MCMXCIX

iv

THE
BAMPTON LECTURES

FOR
1913

v

THE
CHURCH IN ROME
IN THE FIRST CENTURY

LECTURE
II

Romans
10:14: ‘How shall they call on Him, in whom they have not believed? And
how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher?’

The
narrative of St. Luke in that earlier part of the Acts of the Apostles
which leads up and is introductory to the main theme of the work is
obviously fragmentary. The object of the writer however stands out
clearly. He intended to give such an account, step by step, of the
beginnings of Christianity, as was necessary for a full understanding of
the life-work and missionary labours of St. Paul up to the time of his
captivity at Rome. Every episode appears to have been carefully selected
with a definite and precise purpose, and if the story, as told by him,
seems at times to be tantalisingly brief and scanty, even disjointed, we
must remember that those for whom it was written had access to oral
sources of information from persons who had witnessed or taken part in the
events described, which would place each episode in its proper setting and
give to it its rightful significance. This we cannot do now, but if we
bear in mind that not only the facts recorded by Luke but even his
silences are suggestive, we may, I think, by the help of evidence gathered
in from various sources, from contemporary or nearly contemporary
writings, from the accumulated results of archaeological research, and
from well-authenticated tradition, be able to show that the spread of
Christianity during the period covered by the Acts was not by any means
confined to the sphere of Paul’s activity, nor intended to be so confined,
but that one most important field was reserved for the Apostle who fills
the foreground 31of
the Lucan narrative up to the year 42 A.D.
and then, except for a single brief appearance, is seen no
more.

It
is, of course, evident from what I have said that I am assuming that St.
Luke the physician, the travelling companion of St. Paul, was the author
of the Acts of the Apostles. I do so without feeling that such an
assumption at the present time requires defence. In these lectures it is
my aim, as far as possible, to avoid the mere collecting or comparing of
other men’s opinions, or the balancing of the authority of one set of
scholars against another. It is the results of personal investigation into
the history of the Church in Rome in the first century that I am now
specially desirous of bringing before you, not a recapitulation of what
has recently been written about that history. My own experience has taught
me that the only way to arrive at conclusions in historical questions
satisfying to the historical conscience is to study the original
authorities for oneself with an independent mind, using indeed all the
light and all the suggestions that modern critical scholarship can throw
upon the many problems and difficulties that have to be solved, but never
accepting any of the so-called ‘results of criticism’ without testing for
oneself with the greatest care and at first hand the grounds on which they
are supposed to rest.

The
case for the Lucan authorship of the Third Gospel and of the Acts I
consider however to have been so thoroughly established by the remarkable
series of works published by Sir William M. Ramsay
[1]

and
Dr. Adolf Harnack[2]

upon
the subject, as to have been placed, if not beyond the reach of
controversy—for alas ! the spirit of controversy is not 32quickly
laid—on a solid bedrock of reasoned and exhaustive argument against which
the waves of controversy will beat in vain. And not merely have they
proved the unity of authorship. They have shown that we have in St. Luke a
cultured writer possessed of literary power and historical grasp and well
acquainted with the details of Roman provincial administration and of the
distinct characteristics, geographical and political, of different
localities, who in a considerable part of his work speaks as an
eyewitness, and who elsewhere uses first-hand evidence, if at times with a
certain freedom, yet always with honesty and intelligence. My own
conviction that the book of the Acts must have been written during St.
Paul’s first captivity at Rome and completed before his release has long
been firmly held, but this conviction has been strengthened and deepened
by the extraordinarily powerful way in which Dr. Harnack[3]

has
quite recently set forth in serried array the reasons which 33have
slowly driven him to abandon his earlier prepossessions on this question,
and forced him (in spite of the knowledge that he was—to use his own
words—‘creating a revolution within the domain of criticism’[4]

)
to fix on grounds alike of external and of internal evidence the end of
St. Paul’s imprisonment as the date when the Acts, in the form we now
possess the book, was finished.

It
is needless to say that the acceptance of such a conclusion has a very
important bearing on the subject of these lectures. For, if St. Luke wrote
the Acts at Rome, the work must have been written in the first instance
for the Roman Christians, but if so the question naturally arises, why
should there be a total omission in the book of any reference to the
founding of the Church in Rome or to the names of those who first preached
the Gospel in that city? This is one of those silences of St. Luke, of
which I have spoken already as being suggestive. A comparison of the last
verses of the Third Gospel and of the Acts may help us to an answer.[5]

Had the Gospel stood alone all commentators and critics would have
asserted unanimously that the Evangelist believed the Ascension of our
Lord to have taken place on the evening of the day of the Resurrection.[6]

But
from the opening passage of the Acts we learn that they would have been
wrong, and that St. Luke in the conclusion of his Gospel deliberately
foreshortened the events of six weeks in this way, because he intended to
take up the thread of the story and fill in the details later. The.
similar foreshortening of the events of two years, which we find in Acts xxviii. 30-1, suggests that St. Luke in
writing this otherwise strangely puzzling and abrupt ending to his
narrative had already planned in his mind a third book, which should
supplement the Acts as the Acts had supplemented the Gospel, and that this
book would have begun by taking up the account of Peter’s life-work, so
sharply 34broken
off at his release from prison, and that a brief sketch would have been
given of the history of the Church in Rome previous to St. Paul’s two
years’ ministry during his captivity.

