Mrs. Hugh Fraser

St. Peter’s First Visit to Rome—Wide Scope of His Work—Rome Destined to Become the Seat of Ecclesiastical Government—St. Peter’s Early Converts—Persecution of the Jews—Life in the Catacombs—Simon Magus and St. Peter—Peter’s Return to Rome—Nero’s Slaughter of Christians—Peter’s Vision—“Lord, Whither Goest Thou?”—Preparation for Martyrdom—Last Epistle—St. Peter’s Successor—Imprisonment of St. Peter and St. Paul—Scenes of Final Tragedy—Crucifixion of Peter—Paul Beheaded—Devotion of Their Followers.

The perusal of the histories of Rome, both ancient and modern, inspires the reader with amazement, when he realises that, despite countless invasions, destructions, and changes, certain apparently obscure landmarks of events which took place in the city during the first century after Christ, still exist, uneffaced and unforgotten. Yet so it is, particularly in regard to those connected with the sojourn of St. Peter in Rome. The devout pilgrim may visit them to-day with as little doubt as to their identity as did his ancestor in the Faith nearly two thousand years ago. The Apostle’s first visit to Rome took place, according to St. Jerome, Eusebius, and the old Roman Calendar of Bucherius, in the year 45 of our era. Among illiterate sectarians it was still attempted, when I was young, to uphold the theory, invented by the so-called Reformers, that he had never been in Rome at all. Our separated brethren have since grown more enlightened and do not like to be reminded of that contention, annihilated again and again even by their own historians, notably by Baratier, a Protestant divine who published his “Chronological Inquiry” relating to the Bishops of Rome, from Peter to Victor, at Utrecht, in 1740, and by the learned Protestant Bishop Pearson, who had preceded him in the task of demonstrating incontrovertibly that St. Peter had held that See for many years. On the dispersion of the Apostles after the first persecution in Jerusalem, St. Peter had reserved the perilous enterprise of the conquest of “Babylon” (as the seat of empire was at that time called by the Christians) for himself, but there was other and nearer work for him to accomplish first, and it was only some twelve years later that he found it possible to carry out his intention.

In the meantime he had travelled and preached unceasingly in Asia Minor, where during those years he organised and held the Bishopric of Antioch, the third greatest city of the Empire. From thence he instituted the See of Alexandria, of which he constituted St. Mark the Bishop, at the same time decreeing that Alexandria should be the second church of the world, taking precedence of Antioch, which thenceforth ranked as the third.[3] There had evidently never been any doubt in his mind that Rome was to be the first, the seat of ecclesiastical government, long prepared for that destiny by the decrees of Providence, carried out, as sealed orders, by her conquering armies abroad, and by the perfection of her far-reaching yet completely centralised system of organisation at home. We all know that the actual computation of the Christian era is a slightly faulty one, owing to the great laxity and confusion prevailing in the chronology of the Empire at the time of the birth of Christ. But, this much is certain—that some twelve years after the ascension of our Lord, St. Peter came to preach the Faith in Rome. St. Leo the Great (440 A.D.), in his splendid sermon on this subject, describes how the capital of the Empire, “ignorant of the Divine Author of her destinies, had made herself the slave of the errors of all the races, at the very moment when she held them under her laws. She thought she possessed a great religion because she had accepted every falsehood, but the more closely she was held in durance by Satan the more marvellously was she delivered by Christ.” Then, after narrating the partition of the evangelisation of the world among the Apostles, he exclaims: “And dost thou not fear, Peter, to come alone into this city? Paul, the companion of thy glory, is still occupied in founding other Churches; and thou, thou dost plunge into this forest peopled with wild beasts, thou treadest this ocean, whose depths growl with tempests, with more courage than on the day when thou didst walk on the waters towards thy Lord! And thou fearest not Rome, the mistress of the world, thou who, in the house of Caiaphas didst tremble at the voice of a serving maid? Was the tribunal of Pilate, or the cruelty of the Jews, more to be feared than the power of a Claudius or the ferocity of a Nero? No, but the strength of thy love triumphed over fear, and thou didst not count them terrible whom thou hadst been commanded to love.”

