The Death and Burial of St. Peter

Literary tradition is clear that St. Peter was crucified in Rome and was buried at a place called Vatican. Archaeology has confirmed that the Church of St. Peter was built above, and to commemorate, the place of his burial.

In the first 11 chapters of Acts, Peter is depicted as the leader of the early church of Jerusalem. He works there and in the immediately surrounding regions, including Samaria. In Acts 12:1–5, we learn that Herod Agrippa I (who reigned from 41 A.D.–44 A.D.) arrested Peter and put him in prison, apparently intending to put him to death. (Acts 12:5 says Herod intended “to bring him forth to the people”, evidently a 004euphemism meaning to execute him.) This occurred in the spring of 41 A.D.

However, according to the Biblical account, Peter was miraculously delivered from prison by an angel (Acts 12:7–11). Shortly thereafter, he left Jerusalem (Acts 12:7)—no doubt a prudent move.

According to Eusebius’ Chronicle and Jerome’s Illustrious Men, Peter went first to Antioch where he founded a church, then travelled to and preached at a number of other places in Asia Minor and Greece, and finally arrived in Rome sometime late in 42 or early 43. There, as Jerome tells us, he “held the sacerdotal chair … for twenty-five years until the last, that is the fourteenth year, of [the Emperor] Nero.”

That Peter was considered to have been the head of the Roman church for this period of twenty-five years does not mean that he was required to stay in Rome continuously for all that time. Indeed, we are told that Peter was present and spoke at the Jerusalem conference in 49 (Acts 15:7), and also visited Antioch afterward (Galatians 2:11).

Peter’s death is early foreshadowed in Jesus’ statement to Peter recorded in John 21:18: “When you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” The Bible adds that Jesus said this “to show by what death [Peter] would glorify God.” To “stretch out the hands” is doubtless a euphemism for crucifixion.

Peter, like Paul and a host of other Christians in Rome, met their death as a result of Nero’s famous anti-Christian persecutions—Peter by crucifixion. Clement of Rome in his First Letter to the Corinthians speaks of the martyrs’ deaths during Nero’s persecutions:

“Unto these men [Peter and Paul, whose deaths Clement has described] who lived lives of holiness was gathered a vast multitude of the elect, who by many indignities and tortures, being the victims of jealousy, set the finest examples among us. On account of jealousy … [they] had suffered cruel and unholy insults, nevertheless safely reached the goal in the race of faith and received a noble reward, feeble though they were in body.”

In the tenth year of Nero (63/64), on the nineteenth of July, fire broke out in the Circus Maximus by the Palatine and Caelian hills. Tacitus says it was not known whether this was by chance, or whether the fire was set by Nero; Suetonius states that the city was set on fire openly by Nero, who pretended to be disgusted with the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets. The fire burned for six days, and stopped at the foot of the Equiline hill, then started up again in other parts of the city and burned longer. When finally it was at an end only four of Rome’s fourteen districts (as organized by Augustus) were intact. Apparently repentant, Nero put up emergency shelters and brought food for the homeless and fugitive populace, and took steps toward a major rebuilding of the city. Some of the rebuilding expenses Nero paid himself, and he also offered rewards for rebuilding. Prayers and sacrifices were made to the gods. “But”, according to Tacitus, “neither human help, nor imperial munificence, nor all the modes of placating Heaven, could stifle scandal or dispel the belief that the fire had taken place by order. Therefore, to scotch the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue. First, then, the confessed members of the sect were arrested; next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race. And derision accompanied their end: they were covered with wild beasts’ skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by night. Nero had offered his Gardens for the spectacle, and gave an exhibition in his Circus, mixing with the crowd in the habit of a charioteer, or mounted on his car. Hence, in spite of a guilt which had earned the most exemplary punishment, there arose a sentiment of pity, due to the impression that they were being sacrificed not for the welfare of the state but to the ferocity of a single man.”