With
this preface let us now turn to those introductory chapters of the Acts in
which St. Luke sketches for us the steps by which Christianity emerged
from the condition of a strictly Jewish sect to that of a universal
religion intended for all mankind. It will be seen that the enlargement of
view, which is so clearly traced, was very gradual; that it came from
below rather than from above; from the subordinates, to some extent from
the rank and file, rather than from the acknowledged leaders. On the Great
Day of Pentecost when St. Luke so carefully enumerates the various
nationalities from which the great crowd of pilgrims was drawn, it should
be noted that St. Peter addresses them as ‘Men of Israel,’ and his whole
discourse is that of a man concerned only with proving to an assembly of
Jews that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah of their sacred
Scriptures. The passage is in fact a striking testimony both to the wide
extent of the Jewish Diaspora and to the fact of the intense love
and reverence for the Holy City and for the injunctions of the Mosaic Law,
which brought together such a throng of worshippers from far-distant
regions, including people speaking many different tongues, to this feast
at Jerusalem. In the list of those forming St. Peter’s audience we find
the names of six different peoples and the inhabitants of nine different
districts, and it is implied that Jews from these various places had come
up specially for the occasion—with one exception. The phrase ‘the
sojourning Romans, Jews as well as proselytes’ seems capable of only one
interpretation, that St. Luke is here referring to a body of Roman Jews
and converts to Judaism, who were temporarily residing in Jerusalem, and
whom it may be permitted with considerable probability to identify with
the ‘Synagogue of the Libertines’[7]

mentioned
35in
Acts vi.9. Among this body may have been
numbered the Roman Christians Junias and Andronicus, who were some quarter
of a century later saluted by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans ‘as
men of mark among the Apostles and who were in Christ before
me.’

In
his record of the period that follows St. Luke makes it quite clear that
the first organised Christian community was at Jerusalem, not in
Galilee.[8]

After
the day of Pentecost when certain of the multitude exclaimed ‘Are not all
these that speak Galilaeans?’—there is not a word in the Acts to indicate
that the early Church had any connexion with Galilee. The Twelve, whose
authority, as being derived directly from the Lord, no one called in
question, made Jerusalem their headquarters from this time forward, and
from this centre carried on their mission work. But that mission work was
limited to. Jews. The Twelve, moreover, we are expressly told, visited the
Temple regularly[9]

and they seem to have conformed in every way to the regulations of the
Mosaic Law, and to have differed from the Jews amongst whom they lived
only in that they taught that the crucified Jesus, to whose Resurrection
from the Dead they bore personal testimony, had by His Resurrection proved
Himself to be the Messiah.[10]

Among the Twelve St. Peter on every occasion takes the lead and is the
spokesman of the rest, and occupies a position of undisputed
pre-eminence.[11]

In
all that they did during these years, which immediately followed their
Lord’s departure from them, it is scarcely possible that these personal
disciples should not have been 36acting
in strict accordance with their Master’s last commands. Eventually they
were to go forth upon a wider mission to the nations, but for awhile—an
ancient tradition of considerable weight says definitely for twelve
years[12]

—they were to abide at Jerusalem, and restrict themselves to proclaiming
in its simplest form the message of the Gospel to the Palestinian Jews,
meanwhile resting in the promise that in the future whenever fresh calls
should be made upon them they should receive illumination and guidance
from the Holy Spirit.[13]

Not
until the sixth chapter of the Acts do we find any indication of a
widening of view. But here reading between the lines of the brief
narrative one cannot but feel something more than a suspicion that the
movement of which the appointment of the Seven was the outcome, and at the
head of which St. Stephen placed himself, was not one with which the
Twelve were at the time in entire sympathy. The work to which St. Stephen
specially addressed himself was the preaching of the Gospel to the members
of those Synagogues which were set apart for the use of the Hellenistic
settlers and sojourners in Jerusalem, i.e. for Jews of foreign
origin, speaking a foreign tongue, and trained amidst Gentile
associations. Those mentioned seem to belong in order of importance to the
chief Jewish Colonies of the Dispersion. The first place, be it noted, is
assigned to the Libertines or Roman freedmen, men conspicuous probably
alike for their wealth and their close connexion with the Imperial City.
Then come the Alexandrians, members of a Jewish settlement of ancient date
and high culture, in numbers exceeding probably the entire population of
Palestine.[14]

And
after 37them
the Cyrenians,[15]

second
only to the Alexandrians in number, and like them thoroughly Hellenised.
Lastly, mention is made of those of Cilicia and Asia—traders no doubt
connected by ties of family and business with those characteristically
Graeco-Asiatic cities, Tarsus and Ephesus. Among such a body of
‘Hellenists’ the message of the Gospel would naturally be interpreted in a
larger and more universal sense than in those stricter ‘Hebrew’ circles to
which as yet the Twelve had chiefly directed their appeal.