Would that some faithful companion had written down for us some details of that first arrival of St. Peter in Rome! Did he come by sea to Ostia, or to Parthenopeia, like St. Paul? That seems the more likely conclusion, as, given fair winds, it was the route usually taken from the parts of Palestine or Asia Minor. But what must have been his feelings when, from far off, he first beheld the gorgeous, insolent city, towering in gold and marble on its seven hills, swarming with its two million inhabitants, of whose very language he was ignorant! Did some of the few brethren then come out to meet him, as they did St. Paul, later? If he entered by the Ostian Way, he must have passed quite near to the spot which was to witness their double martyrdom twenty-five years afterwards. All we know is that his intrepid soul was not affrighted at the wealth and splendour of the hostile city which he meant to win back to his Master before his own labours should cease. From that day, although he had to leave it again and again to attend to the churches elsewhere, Rome was his home, his especial fold, the centre of Christendom, and the Holy City of generations to come, since Jerusalem had forfeited that title forever.

It was not to the owners of Rome, but to the thousands of poor Jews who had been brought there as captives, that St. Peter first came to preach. Already they were the despised hewers of wood and drawers of water for their enemies, and had managed, very early in their sojourn, to rouse the ire of their Roman masters. At first the Christian converts in Rome were entirely drawn from their ranks, and the Romans called them all “Jews,” and occasionally banished them, as I have said elsewhere, from the city, to that spot, near the Porta Capena, which afterwards became the headquarters of the Church through centuries of persecution. Here, at least, they could do as they liked, and no one seems to have taken exception to their commencing that series of widely spreading underground labyrinths known now as the Catacombs, and usually regarded, quite mistakenly, as having been intended solely for purposes of sepulture. That was provided for as one of its great objects, certainly; but there were Churches where crowds could kneel together in worship round the tomb of some illustrious martyr; and there were halls and chambers as well, where, as after history showed, whole communities could live for weeks or months when it was not safe for Christians to show their faces above ground.

St. Peter had it from his Master’s lips that he should follow Him in the manner of His death, but the day fixed by the Lord for that “birthday” (as the Christians called martyrdom) was hidden from him till almost the end. He was away from Rome when he heard that his once defeated adversary, the wizard-impostor, Simon Magus, was revelling there in the favour of Nero, and regarded by all as almost, if not actually, a god. The calling of the necromancer appealed strongly to Pagan sympathies at that time, and Nero was only too delighted to possess himself of the services of the famous magician. He showered gifts upon him, brought him to live in his own palace, and caused, or permitted a statue of him to be erected, of which the inscription attested his supposed divinity. So Simon Magus was the chief favourite, and was exercising whatever he had of unholy power, to make himself necessary to the Emperor and feared by the people. Although the fiercest of persecutions was raging, St. Peter at once came back to Rome to confront and confound the diabolical impostor, even as he had done in Samaria, years before, when he (from whom all traffic in holy things was named) offered the Apostles money if they would impart to him the power conferred on them by the Holy Ghost.

Nero, after reigning for five years with unusual mildness for those times, had, with the murder of his mother, Agrippina, inaugurated a carnival of slaughter, and the Christians were suffering terribly. St. Peter hastened to sustain their courage and also their faith, fearing, as we are told, that the weaker brethren might be led astray by the skill of the magician, who, like all his kind, could sometimes command the powers of darkness and was able to supplement them by trickery when they failed him.

St. Peter feared for the flock over whom he had ruled in person for some twenty-five years, so, as St. Jerome and other great authorities tell us, he made all the speed he could, and arrived in Rome to find the persecution at its height. It was at this time that she who had been Peter’s wife in his youth, but whom, ever since the hour when he was called by the Lord, he had regarded as a sister, and who had followed to minister to him in his wanderings, was led forth with other Christians to martyrdom. St. Clement of Alexandria describes the scene, and tells us that, as they passed before St. Peter, who had been blessing them and praying for them, his last farewell to this faithful woman was summed up in three words, “Oh, remember the Lord!”

All the love and longing of Peter’s heart, all the tender memories of the Redeemer’s blessed presence in their own house, were in the cry. She passed on, and won her crown first, but the Apostle had but a little while to wait for his. Simon Magus, crazed with pride, had promised to give the Emperor the most magnificent proof of his supernatural powers—he should behold him fly to heaven! Nero was delighted. A high and richly decorated scaffolding was erected, from which the Mage was to take his flight; a throne was raised opposite to it, whence his patron could watch his triumph; and the whole city crowded to the spot to witness and applaud.

Not far off in the crowd some poorly clad “Jews” surrounded an old man called Peter, who knelt and prayed—prayed fervently that God would confound the wicked and not permit His servants to be deluded by the snares of the Evil One.

The great moment came. After pompous orations and loud acclaims, Simon Magus leapt from the scaffolding—and fell, a mangled heap, at the feet of Nero, whose face and garments were sprinkled with his blood. He lingered for two or three days and then expired miserably. The superstitious Emperor believed that magic had been pitted against magic to compass his own humiliation and his favourite’s downfall. Who was the offender? Then some courtier pointed out the grey-haired man with the tear furrows in his cheeks, now returning thanks to God, and from that time the doom of the Apostle was sealed.

