Was St Peter Ever in Rome?

Every year on June 29 the Orthodox Church keeps the feast of the holy, glorious and all-praised Apostles Peter and Paul, and her calendar of saints says plainly that Peter "was put to death in Rome during the reign of Nero."¹ Yet some Protestant writers and a few modern historians say Peter never set foot in Rome. The New Testament never states that he did, and the question has long been tangled up with a larger one: whether the bishop of Rome rules the whole Church as Peter's successor.

This article separates those two questions. It looks at what Scripture says and does not say, at the earliest Christian witnesses, at the excavations under St Peter's Basilica, and at the strongest case against the tradition. It then gives the Orthodox answer, which is twofold: yes, Peter preached and died in Rome; and no, that fact does not establish papal supremacy.

In brief

The New Testament never says in so many words that Peter was in Rome. It does, however, end 1 Peter with greetings from "she who is in Babylon," a name early Christians used for Rome, and John 21 foretells Peter's martyrdom. From the 90s onward the witnesses multiply: 1 Clement, written from Rome, sets Peter beside Paul as a martyr of "our own generation"; Ignatius, writing to the Romans, says he does not command them "as Peter and Paul" did; Dionysius of Corinth says the two apostles taught in Italy and "suffered martyrdom at the same time"; Gaius of Rome points to their "trophies" on the Vatican Hill and the Ostian Way; Irenaeus says they founded the Roman church. Excavations in the 1940s found a modest shrine of about 160 AD on the Vatican Hill, very likely the "trophy" Gaius mentions; whether any bones found there are Peter's is disputed. Later details, such as a twenty-five-year Roman episcopate, are legend. The skeptical case (Goulder, Zwierlein) deserves an answer, and it has one: no other city ever claimed Peter's death. But Irenaeus credits the Roman church to Peter and Paul together, Peter also founded the church of Antioch, and the Council of Chalcedon explained Rome's first rank by its having been the imperial capital.

Thesis: St Peter preached and died as a martyr in Rome, as the whole early Church remembered; that historical fact, rightly received, honors Rome as the church of two apostles and gives no ground for the later doctrine of papal supremacy.

What the New Testament says, and does not say

Acts follows Peter through Jerusalem, Samaria, Lydda, Joppa and Caesarea. After his release from prison, "he departed and went to another place" (Acts 12:17), and apart from the council of Acts 15 he disappears from Luke's story. Acts ends with Paul under guard in Rome, and Paul's letter to the Romans, written before he arrived, greets many people there but not Peter. Galatians describes an agreement in which Paul would go "to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised" (Galatians 2:9).² Those silences are the starting point of every skeptical argument, and they are real.

Two texts point the other way. The risen Lord tells Peter: "when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish," and the evangelist adds, "This He spoke, signifying by what death he would glorify God" (John 21:18-19). That establishes a martyr's death, though not its place. The second is the closing of 1 Peter: "She who is in Babylon, elect together with you, greets you; and so does Mark my son" (1 Peter 5:13).³

Literal Babylon on the Euphrates is unlikely: there is no record of Peter, Mark or a first-century church there. Revelation uses "Babylon" for a city on "seven mountains," "that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth" (Revelation 17:9, 18), and Jewish writers after the fall of Jerusalem also called Rome by that name.⁴ Eusebius, around 325, reports the tradition that Peter wrote his first letter "in Rome itself," and that he "calls the city, by a figure, Babylon."⁵ Mark's presence fits as well, since 2 Timothy 4:11 has Paul asking for Mark to be brought to him. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia notes that this was the general reading until the Reformation, when Erasmus and Calvin argued for the literal Babylon.⁴ Calvin called the Roman reading an "old comment" that "has no color of truth in its favor," partly because he saw how it was used for the papacy.⁶ The encyclopedia's own article, written from the Protestant side, still concludes that Rome is meant.

The earliest witnesses

Rome, about 96: 1 Clement

The letter of the church of Rome to Corinth, traditionally linked with St Clement of Rome and usually dated to the 90s, calls Peter and Paul "the greatest and most righteous pillars" of "our own generation." It says: "Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labours; and when he had at length suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him." Of Paul it adds that he "suffered martyrdom under the prefects."⁷ Clement does not name the city. But he writes from Rome, he pairs Peter with Paul (whose Roman death no one doubts), and he moves straight on to "a great multitude of the elect" who suffered, which is usually connected with Nero's persecution in Rome.