What
we do know is that St. Stephen’s ardour and activity and the special
character of his teaching speedily aroused the intense enmity of the
Jewish rulers. He was seized, brought before the Sanhedrim, and without
proper trial or condemnation in a sudden outburst of fanatic fury stoned
to death. It was the signal for a persecution which scattered far and wide
those who had attached them-selves to him and the doctrines that he
taught.

But
fierce though the persecution was, St. Luke expressly tells us, it did not
touch the Twelve. ‘They were all,’ we read ‘scattered abroad, except the
Apostles.’[16]

Apparently
at this time the accusers of Stephen did not regard the Twelve, and the
Judaeo-Christians who held with them, as men ‘speaking against this Holy
Place and trying to change the customs that Moses hath delivered unto us.’
As yet they (the original Apostles) seem not to have offended the
susceptibilities of the High-Priestly caste by any neglect in their
outward observance of the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish law. But
tliis scattering abroad of the friends and disciples of Stephen was to be,
under God’s providence, gradually productive of great results. It led
directly to the conversion of Saul the persecutor. It brought Philip, one
of the Seven, to Samaria, where many were converted by 38his
preaching. Such indeed was his success that for the first time the
Apostles broke through their rule of confining themselves to Jerusalem and
its neighbourhood, and Peter and John, the two leaders, were sent to take
official charge of the new field of missionary operations. And there at
Samaria (mark the emphasis Luke lays upon the incident) Peter was
confronted with the man who, under the name of Simon Magus, was according
to tradition to exercise a large, perhaps a decisive, influence upon his
action at a critical point in his career.[17]

Nor
was this all. After an interval, probably of some three years,[18]

we
find that persecution has for the time entirely ceased,
and that already the Christian Church is peacefully and firmly established
throughout the whole of Judaea, Galilee and Samaria,[19]

and
Peter engaged on a tour of visitation in all parts.[20]

Finally
he reaches Joppa and there takes up his abode for some time in the house,
we are told, of one Simon a tanner. Now this very fact, that the Apostle
chose to reside with a man whose trade in the eyes of strict orthodox
Judaism was unclean, points to the advance he had already made in casting
himself loose from the fetters of Jewish prejudice. The vision which sent
him to Cornelius was probably the reflection of the doubts and
questionings which had been previously filling his thoughts and an answer
to his prayers.[21]

It
was a preparation for 39that
which was to follow, for his visit to the Roman centurion was not merely
to teach him that the law which forbade intercourse between Jew and
Gentile was henceforth done away, but to open his eyes to the startling
and all-important fact that it was the revealed will of God that
uncircumcised Gentiles should be admitted to the full privileges of
Christianity. The question how far such Gentiles would have to conform to
the Jewish law was indeed not yet settled, nor was it to be settled
without much prolonged and even embittered controversy in the years that
were to come. The collocation by St. Luke in juxtaposition of the defence
of St. Peter[22].

to
the brethren at Jerusalem for his action in regard to Cornelius, and of
the news reaching those same brethren that certain men from Cyprus and
Cyrene, on their own initiative, without sanction or authority from the
Mother Church, were preaching to the Greeks at Antioch and had converted a
large number of them to the faith,[23]
was clearly intentional. St. Peter’s apologia was apparently
somewhat grudgingly accepted, for there is little of spontaneous
enthusiasm about the words—‘and when they had heard these things they held
their peace and glorified God, saying “Then also—ἄρα γε
καὶ—to
the Gentiles hath God granted repentance unto life.”’

On
receiving information, therefore, about what was occurring at Antioch, it
was only natural that those at the head of the Church in Jerusalem should
determine to send to the Syrian capital one of their own body with
instructions 40to
inquire personally into the truth of the reports that had reached them,
and to establish official control over a movement which seemed at first
sight to be revolutionary, and which was in fact a long step in advance
towards a totally new conception of the mission of Christianity in the
world.