Not at once did the tyrant’s servants succeed in laying hands on St. Peter. The Christians, ready enough themselves to face martyrdom and rejoin the victors who had gone before, could not reconcile themselves to the loss of the beloved Shepherd of their souls, and urged him, with wild entreaties, to flee to safety. He was still needed, they said; it could not be God’s will that the Church should be left desolate of his sustaining presence in such evil times. Sorely against his will he consented to leave the city, but, as he chose the Appian Way for his flight, it is clear that he only contemplated remaining hidden for a time in the subterranean retreats of the Pagus Triopius; had he meant to reach the coast, he would have taken the road to Ostia, emerging from the opposite and lower end of the town. In the very first years of his Pontificate in Rome, an edict of Claudius had banished the “Jews” from the city and it is believed that St. Peter accompanied them in their exile to this spot, and he would naturally turn to it in an emergency.

But, a little beyond the first milestone, the Apostle’s steps were arrested by a vision which must have filled him with joy and yet wrung his heart with memories of pain.[4] One came towards him through the dusk, bearing a cross. The never-to-be-forgotten eyes once more looked into his. We can almost hear now the wild cry of the Apostle—“Lord, whither goest Thou?”

“To Rome to be crucified anew,” was the answer.

The vision faded away, and, with a heart breaking with joy and love, the Apostle retraced his steps and told the faithful of the Lord’s will, now so clearly revealed. “The Prince of Pastors” had spoken. The hour for which His great vicar had waited so long was at hand—the martyrdom for which he thirsted, already prepared. The weeping brethren went out to see the place where Christ had met their Spiritual Father, and found there the impress of the Saviour’s blessed foot upon the stone. Later a church[5] was erected at the spot, but at that time all that was possible was to cover the sacred footprint and mark the site for veneration. (This stone was afterwards removed to the Church of St. Sebastian, but a copy of it is still kept at Domine Quo Vadis.) Every trace of the history of the Faith was so inexpressibly dear to those loving hearts! One disciple, who must have followed St. Peter at a distance on that memorable night, found in the path a little bandage which had detached itself from his foot (were his feet sore and cut from the many weary steps that the saving of souls had cost him?) and this was reverently treasured, and a Basilica called “In Titulus FasciolÆ,” and now known as the Church of SS. Nereus and Achilleus, was erected in after years to mark the spot and guard the humble souvenir.

All this happened apparently in the month of September or October. Within a year, at most, the mourning Christians, led by Clement, Peter’s successor, put up the marble tablet—found in 1911—a small tablet of greenish marble, on which these words were inscribed:

“Here the Blessed Peter absolved us, the elect, from the sins confessed.”

But what a chapter of history had been written between! St. Peter returned to the city and disposed all things for his death. His first care was to write his second Epistle General, his last will and testament, and his farewell to the faithful. “In a little while,” he says, speaking of his mortal body, “this my tent will be folded away, as was signified to me by the Lord Himself,” thus evidently referring to the vision on the Appian Way. Only the words of our Divine Lord surpass in majesty and tenderness that last Epistle of St. Peter. Heaven was very near as he wrote it, the celestial melodies were already in his ears, the recent apparition of his Master had filled his heart with love and longing almost too great to be borne, but that love translates itself into the most tender parental care for the children he was leaving behind. With what tears and devotion must the letter have been received in the different Churches that had known his care, when it came to them accompanied by the news of his death!

More important even than his farewell to his children was the matter of appointing his successor, the second of the long line of which our own beloved Pius X is the present representative. Although Linus had been for ten years St. Peter’s fervent auxiliary Bishop, his right hand in the government of the Church, whose vast growth had made it necessary in turn to appoint Cletus as auxiliary to Linus, the Apostle passed over them and chose Clement to immediately succeed him as the Vicar of Christ.[6] Clement with his noble name, his great gifts, and his eminent holiness, was the man needed in Rome at that moment, and, as Tertullian and St. Epiphanius attest, was at this time consecrated by St. Peter and then solemnly installed by him as head of the Universal Church.