Antioch to Rome, about 110: St Ignatius

On his way to the beasts, St Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the Roman Christians: "I do not, as Peter and Paul, issue commandments unto you. They were apostles; I am but a condemned man."⁸ The sentence makes most sense if Peter and Paul had taught the church he was addressing. (On the letters and their date, see our article on Ignatius.)

Corinth and Rome, about 170 to 200

Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, wrote to the Romans in the time of their bishop Soter, about 170. Eusebius preserves his words: Peter and Paul "planted and likewise taught us in our Corinth. And they taught together in like manner in Italy, and suffered martyrdom at the same time." Around 200 a Roman churchman named Gaius, arguing with the Montanist Proclus, wrote: "But I can show the trophies of the apostles. For if you will go to the Vatican or to the Ostian way, you will find the trophies of those who laid the foundations of this church."⁹ A "trophy" here is a monument of victory, that is, a martyr's memorial, and Gaius places Peter's on the Vatican Hill.

Gaul, North Africa and beyond

St Irenaeus of Lyons, writing about 180, says Matthew wrote his Gospel "while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church," and calls the Roman church "founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul."¹⁰ Tertullian of Carthage, about 200, writes of Rome: "How happy is its church, on which apostles poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood! Where Peter endures a passion like his Lord's!"¹¹ Origen, as quoted by Eusebius, adds that Peter, "having come to Rome," was "crucified head-downwards."¹²

{{very-strong: From Rome, Corinth, Gaul and North Africa, second-century Christians remembered Peter as having taught and died in Rome, and no other city ever claimed his martyrdom.}}

Where legend grows

Honesty requires noting where the tradition later expanded. Eusebius brings Peter to Rome under Claudius to confront Simon Magus, and Jerome (392) says Peter came "in the second year of Claudius to overthrow Simon Magus, and held the sacerdotal chair there for twenty-five years."¹³ Lactantius, writing about 315, says instead that Peter came to Rome "while Nero reigned."¹⁴ The Simon Magus contest comes from apocryphal literature, and a twenty-five-year residence cannot be squared with Paul's silence in Romans or with Peter's presence in Jerusalem at the council of Acts 15. Most likely Peter came to Rome late in his life, in the 60s, and died in Nero's persecution after the fire of 64. The details of his death, including the inverted cross, are discussed in How Did the Apostles Die?

What the excavations found

Soon after Pius XII became pope in 1939, workmen lowering the floor of the grottoes under St Peter's Basilica broke into a Roman mausoleum. The pope ordered excavations, carried out from 1941 by a Vatican team including the Jesuit archaeologists Antonio Ferrua and Engelbert Kirschbaum. The classicist John Curran summarizes what they found. A street of second- and third-century tombs, pagan and Christian, ran under the basilica. Constantine's builders had cut off the tops of these tombs and filled them with earth to create a level platform, at great cost, so that the altar of his church would stand over one exact spot. At that spot was a small courtyard against a wall the excavators called the Red Wall, with a monument of two niches built into it. Brick stamps from a drain beside it date the complex to the mid-second century (the bricks came from a workshop active between 147 and 161).¹⁵

{{strong: By about 160, Roman Christians had built a small shrine on the Vatican Hill over a grave they honored as Peter's; it very probably is the "trophy" Gaius mentions, and Constantine built his basilica around it.}}

The bones are another matter. In his Christmas broadcast of 1950 Pius XII said the tomb had been found ("the answer is beyond all doubt yes") but that, for the human remains, "it is impossible to prove with certainty that they belong to the apostle."¹⁶ A Greek graffito scratched on plaster, read by Ferrua as "Petr[os] en[i]" ("Peter is here within") was restored by others to mean the opposite. The epigrapher Margherita Guarducci then argued that bones removed in 1942 from a marble-lined niche in an adjoining wall had traces of purple cloth woven with gold, belonged to a robust man of sixty to seventy, and were Peter's. On June 26, 1968, Paul VI announced that the relics of St Peter had been "identified in a way which we can hold to be convincing."¹⁷ He did not make it a matter of faith. Catholic News Service has noted that "no pope has ever declared the bones to be authentic," and Curran, after reviewing the evidence, judged that the 1968 statement could not be accepted.¹⁸ In 2019 Pope Francis gave nine of these fragments to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who called the gift "a brave and bold initiative."¹⁸

{{debated: Whether the bones announced by Paul VI in 1968 are the remains of the Apostle Peter.}}

The Church's faith does not depend on those bones. The shrine shows something more modest and more useful: a Roman community honoring a particular grave as Peter's within a century of his death.