Joseph,
surnamed Barnabas, whom they selected as their emissary, was a man
singularly well qualified for dealing wisely and sympathetically with the
new situation. He had been intimately associated from the very first with
the Jerusalem Church.[24]

He
was at once a Levite and a Cypriote Hellenist, and the surname which was
given to him by the Apostles themselves tells us that he was a man endowed
with prophetic gifts for the exposition and interpretation of Scripture.[25]

And
he was to remain for some years, probably to the end of his life, a
mediator and reconciler between the opposing schools of thought and ideals
of Christianity associated later with the names of St. James and St. Paul.
It is noteworthy how large a part Barnabas, who had now gone to Antioch as
the representative of the Church at Jerusalem, took in preparing the way
for him who was to be pre-eminently the Apostle of the Gentiles. The two
men may possibly have first become friends in their youth, when Saul of
Tarsus was studying at the feet of Gamaliel. In any case when Saul, three
years after his memorable conversion, came up to Jerusalem to make the
acquaintance of Peter, he found, perhaps not unnaturally, that the
brethren looked askance at the erstwhile persecutor, until Barnabas took
him by the hand and, as it were, stood 41voucher
for his good faith.[26]

His reception, however, on this occasion appears to have been so far
discouraging that Saul withdrew for a considerable time to his native
place Tarsus. Thither Barnabas after a brief sojourn at Antioch now went
to seek in his retirement the man whom he knew to be specially well fitted
to act as his colleague at this juncture. His judgment and prevision were
more than justified. For a whole year, we read in the Acts, Barnabas and
Saul taught with such success that the assemblies of the faithful, whether
of Jewish or Gentile origin, met together harmoniously and in such
numbers[27]

that
even in this vast city,[28]

of
mixed population, professing every known variety of religion, the new sect
became sufficiently large and well known to attract public attention. The
scoffing nick-name, Christiani, was now for the first time given to
the disciples of Jesus by the pagan Antiocheans—a term of shame and
reproach, which soon was to become a title of glory.

While
at Antioch under the leadership of Barnabas the
preaching of the Gospel was thus making rapid progress, events were taking
place in Judaea of critical importance for the future of the Church.
The peace which the Christians in
Palestine
enjoyed in the period preceding the conversion of Cornelius had been due,
not to any increase of good-will on the part of the Jewish rulers, but to
the fact that these were too much occupied at that time with their own
serious troubles. The order given by the Emperor Caligula to place his
statue in the Holy of Holies had filled the whole nation with horror and
made them resolve rather to be massacred than allow such a profanation of
the Temple.[29]

The
assassination of 42Caligula
alone averted a general revolt. According to Josephus, Herod Agrippa, who
was then in Rome, played a very important part in securing the peaceful
accession of Claudius, who rewarded him for his services by bestowing upon
him, in addition to Galilee, Peraea and the territory beyond the Jordan
with which he had been invested by Caligula, also Judaea, Samaria and
Abilene, making his kingdom thus equal in extent to that of his
grandfather Herod the Great.[30]

Claudius
became emperor, January 24, 41 A.D.,
and towards the end of that year King Agrippa went to Palestine with the
intention of using every means to ingratiate himself with his new
subjects. He was especially desirous of impressing them with his careful
observance of the Mosaic law and his zeal for the national religion, being
to some extent suspect through his long residence in Rome and alien
descent.[31]

Accordingly
having gone to Jerusalem to keep the first Passover after his accession,
he resolved to give a signal mark of his fervour as a defender of the
faith, by the summary execution of James the son of Zebedee. Possibly he
was the only one of the Christian leaders on whom for the moment he could
lay hands. But finding his action had pleased the Jews, he proceeded to
arrest Peter also, and, as the days of unleavened bread had already begun,
he placed the Apostle in prison under the strictest guard with the
intention of bringing him forth before the people as soon as the Passover
was over.[32]

The
story of his escape as told by St. Luke, which ends so abruptly, has every
internal mark of having been derived directly from the maid-servant Rhoda,
whose name is otherwise so unnecessarily mentioned. We learn from this
graphic narrative that the house in Jerusalem where the disciples were
43accustomed
to hold their gatherings for prayer was that of Mary, the mother of John
Mark, and the aunt of Barnabas. It was to this house that the Apostle
naturally turned his steps, as soon as he found himself outside the prison
gates, but with no intention of remaining in so well known a spot. As he
entered the room with a movement of his hand he at once checked their
cries of astonishment, briefly told his tale, probably almost in the rapid
words recorded, asked his hearers to repeat it to James and the brethren,
and then immediately, while it was still dark, he went out to betake
himself to a more secure hiding-place. And as the Apostle disappears into
the obscurity of the night, so does he, so far as his active career is
concerned, disappear henceforth from the pages of St. Luke’s
history.