Then came the beginning of the end, but the first stage was a long and weary one. St. Paul, it appears, besides his reported share in the downfall of Simon Magus, had drawn upon himself the furious wrath of Nero by converting two of his favourites in the palace itself, one a concubine, the other a chamberlain in close attendance on his person. His doom was pronounced at the same time as that of St. Peter, though the manner of their end was not at once decided upon. St. Paul was removed from the house in the Via Lata (now the Church of Santa Maria in Via Lata) and, with St. Peter, was thrown into the Mamertine Prison, and kept there for eight months. The very name of this dungeon still brings back to me a chill of fear when I hear it pronounced, for to me it was the most terrible spot in all Rome. Deep under the eminence which is crowned by the Capitol is a chamber cut in the rock, unlighted, unaired, and lined with the huge uncemented blocks which date from Rome’s prehistoric times; a prison dreadful enough by itself, but there is worse below. A square aperture in the floor, just large enough for a man’s body to pass through, gives access to another dungeon excavated beneath it, a pit of blackness, where Jugurtha and many other poor wretches, condemned to die by violence or starvation, moaned their lives away, before it was honoured by the presence of the Apostles. They were let down into it by a rope, and the men who were lowering St. Peter carried out their task with such brutal roughness that they knocked his dear head violently against the wall, in his descent. The wall must have been less hard than their hearts, for it took the impression, and the mark has been kissed for close on two thousand years by the lips of ardent pilgrims. I remember touching it, when, as a child, I saw it first, and receiving the most extraordinary thrill of a living reality of some kind. There is now a staircase by which to descend to the lower prison, but in my early days there was only a rough ladder leading into what, in spite of the guardian’s taper, showed as a black abyss. The place is thirty feet long and twenty-two wide, with a height of sixteen feet, and was often crowded with captives. We do not know how many it contained when the Apostles (probably not on the same day) were brought there; stagnant water covered the floor, and fetid odours made the air a poison, but where St. Peter’s feet first touched the pavement a spring of clear water bubbled up, and was running gaily when I visited the spot. We know that St. Peter and St. Paul converted and baptised forty-seven persons in this den, besides the two captains of their guards, St. Processus and St. Marcellianus, so that the little spring served for the most noble ends.

The damp cold of the dungeon is so deathly that the Apostles’ lives must have been preserved as by a miracle through those terrible eight months. They had bidden farewell to the light in the golden days of autumn; they came forth to meet its blinding radiance in the dazzle of June. Quickly the news spread among the Christians, ever eager to hear how it fared with their revered Pastors; and already, when these had but just emerged from their dungeon, loaded with chains and under a heavy guard, the intrepid crowd had formed in procession to accompany them to their triumph. Their sentences were already pronounced. St. Peter, the poor Jew, was to be scourged and crucified; St. Paul’s Roman citizenship forbade these humiliations; he was to be beheaded.

It is a long way from the Capitol to the Ostian gate and the Vatican, and the Apostles’ limbs, cramped from long confinement, must have moved slowly and wearily over the Via Sacra, now, for the first time, deserving of its name; the heat at that time of year is overpowering, and the blaze of midday beat down upon their heads. At a certain point, about three-quarters of a mile from the present gate of St. Paul, the cortÈge halted and divided itself into two, and here the Fathers of all Christianity bade one another farewell—for the few hours which must pass before they should be reunited “in the Lord.” The little chapel which marks the spot bears this inscription:[7]

The soldiers who had charge of St. Paul led him away to the westward, to a spot whither, as St. Clement gives us to understand, the Emperor Nero deigned to come to enjoy the sight of his sufferings. St. Peter’s escort had been commanded to bring him to the Vatican hill, the old place for Christian executions, easy for the people to find, because of a very ancient terebinth tree which had stood there for hundreds of years and was a popular landmark. The murderers, when they were authorised ones, as in this case, always sought to give the greatest publicity to such executions, hoping (very much against hope, one would think) that the victims’ courage would give way and fear induce apostasy at the last moment; or, failing that, that the sight of their torments would deter others from embracing Christianity.

So St. Peter, praying and rejoicing, was first scourged after the cruel Roman manner, and then both bound and nailed to his cross, head downward by his own request, since he said he was not worthy to die like his Lord. The blood that flowed from his wounds was gathered on linen cloths by the weeping Christians, who stood around him for the long hours he hung there.

The ancient antiphon which used to be sung on the Feast, thus describes the martyrdom of St. Peter:

So they reversed the cross, and nailed his feet at the top and his hands at the base. While Peter was on the cross there came a great multitude, cursing CÆsar, and there was great lamentation before the cross.

Peter, from the cross, exhorted the people, saying: “Weep not, but rejoice with me, because I go to-day to prepare a place for you.” And having thus spoken he said: “Good Shepherd, I thank Thee that the sheep Thou didst confide to me take part in heart with my sufferings; I beseech Thee that they may also take part with me in Thy grace for all eternity.”