Additional information is given by Sulpicius 005Severus (363–420 A.D.) in his Sacred History or Chronicle of the World (II, 29). Severus gives the same facts with which we are already familiar, about the fire and the persecution of the Christians and the many who were “crucified or slain by fire.” Then he goes on to say:

“Afterwards, too, their religion was prohibited by laws which were enacted; and by edicts openly set forth it was proclaimed unlawful to be a Christian. At that time Paul and Peter were condemned to death, the former being beheaded with a sword, while Peter suffered crucifixion.”

In the promulgation of such anti-Christian laws Nero probably wanted to establish legal grounds for what he had already done as an act of outright violence. No doubt the inauguration of these laws and their application to accomplish condemnations and executions required some length of time. Since Severus speaks as if Peter was condemned on the basis of these laws, it is likely that he died as a result of legal action and perhaps in 67/68, as Jerome suggests (Jerome, Illustrious Men, 16).

Origen (cited by Eusebius, Church History, III, 1) says Peter “was crucified head-downwards, for he had requested that he might suffer in this way.” Jerome (Illustrious Men 1) relates that he was “nailed to the cross with his head towards the ground and his feet raised on high, asserting that he was unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord.”

While it is true that an executed criminal had no legal right to burial, the laws evidently allowed friends or relatives to claim a body for burial—as was done for Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea—and this could have been done for Peter as, no doubt, also for other victims of persecution. In any event, there is little doubt where he was buried.

Many references speak either of the place of Peter’s burial or of the place of his execution or of both as being at the Vatican. The earliest is that of Gaius, a presbyter in the Church at Rome under Pope Zephyrinos (199–217). According to Eusebius (Church History, II, 25), Gaius claimed in a dispute with an eastern Christian sect that he Gaius could show his antagonist the “trophies” of Peter and Paul. A “trophy” in Greek and in Latin is a token of the turning around, hence of the rout, of an enemy, and is thus a sign or memorial of victory, often raised on the field of battle. Because Gaius’ antagonist refers to certain tombs as “trophies”, Gaius too must have referred to the grave-monuments of Peter and Paul. These are memorials of triumph, because they mark the last resting places of the apostles who died as heroic witnesses. Peter’s trophy, says Gaius, may be found at the Vatican. Evidently, it was already a 006well-established and well-known Christian landmark in Rome at the time of Gaius, i.e., about the year 200. Many other later references attest the general location of Peter’s tomb.

The Vatican was the last of the fourteen administrative districts into which Rome was divided by Augustus. The name (adjective Vaticanus, substantive Vaticanum) may have been derived from an early Etruscan settlement. The whole area, called the Ager (“field” or “district”) Vaticanus, was across from the Campus Martinus on the west side of the Tiber River and north of the Janiculum hill. On the northwest was a conspicuous hill, the Mons Vaticanus, one of several montes Vaticani extending from the Janiculum to Monte Mario. The district was rural or suburban, considered unhealthy, infested by large snakes and known for clay from which bricks, tiles and earthenware vessels (“brittle dishes,” according to Juvenal, Satires, VI, 344) were made.

The Emperor Constantine is supposed to have erected a church—the Church of St. Peter—over the site of the apostle’s tomb. Archaeological excavations have confirmed this tradition.

The first excavations beneath the church of San Pietro in Vaticano were conducted during the period 1940–1949 by Apollonj-Ghetti. Further investigations were under taken in 1953 and thereafter by Guarducci. As a result of these excavations, it was found that simple early burials were made on the Vatican hillside as early as the first century of the present era. One tomb, for example, was covered with tiles on one of which was a manufacturer’s mark datable to the reign of Vespasian (69–79), while close by was a clay lamp with the name of a potter known elsewhere on lamps datable to about 70.

In the period from approximately 130 to 300 a double row of magnificent mausolea were built over the pre-existing cemetery, thereby partly obliterating it. These mausolea were rectangular structures of concrete faced with brick, much like small houses, with the exterior decoration in opus reticulatum (small diamond-shaped stones in a “network” pattern) and terra cotta, with titulus inscriptions of the owners on marble tablets above the entrance, and with reliefs, mosaics, and paintings in the interior. In the walls, niches were made for urns of cremation, but places were also provided for burials since the Roman custom changed gradually to inhumation in the second and third centuries. Decorations generally show the themes of pagan religion, but there are some clear Christian burials too.