There
are difficulties in this brief account of the Herodian persecution of the
spring of 42 A.D.
There is no hint that the Twelve were at Jerusalem at this critical time.
St. Peter himself does not seem to have been there when St. James was
beheaded. His parting words point to two conclusions: (1) that the other
James, the Lord’s Brother, was already the recognised head of the
Jerusalem community; and (2) that the speaker had no expectation of being
able to tell his tale to ‘James and the brethren’ in person. The
explanation however lies to our hand, if we accept the ancient and
well-attested tradition of which I have already spoken, that the Lord
Jesus had bidden his Apostles to make Jerusalem the centre of their
missionary activity for twelve years, after which they were to disperse
and go forth to preach to the nations. Already before Herod Agrippa struck
his blow the Twelve had begun to set out each one to his allotted sphere
of evangelisation, the care of the Mother Church being confided to James,
the Lord’s Brother, assisted by a body of presbyters, of whom he was one,
but over whom he presided with something of monarchical authority. It
would be an anachronism to give him the Gentile title of Bishop, but in
this earliest constitution of the Jerusalem Church we have the model which
other Churches were to follow and out of which episcopacy
grew.44

But
even if this be granted, it throws no light on the after-life of St.
Peter. For his after-life we have again to fall back mainly upon
tradition, a tradition already referred to by me at the close of my first
lecture, which makes St. Peter to have been the founder of the Church in
Rome. St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, as I have shown, speaks of
that Church as already in 57 A.D.
long established and of world-wide repute, into which as being built on
another man’s foundation he had not thought it right to intrude.[33]
The question then arises, what grounds are there for believing that the
man to whom he refers was St. Peter?

Now
there are traditions and traditions. First let it be premised that we are
not dealing here with a tradition handed down orally by illiterate people.
Not that oral tradition is to be neglected or despised. There is abundant
evidence to show with what accuracy historical traditions including long
lists of names have been handed down from generation to generation even
among tribes unacquainted with writing. After describing the pre-Hispanic
civilisation in Peru, a recent writer remarks: ‘It is not surprising, in
spite of the fact that no form of writing was known, that the people
capable of such political organisation had pre-served in traditional form
much of their early history. Feats of memory, which seem almost miraculous
to civilised races, who have become dependent on written records, have
been chronicled of several peoples below the Peruvians in the scale of
culture. The nobility among the Polynesians received regular instruction
in their past history, and the chiefs could repeat long genealogies, which
had been faith-fully handed down from generation to generation. Even among
African races traditional records are not unknown, and in one case a list
of even one hundred chiefs, together with historical details, has been
recently obtained from a tribe in the heart of the Southern Belgian
Congo.[34]
In the first century, however, in Rome and in all the chief centres
45of
population, where the early Christian Churches were established, writing
was familiarly employed by all classes. At one time it was assumed, with
an assurance that had absolutely no basis, that the events of early
Christian history could only have been known through oral transmission,
that it was most unlikely that anything was committed to writing at the
time, and the idea that the separate Churches kept any records of the
appointment of their officers, or any statements concerning the various
vicissitudes of their fortunes, was dismissed as untenable. ‘There is a
very strong body of opinion,’ said Sir W. Ramsay[35]

about
nine years ago, ‘that the earliest Christians wrote little or nothing. It
is supposed that partly they were either unable to write or at least
unused to the familiar employment of writing for the purposes of ordinary
life. Put aside that prejudice, and the whole body of opinion, which
maintains that the Christians at first did not set down anything in
writing about the life and death of Christ, strongly and widely accepted
as it is, dominating as a fundamental premise much of the discussion of
this whole subject in recent times, is devoid of any support.
. . . One of the initial presumptions, plausible in appearance
and almost universally assumed and conceded, is that there was no early
registration of the great events in the beginning of Christian history.
This presumption we must set aside as a mere prejudice, contrary to the
whole spirit and character of that age and entirely improbable.’ Such a
presumption has in fact been proved by recent discoveries to be in all
probability quite erroneous, and indeed there are strong grounds for
making an assumption of a precisely opposite character, i.e. that
the chief Christian Churches did keep more or less regular archives,
which, like the bulk of ancient records, perished through fire or other
accidents,[36]

through
the ruthless sacking of the city by barbarian conquerors, and in the case
of these 46Christian
archives by systematic destruction at the hands of the imperial
authorities, more especially during the persecution of Diocletian. But
though the documents themselves disappeared,[37]

the
memory of their contents would remain to be worked up afresh into new
narratives tinged with the opinions, beliefs and modes of thought of the
time at which they were written, and in such a setting as the pious fancy
of the compilers thought to be edifying, and in harmony with their
subject. What criteria then, it may be asked, have we for judging whether
these later Acts and Passions of Saints and Martyrs contain
in the midst of apocryphal accretion a real core of sound and trustworthy
historical fact? A tradition before it can be accepted as embodying
authentic history should, I think, satisfy the following conditions: (1)
It must be concerned with an event or series of events that had a great
number of witnesses, and of witnesses who would have a strong motive to
record or bear in memory what they had seen. (2) The beginning of the
tradition should appear at a time not too remote from the facts it
records, at a time, that is to say, in which it should not be possible for
the notices handed down by contemporaries to be obscured. (3) Shortly
after that time to which the beginning of the tradition goes back there
should appear in 47the
community to which it relates a firm and general persuasion of its truth.
(4) This persuasion should spread gradually until everywhere the facts are
accepted as true without any doubts being raised even by those who, had
they not been plainly true, would have desired to reject them.