‘Tis said that he repeated over and over in his heart that humble protestation, “Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee!” And when at last his praying and blessing ceased, and the beloved face turned grey and stiff, they took him down, washed the stains away from those furrows that the tears of repentance for his denial had been scoring in his cheeks for nigh on forty years, closed the eyes that had looked on the Lord and had been such wells of sorrow and contrition, and buried his blessed body close by, in the stricken soil that the Romans had learnt to shun.

And “by the power of this other cross, raised in Rome, Babylon became that day the Holy City, while Zion must forever rest under malediction for having crucified her Saviour. Rome may reject the Man-God as she will, she may shed His blood in that of His martyrs, but no crime of hers can avail against the tremendous fact accomplished in this hour; the cross of Peter has transferred to her all the rights in the Cross of Jesus,—it is she who is now Jerusalem.”

... “This tribute of death, Levi knew it not; this dower of blood, Jehovah demanded it not of Aaron; men die not for a slave—and the Synagogue was not the Spouse.”[8]

The Vatican crypt which received the body of St. Peter immediately after his martyrdom, was excavated under a temple of Apollo, the deity supposed to preside over public games, near the old circus of Nero. By the year 89 or 90 A.D., when St. Peter’s fourth successor, St. Anacletus, became Pontiff, during the reign of the Emperor Domitian, one is led to suppose that this temple was more or less forsaken as a place of pagan worship, since Anacletus was able to “build,” as the phrase runs, a tiny oratory, just large enough for two or three persons to kneel in, around the tomb of St. Peter. Here again, apparent accident served the ultimate designs of Providence in regard to this fore-hallowed site. The Christians desired greatly to deposit the Apostle’s remains in the deep and secret excavations, already crowded with the bodies of martyrs, near the fourth milestone on the Appian Way, the vaults which had more than once afforded refuge to the persecuted brethren and to the Apostle himself. But with the persecution that was raging at the moment of his death, it would have been impossible to transport the body without attracting notice, so the nearest spot was chosen, regardless of the fact that it was in the close neighbourhood of a number of pagan tombs. As we shall see later, this humble resting-place was threatened with desecration in its turn, and was emptied of its treasure for many years in favour of the more distant cemetery.

The martyrdom of St. Peter attracted little notice except from the poor Christians who gathered round his hard deathbed, to weep and pray and receive his last blessing; that of St. Paul, the Roman citizen, was a much more public and popular affair. The intrepid band of disciples who followed him to the chosen spot on the Ostian Way, not far from the other (but divided by the slopes of the Janiculum), risked death more certainly in doing so, and some of them doubtless paid its penalty.

Before reaching the place of execution, St. Paul saw, weeping bitterly by the roadside, the holy matron Plautilla, one of his converts, who had hastened thither to bid him farewell and ask for his last blessing. As our Lord, on the way to Calvary, paused to speak to the daughters of Jerusalem, so St. Paul stayed his steps to console this faithful woman. He asked her to give him her veil, that he might cover his eyes with it when he was beheaded, and he promised that he would return it to her after his death. Plautilla, feeling scarcely worthy of such an honour, yet rejoiced to be able to serve him, eagerly placed her veil in his hands, while his jailers mocked at the Apostle’s promise. But her faith and love were rewarded, and she beheld the beloved Pastor again with her bodily eyes, when, after his martyrdom, he appeared to her and restored the veil, all stained with his blood.

At the spot called then “ad Acquas Salvias,” St. Paul was tied to a pillar, and the executioner’s sword severed his head from his body. The head, in falling, bounded away, touching the ground three times in all, and, at each point where it touched, a spring of clear water instantly burst forth and is still flowing. The first was warm as life-blood, the second tepid, and the third, icy cold. A Frenchwoman has written of this miracle as only a Frenchwoman could: “At the first touch, the soul has but just escaped from the body—that glorious head is yet full of life! At the second, the shadow of death is already cast over those wonderful features; at the third, the eternal sleep has overtaken them, and, though still radiant in beauty, they announce that the lips will never open again in this world, and that the eagle glance is veiled forever.”

The show is over, the Emperor is borne away by his slaves and sycophants, sulky, perhaps, at not having seen more blood or greater wonders. But the destruction of Simon Magus and the alienation of his favourites is avenged. That is something to take back with him to the night’s debauch on the Palatine. The vulgar crowd has followed him, and as the quick Italian night comes down, and the mists roll along the river, while the evening star hangs white in the low crimson of the West, the mourners gather up the sacred body and the haloed head, and hasten, as in St. Peter’s case, to bury the martyr close by, in a bit of land owned by the noble matron Lucina, who, years later, built on it a splendid tomb for his earthly resting-place.