Near the west end of the double row of 007mausolea was found a steep narrow street. On the east side of this street was a wall, the purpose of which was to fix the boundaries of the street and of adjacent tombs. Set into the east side of this wall, facing an open court, is a two-story niche or shrine (the “Aedicula”) (see reconstruction). The wall was plastered and colored red (the “Red Wall”), and the Aedicula was constructed at the same time as the wall into which it is recessed, about 160. Some early burials extend under the Red Wall, and there are traces of an ancient grave under the Aedicula. On the Red Wall and probably not much later than the wall and the Aedicula, a graffito was found with the name of Peter and a word possibly meaning “is within”, thus a scratched notation by some worker or visitor that “Peter is buried inside”. Accordingly, the Aedicula probably 008marked the last resting place of Peter, and this shrine may therefore be recognized, as is done by most scholars, as the “trophy” or tomb of Peter at the Vatican to which Gaius made reference around 200 A.D.

At the exact place believed to have this significance the emperor Constantine built a large church. To put the church exactly here involved a project of extraordinary difficulty because of the pre-existing cemetery. This cemetery had to be invaded (surely a moral if not also a legal problem) and a large building area leveled (involving the moving of an estimated more than million cubic feet of earth). In most cases the roofs of the mausolea were removed, earth was packed into the exposed chambers, and the foundation walls of the church were set into the midst of the cemetery. Obviously, Constantine could have chosen an easier site if his purpose was anything other than to build a church over what he believed to be the tomb of Peter.

Like several other of Constantine’s churches (San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem), the Church of St. Peter was a basilica, a Roman type of building used for various purposes and known from at least the second century prior to the present era, in which a hall is subdivided by internal colonnades. The Constantian church of St. Peter’s is known from some remaining portions of it found in the excavations under the present San Pietro in Vaticano, and from drawings and plans of it made before or during its demolition to make way for the present church. It was a five-aisled basilica, 85 meters long and 64 meters wide, with a single projecting apse at the west end and a narrow transept. The apse was oriented precisely to the Aedicula. Over the tomb of Peter were set spiral columns.

In the fifteenth century it was decided to demolish the Constantinian basilica because of its dilapidated condition, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was replaced by the present church, designed by Bramante. The first stone was laid in 1506, the work was continued by Raphael in 1514, and the great dome made by Michelangelo in 1546. The church was dedicated in 1626. Bernini designed the bronze canopy over the alter in 1633 and later designed the colonnades around the elliptical piazza to which the obelisk had been moved in 1586. Six of the spiral columns which Constantine put above St. Peter’s tomb survive and were placed by Bernini in galleries in the dome of the present church. Under the present altar, which is the work of Clement VIII (1592–1605), are the altars of Callistus II (1119–1124) and Gregory the Great (590–604) and, beneath them all, in direct line, are the Red Wall and the Aedicula, the “trophy” of Peter.

(For further details, see Jack Finegan, “Chronology of Paul and Peter—A Provisional Synthesis in the Light of Archaeology and Recent Study”, forthcoming: B. M. Appolonj-Ghetti, et al., Esplorazioni sotto la confessione di San Pietro in Vaticano eseguite negli anni 1940–1949. 2 vols. 1951; Arthur S. Barnes, St. Peter in Rome and His Tomb on the Vatican Hill, 1900; S. Dockx, “Essai de chronologie petrinienne” in Recherches de Science Religieuse. 62 (1974), pp. 221–241; Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 1964; Margherita Guarducci, The Tomb of St. Peter, 1960; Englebert Kirschbaum, The Tombs of St. Peter & St. Paul, 1959; Jocelyn Toynbee and John Ward Perkins, The Shrine of St. Peter and the Vatican Excavations, 1956).

Literary tradition is clear that St. Peter was crucified in Rome and was buried at a place called Vatican. Archaeology has confirmed that the Church of St. Peter was built above, and to commemorate, the place of his burial.