Let
us now apply these criteria to the Petrine tradition at Rome. That Peter
visited Rome between the years 62 A.D.
and 65 A.D.
and that he was put to death there by crucifixion is admitted by everyone
who studies the evidence in a fair and reasonable spirit.[38]

This
is not a tradition, it may rather be described as a fact vouched for by
contemporary or nearly contemporary evidence. On this point no statement
could be stronger than that of Professor Lanciani: ‘I write about the
monuments of Rome from a strictly archaeological point of view, avoiding
questions which pertain or are supposed to pertain to religious
controversy. For the archaeologist, the presence and execution of SS.
Peter and Paul in Rome are facts established beyond a shadow of doubt by
purely monumental evidence.’ It is now generally conceded that the first
epistle bearing the name of Peter was written from Rome. The ‘Apocalypse
of St. John’ and the ‘Sibylline Oracles’ show that Babylon was a common
synonym for Rome in the second half of the first century.[39]
The language of Clement of  Rome
[40]

in
his Epistle to the Corinthians leaves no doubt—for it is the witness of a
contemporary—that Peter was martyred at Rome. ‘But leaving ancient
examples let us come to the athletes who were very near to our own times,
let us take the illustrious examples of our own generation.
. . . Peter who through unjust jealousy endured not one or two
but many sufferings and so having borne witness—μαρτυρήσας—departed
to the place of glory that was his due.’ The 48statement
in the apocalyptic ‘Ascension of Isaiah’[41]

—also
the work of a contemporary—that ‘a lawless king, the slayer of his mother,
will persecute the plant which the Twelve Apostles of the Beloved have
planted. Of the Twelve one will be delivered into his hands’ can scarcely
refer to another event than the death of Peter at the time of the Neronian
persecution. A comparison of St. John xxi. 18, 19 with St. John xiii. 36, 37 and with 2 Peter i. 14 is evidence as to the
manner of that death. The question of the authorship of the Fourth Gospel
or of 2 Peter is immaterial, for the writers, whoever they were, belong to
the first century, and the testimony to the received belief of the
Christian Church which they give is authentic.

But
a solitary brief visit to Rome after St. Paul had previously spent in that
city two years of fruitful work does not account for the position assigned
by tradition to St. Peter in relation to the Roman Church. Though the two
names are on several occasions coupled together, as joint founders of the
Roman Church, in all the earliest notices in which the two are named
together the name of Peter stands first. Thus Ignatius in his Epistle to
the Romans written about 109 A.D.
says: ‘I do not command you like Peter and Paul; they were Apostles; I am
a condemned criminal.’[42]
Dionysius of Corinth 171 A.D.
writing to Soter bishop of Rome[43]
speaks ‘of the plantation by Peter and Paul that took place among the
Romans and Corinthians.’ Irenaeus a few years later is filled with respect
49for
‘the most great and ancient and universally known Church established at
Rome by the two most glorious Apostles Peter and Paul, and also the faith
declared to men, which comes down to our own time through the succession
of her bishops. For unto this Church, on account of its more powerful
lead, every Church, meaning the faithful who are from everywhere, must
needs resort; since in it that tradition which is from the Apostles has
been preserved by those who are from everywhere. The Blessed Apostles,
having founded and established the Church, entrusted the office of the
episcopate to Linus. Paul speaks of this Linus in his epistles to Timothy,
Anencletus succeeded him, and after Anencletus, in the third place from
the Apostles, Clement received the episcopate.’ Now Irenaeus, who was a
disciple of Polycarp, and acquainted with others who had known St. John,
and who in 177 A.D.
became bishop of Lyons, had spent some years in Rome. This passage was
written, as he tells us, in the time of Eleutherus, probably about 180
A.D.[44]

Eusebius
of Caesarea has left us two lists of the Roman bishops, one in his
‘Ecclesiastical History,’ the other in his ‘Chronicle.’ The first is the
list of Irenaeus, the beginning of which has just been quoted. The second
is derived from the lost ‘Chronicle’ of Hippolytus, bishop of Portus,
written about half a century later. In the ‘Chronicle’ St. Peter’s
episcopate at Rome is stated to have lasted twenty-five years.[45]

