Peter. New York: Hawthorn, 1960; and the Scavi reports. (The Vatican excavations; the disputed identification of the relics.)
  • Bockmuehl, Markus. Simon Peter in Scripture and Memory. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012. (The Roman traditions assessed.)