The case against, at full strength

The first known challenge came late. Curran notes that "no challenge was ever mounted to the tradition of Peter's residence and martyrdom in Rome prior to 1324."¹⁵ Calvin rejected the Roman reading of "Babylon" and denied a long Roman episcopate, but on the main question he wrote: "from this agreement of authors, I do not dispute that he died there, but that he was bishop, particularly for a long period, I cannot believe."¹⁹

The modern case is sharper. Michael Goulder argued in 2004 that Paul and Acts place Peter in Jerusalem, that 1 Clement mentions Peter's labors "but not Rome and not martyrdom," that legends of a Roman stay were forming by about 100, and that Peter "probably died in his bed in Jerusalem about AD 55."²⁰ The classical philologist Otto Zwierlein, in a 2009 study summarized by Pieter van der Horst, argued that Peter "never visited Rome, did not undergo martyrdom there, was not buried there, and certainly was not the first bishop of Rome." On his reading "Babylon" means the diaspora, 1 Clement knows nothing beyond Acts, and the Ignatian letters are late forgeries.²¹

These arguments rest on two moves: reading the earliest texts as minimally as possible, and redating the inconvenient ones. Each move is possible; together they ask a great deal. 1 Clement's reticence about places is typical of the letter, which also does not say where Paul died, yet no one doubts Paul died in Rome. The pairing of Peter and Paul appears independently in Rome (Clement), Antioch (Ignatius) and Corinth (Dionysius), and Corinth had its own claim to both apostles and no reason to flatter Rome. The New Testament scholar Markus Bockmuehl, answering Goulder, observed that "local memory of Peter's martyrdom remained confined to Rome and was never subject to competing claims elsewhere."²² Jerusalem, Antioch and the East, which honored Peter greatly, never claimed his tomb. And the Vatican shrine shows that by the mid-second century a real grave, in a real cemetery, was honored as his. A legend invented late in the century, as Zwierlein proposes, does not fit that evidence well.

The silence of Romans and Acts fits Peter's arriving after Paul wrote and after Acts ends. The Galatians agreement shows where each apostle was chiefly sent, not a fence around Peter: Rome had a large Jewish community, and 1 Peter itself is addressed to scattered believers.

The Orthodox answer: yes, and therefore not supremacy

The Orthodox Church affirms that St Peter preached and died in Rome. She honors the church of Rome as the church of Peter and Paul, consecrated by their blood. Before the schism, the Orthodox recognized the bishop of Rome as first in honor among the bishops. What she denies is the conclusion later drawn from these facts. The First Vatican Council (1870) taught that Peter "lives and presides and exercises judgment in his successors the bishops of the holy Roman see, which he founded and consecrated with his blood," and that "whoever succeeds to the chair of Peter obtains by the institution of Christ himself, the primacy of Peter over the whole church."²³ The early sources do not support that conclusion, and the Orthodox Church holds it to be an error. She honors the primacy of honor that Rome held among the churches while she kept the Orthodox faith, but she acknowledges no bishop as holding universal jurisdiction or infallibility by divine right.

• Rome is the church of two apostles, not one. Irenaeus does not name Peter alone as Rome's founder. "The blessed apostles," plural, "committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate." Eusebius likewise says that "after the martyrdom of Paul and of Peter, Linus was the first to obtain the episcopate."²⁴ In the earliest lists Peter is the apostolic founder, not the first bishop in a line of monarchs.
• Peter's chair is not only in Rome. Eusebius calls Ignatius bishop of Antioch, "second in succession to Peter."²⁵ St Gregory the Great, pope of Rome, wrote to the patriarch of Alexandria that the see of Peter "in three places is the See of one": Rome, where Peter died; Alexandria, to which he sent his disciple Mark; and Antioch, where "he sat for seven years."²⁶ If Peter's chair is shared by three ancient patriarchates, residence in Rome cannot by itself confer rule over the whole Church.
• The councils gave Rome first place for another reason. Canon 28 of Chalcedon (451) says: "the Fathers rightly granted privileges to the throne of old Rome, because it was the royal city," and gives New Rome, Constantinople, equal privileges after it. Pope Leo refused to accept the canon, appealing to the canons of Nicaea and to "the blessed Apostle Peter's authority"; but the bishops' own explanation shows that the East did not ground Rome's rank in Petrine jurisdiction.²⁷
• Founding a church is not ruling the Church. Christ's promise, "on this rock I will build My church" (Matthew 16:18), was read by St John Chrysostom as "on the faith of his confession,"²⁸ and none of the early witnesses above infers from Peter's death in Rome that the Roman bishop holds universal jurisdiction. For the wider history, see Did the Early Church Believe in Papal Supremacy?, the overview Papal Supremacy, and Vatican I and Ultramontanism.