In
the ‘Ecclesiastical History’ we read—‘under the 50reign
of Claudius by the benign and gracious providence of God, Peter that great
and powerful apostle, who by his courage took the lead of all the rest,
was conducted to Rome.’
In other passages his martyrdom with that of Paul is represented as taking
place after Nero’s persecution.[46]

The
interval between these two dates would roughly be about twenty-five years.
Now it is evident that these figures, derived as they are from men like
Irenaeus and Hippolytus, who had access to the archives and traditions in
Rome itself, cannot be dismissed as pure fiction. They must have a basis
of fact behind them. Eusebius tells us ‘that after the martyrdom of Paul
and Peter Linus was the first that received the episcopate at Rome.’ Now
the date of this martyrdom was according to the received tradition the
fourteenth year of Nero or 67 A.D.;
if then we deduct twenty-five years, we arrive at 42 A.D.,
which is precisely the date given for St. Peter’s first visit to Rome by
St. Jerome in his work ‘De Viris Illustribus.’ Remembering that Jerome was
a translator of the Eusebian Chronicle his words may be taken to embody a
close acquaintance with Eusebius’ works, including his lost ‘Records of
Ancient Martyrdoms,’ and with the sources that he used. Jerome writes as
follows: ‘Simon Peter, prince of the Apostles, after an episcopate of the
Church at Antioch and preaching to the dispersion of those of the
circumcision, who had believed in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and
Bithynia, in the second year of Claudius goes to Rome to oppose Simon
Magus, and there for twenty-five years he held the sacerdotal chair until
the last year of Nero, that is the fourteenth.’[47]

Now
here amidst a certain confusion, which will be dealt 51with
presently, a definite date is given for Peter’s first arrival at Rome,
and, be it noted, it is the date of his escape from Herod Agrippa’s
persecution and his disappearance from the narrative of the
Acts.

This
evidence of Jerome, it will be thus seen, rests upon that of Eusebius, and
that of the earlier authorities which that historian consulted. It has
been said that one of the conditions of the soundness of an historical
tradition was the wideness and unanimity of its reception. Now probably
never was any tradition accepted so universally, and without a single
dissentient voice, as that which associates the foundation and
organisation of the Church of Rome with the name of St. Peter and which
speaks of his active connexion with that Church as extending over a period
of some twenty-five years.

It
is needless to multiply references. In Egypt and in Africa, in the East
and in the West, no other place ever disputed with Rome the honour of
being the see of St. Peter; no other place ever claimed that he died there
or that it possessed his tomb. Most significant of all is the consensus of
the Oriental, non-Greek-speaking, Churches. A close examination of
Armenian and Syrian MSS.,[48]

and
in the case of the latter both of Nestorian and Jacobite authorities,
through several centuries, has failed to discover a single writer who did
not accept the Roman Petrine tradition.

No
less striking is the local evidence (still existing) for a considerable
residence of St. Peter in Rome. ‘There is no doubt,’ is the judgment of
Lanciani, once more to quote his well-known work ‘Pagan and Christian
Rome’ (p. 212), ‘that the likenesses of St. Peter and St. Paul have been
carefully preserved in Rome ever since their lifetime, they are familiar
to every one, even to school-children. These portraits have come down to
us by scores. They are 52painted
in the cubiculi of the Catacombs, engraved in gold leaf in the
so-called vetri cemeteriali, cast in bronze, hammered in silver or
copper, and designed in mosaic. The type never varies. St. Peter’s face is
full and strong with short curly hair and beard, while St. Paul appears
more wiry and thin, slightly bald with a long pointed beard. The antiquity
and the genuineness of both types cannot be doubted.’ Other noticeable
facts are: (l) the appearance of the name of Peter, both in Greek and
Latin, among the inscriptions of the most ancient Christian cemeteries,
especially in the first-century catacomb of Priscilla.[49]

The
appearance of this unusual name on these early Christian tombs can most
easily be explained by the supposition that either those who bore it or
their parents had been baptised by Peter. In any case it may be taken that
his memory was held in 53especial
reverence by them. Again, on a large number of early Christian
sarcophagi now in the Lateran Museum the imprisonment of Peter by
Herod Agrippa and his release by the angel is represented. The French
historian of the ‘Persecutions of the first two Centuries,’ Paul Allard,[50]

was
the first to point out that the frequency with which this subject was
chosen might be accounted for by the existence of a traditional belief in
a close connexion between this event and the first visit of St. Peter to
Rome. Orazio Marucchi, the learned and accomplished pupil and successor of
De Rossi, in his latest volume upon recent researches in the catacombs,
commenting upon this suggestion of Allard, adds that this scene is often
united to others, in which Moses and Peter appear as the representative
founders of the Jewish and Christian Churches with particular reference to
the Church in Rome.[51]

In
some representations may be seen the Lord handing to Peter a volume on
which is written Lex Domini, or beneath which is
the legend Dominus Legem
Dat.[52]

