The Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul

The New Testament does not narrate the death of either apostle. Acts leaves Paul under guard in Rome (Acts 28:16, 30–31). The second letter to Timothy has him say that he is “already being offered” and that the time of his departure has come (2 Timothy 4:6–8). In John’s Gospel Jesus tells Peter that in old age he will stretch out his hands and be taken where he does not wish to go, which the evangelist explains as a sign of how Peter would die (John 21:18–19). The first letter of Peter sends greetings from “Babylon” (1 Peter 5:13), which later writers took to be a name for Rome (Eusebius, Church History 2.15.2).

The first witness outside the New Testament is 1 Clement, written from Rome and usually dated about AD 96, a generation after the reign of Nero. It sets Peter and Paul before the Corinthians as examples “furnished in our own generation” of men persecuted to death. Peter endured many labours and, having “suffered martyrdom”, went to the place of glory. Paul was seven times in chains, preached in east and west, reached the limit of the west and “suffered martyrdom under the prefects” (1 Clement 5). The letter names no place, year or manner of death. About AD 110 Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the Roman Christians that he did not give them orders “as Peter and Paul” had (Ignatius, To the Romans 4).

The details come later. About 170 Dionysius of Corinth wrote that the two had taught together in Italy and died as martyrs at the same time (Eusebius, Church History 2.25.5–8). Irenaeus, about 180, calls the Roman church founded by Peter and Paul (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.2). About 200 Tertullian wrote that at Rome Peter suffered as his Lord had and Paul died a death like John’s (Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 36); the John meant is usually taken to be John the Baptist, who was beheaded. The Roman writer Gaius, at the same period, offered to show the “trophies” of the apostles at the Vatican and on the road to Ostia (Eusebius, Church History 2.25.5–8). Origen, in the third century, in a passage that Eusebius reports, says that Peter was crucified head downwards at his own request and that Paul was martyred at Rome under Nero (Eusebius, Church History 3.1.2). Eusebius, who preserves several of these quotations, sums up in the early fourth century: Paul was beheaded at Rome and Peter crucified under Nero (Eusebius, Church History 2.25.5–8).

The churches draw different conclusions from Peter’s presence in Rome. The Catholic Church teaches that Christ made Peter the rock of his church and that the bishop of Rome is Peter’s successor (Catechism of the Catholic Church 881–882). The Orthodox patriarchs wrote in 1848 that Rome’s see is reckoned Peter’s by a single tradition and not from Scripture, which speaks rather for Antioch, and that its primacy was an honour given because Rome was the imperial city (Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848) §§ 11, 13). Among Protestants, Calvin did not dispute that Peter died at Rome but could not believe that he had been its bishop, least of all for a long time (Calvin, Institutes 4.6.15).