Protestants who deny Peter's Roman stay in order to deny the papacy concede too much: they accept that if Peter was in Rome, Rome's claims follow. They do not. The Orthodox Church can accept the full historical evidence because her doctrine of the Church never rested on a single city. Every bishop who keeps the apostolic faith in communion with the Church stands in the apostolic succession (see Did the Early Church Believe in Apostolic Succession?).

What we can say confidently

• Peter died a martyr's death, as John 21:18-19 foretells.
• 1 Peter 5:13 most likely uses "Babylon" for Rome, as Revelation and Eusebius do.
• From about 96 to 200, witnesses in Rome, Antioch, Corinth, Gaul and North Africa associate Peter, with Paul, with the church of Rome and with martyrdom there; no rival city ever claimed his death.
• A shrine of about 160 on the Vatican Hill marked a grave honored as Peter's, and Constantine built his basilica over it.
• The earliest sources credit the Roman church to Peter and Paul together and give Linus as its first bishop; Peter is also remembered as founder of the church of Antioch.
• Peter's presence in Rome does not establish papal supremacy, which the Orthodox Church rejects as an error.

What remains disputed

• When Peter came to Rome and how long he stayed; the twenty-five-year tradition is late and unlikely.
• Whether 1 Clement 5 itself refers to a death in Rome or only implies it.
• The date of the Ignatian letters (the usual date is about 110; some scholars, such as Zwierlein, date them later).
• Whether the bones announced in 1968 are Peter's; the reading of the "Petr[os] en[i]" graffito.
• The manner of Peter's death and whether the cross was inverted.

Conclusion

The fisherman from Bethsaida, who denied his Lord three times and was three times restored, ended his life in the capital of the empire, glorifying God by the death Christ had foretold. The Church has never forgotten it, and the Orthodox keep his memory with Paul's each June 29. On the historical question the evidence is ample, and skeptical attempts to remove Peter from Rome require more special pleading than the tradition does.

The Orthodox answer gives both history and ecclesiology their due. Rome is honored as the church where two apostles poured out their blood. But the rock on which Christ builds His Church is not a city, and the apostolic succession belongs to every church that keeps the faith Peter confessed: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). To read more about the apostle himself, see Peter: The Apostle Restored by Christ.

Notes

1. Orthodox Church in America, "Lives of all saints commemorated on June 29" (Apostles Peter and Paul), https://www.oca.org/saints/all-lives/2021/06/29.
2. Acts 12:17; Galatians 2:7-9 (NKJV). For the greetings, see Romans 16.
3. John 21:18-19; 1 Peter 5:13 (NKJV), https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Peter+5%3A12-13&version=NKJV.
4. Revelation 17:5, 9, 18 (NKJV); A. W. Fortune, "Babylon in the New Testament," International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr (1939 edition), https://www.internationalstandardbible.com/B/babylon-in-the-new-testament.html (on Sibylline Oracles 5.143, 2 Esdras and 2 Baruch, and the reading of 1 Peter 5:13 before and after the Reformation).
5. Eusebius, Church History 2.15.2, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, NPNF2 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250102.htm.
6. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, on 1 Peter 5:13, trans. John Owen, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/comment3/comm_vol45/htm/iv.vi.iv.htm.
7. 1 Clement 5-6, trans. John Keith, ANF 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm.
8. Ignatius, To the Romans 4, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, ANF 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0107.htm.
9. Eusebius, Church History 2.25.5-8 (Gaius and Dionysius), NPNF2 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250102.htm; on Dionysius and Soter, 4.23.9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250104.htm.
10. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1 and 3.3.2, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, ANF 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103301.htm and https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm.
11. Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics 36, trans. Peter Holmes, ANF 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0311.htm.
12. Eusebius, Church History 3.1.2, citing Origen's Commentary on Genesis, NPNF2 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm.
13. Eusebius, Church History 2.14.6; Jerome, Lives of Illustrious Men 1, trans. Ernest Cushing Richardson, NPNF2 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2708.htm.
14. Lactantius, Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died 2, trans. William Fletcher, ANF 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0705.htm.
15. John Curran, "The Bones of Saint Peter?" Classics Ireland 3 (1996), http://www.classicsireland.com/1996/Curran96.html.
16. Pius XII, Christmas radio message, 23 December 1950, as quoted in English by Curran (note 15); the first part also in Italian in Paul VI, General Audience, 26 June 1968 (note 17).
17. Paul VI, General Audience, 26 June 1968 (Italian), https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/it/audiences/1968/documents/hf_p-vi_aud_19680626.html; English rendering from Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service (note 18).
18. Cindy Wooden, "Pope Francis gives Orthodox patriarch relics of St. Peter," Catholic News Service, in America, 3 July 2019, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/07/03/pope-francis-gives-orthodox-patriarch-relics-st-peter; Curran (note 15).
19. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 4.6.15, trans. Henry Beveridge, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes/institutes.vi.vii.html.
20. Michael D. Goulder, "Did Peter ever go to Rome?" Scottish Journal of Theology 57, no. 4 (2004): 377-396, abstract at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/scottish-journal-of-theology/article/did-peter-ever-go-to-rome/11ABA1E02F005D73B37B957F7DD7C119.
21. Pieter W. van der Horst, review of Otto Zwierlein, Petrus in Rom: die literarischen Zeugnisse (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.03.25, https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010.03.25.
22. Markus Bockmuehl, "Peter's death in Rome? Back to front and upside down," Scottish Journal of Theology 60, no. 1 (2007): 1-23, abstract at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/scottish-journal-of-theology/article/peters-death-in-rome-back-to-front-and-upside-down/28C2A7CE52BAD643A1D0F3656D57BF42.
23. First Vatican Council, Pastor aeternus (18 July 1870), ch. 2, English text at https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm.
24. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.3 (see note 10); Eusebius, Church History 3.2.1 (see note 12).
25. Eusebius, Church History 3.36.2; compare 3.22 (see note 12).
26. Gregory the Great, Register of Letters, Book 7, Letter 40, to Eulogius of Alexandria, trans. James Barmby, NPNF2 12, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360207040.htm.
27. Council of Chalcedon (451), canon 28, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3811.htm; Leo the Great, Letter 105, to Pulcheria Augusta, trans. Charles Lett Feltoe, NPNF2 12, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3604105.htm.
28. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 54.3, trans. George Prevost, rev. M. B. Riddle, NPNF1 10, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200154.htm.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• Ante-Nicene Fathers, vols. 1, 3, 7 and 9: Ignatius, To the Romans; Irenaeus, Against Heresies; Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics; Lactantius, Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died; 1 Clement. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885-1896.
• Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vols. 1, 3, 12 and 14: Eusebius, Church History; Jerome, Lives of Illustrious Men; Gregory the Great, Register of Letters; Leo the Great, Letters; the canons of Chalcedon. Buffalo and New York, 1890-1900.
• Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 10: John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew. 1888.
• First Vatican Council. Pastor aeternus. 1870.
• Paul VI. General Audience, 26 June 1968. Vatican.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Orthodox Church in America. Lives of the Saints: Apostles Peter and Paul (June 29).

Other scholarship

• Bockmuehl, Markus. "Peter's death in Rome? Back to front and upside down." Scottish Journal of Theology 60 (2007): 1-23.
• Curran, John. "The Bones of Saint Peter?" Classics Ireland 3 (1996).
• Fortune, A. W. "Babylon in the New Testament." International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr. 1939.
• Wooden, Cindy. "Pope Francis gives Orthodox patriarch relics of St. Peter." Catholic News Service, 2019.

Sources from the skeptical and Reformed side

• Calvin, John. Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, trans. John Owen; Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge.
• Goulder, Michael D. "Did Peter ever go to Rome?" Scottish Journal of Theology 57 (2004): 377-396.
• Zwierlein, Otto. Petrus in Rom: die literarischen Zeugnisse. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009; reviewed by Pieter W. van der Horst, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.03.25.