More
remarkable still are those in which Moses, with the well-known traits of
St. Peter, strikes the rock out of which flow the waters of cleansing
through baptism in the name of Jesus Christ.[53]

Taken
together all these authentic records of the impressions that had been left
upon the minds of the primitive Roman Church of a close personal connexion
between that Church and the Apostle Peter cannot be disregarded. They are
existent to-day to tell their own tale.54

Once
more the number of legends and the quantity of apocryphal literature that
grew up around the Petrine tradition are witnesses not merely to the hold
that it had upon popular regard but to its historical reality. Many of
these legends, much of this literature may in the main be evidently
fictitious, but even in those which are most clearly works of imagination,
there is almost always a kernel of truth overlaid with invention.[54]

It
is perfectly well known that most of these documents have behind them
other documents, which are now lost, but out of which those we now possess
have grown by gradual accretions and interpolations.[55]

But
it is not impossible even now for sound and scholarly criticism to arrive
with fair certainty in many cases at the ultimate basis of fact on which
the edifice of fiction rests. One of these apocryphal documents we
55have
in a very early form—the Ebionite ‘Preaching of Peter’—which was produced
in the first decade of the second century; as a proof of its early date it
may be mentioned that it was used by Heracleon in Hadrian’s time.[56]

The
work bears on the face of it testimony to the fact that Peter did labour
and preach at Rome, for it was written at a time when some of those who
actually saw and heard him may have been still alive, and there must have
been numbers whose fathers were grown-up men even in the time of Claudius.
The traditions connected with the cemetery ‘ad Nymphas’ where Peter
baptised, with the primitive chair now in St. Peter’s Basilica, with the
very ancient churches of St. Pudenziana, St. Prisca and St. Clement, with
the Quo Vadis? story, whatever their real historical value or lack
of value, undoubtedly stretch back long before the fifth and sixth
centuries, when pilgrims flocked to Rome with their ‘itineraries’ in their
hands, and they spring from a general and deep-rooted belief in a long and
active ministry of the Apostle in the See that had become identified with
his name.[57]

Returning
then once more to the undisputedly historical ground of St. Paul’s Epistle
to the Romans, we find that in 57 A.D.
there was in Rome a Christian community not of yesterday, but of many
years’ standing: an important community, whose faith and whose high repute
were well known in all churches of the Empire with which the writer was
acquainted. Further that St. Paul himself for some years past had been
longing to visit this Roman community, 56but
had been hindered from doing so by the restriction he had imposed upon
himself of not building on another man’s foundation. If again the question
be repeated—Who was this man? with greater emphasis than before the same
answer must be returned—It cannot be any other than St. Peter.

But
having arrived so far, we are confronted with certain difficulties that
arise in making this earlier ministry of St. Peter at Rome fit in with the
New Testament records relating to the same period. These difficulties will
be dealt with in the next lecture. To-day I shall confine myself to
pointing out that the circumstances which led to St. Peter’s mission to
Rome very soon after his escape from prison in the second year of Claudius
were strictly analogous to those described in the earlier part of the
present lecture, which led first to the mission of Peter accompanied by
John to Samaria, and then to that of Barnabas to Antioch.

The
dispersion of the Hellenist disciples of St. Stephen, after the
persecution in which their brilliant leader died a martyr’s death, was the
direct cause of the evangelisation first of Samaria and then some years
later of Syrian Antioch. Philip, like Stephen one of the Seven, preached
in Samaria meeting with great success, and there encountered a certain
man, Simon by name, who gave himself out to be some great one, and who had
by his sorceries astonished and drawn to him great numbers of the people.
On the news of this state of affairs being brought to the Apostles at
Jerusalem, Peter and John were despatched in the name of the Twelve, to
deal with the situation authoritatively. The result for a time, according
to the Acts, was the triumph of St. Peter, Simon himself being baptised
and seeking to be endowed by the Apostle with a portion of his
wonder-working spiritual gifts. And as with Samaria so it was with Syrian
Antioch. Men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who had been obliged to fly from
Jerusalem ‘upon the tribulation that arose about Stephen,’ after preaching
in their own native regions found their way to Antioch, and preaching in
that city of mixed nationalities, not only to Jews but also to the Greeks,
converted many. 57This
news again, that a Church was arising in the Syrian capital with a
considerable Gentile element in its midst, when it reached the Twelve at
Jerusalem, led to immediate action being taken. Barnabas was sent to
exercise super-vision over the new movement, and to see that a precedent
of far-reaching consequences should not be established with-out the
knowledge and sanction of those in authority.

Events
at Rome probably followed on precisely the same lines. Just as the men of
Cyprus and Cyrene in the face of persecution made their way back to their
own homes carrying with them the message of the Gospel, so would it be
with some of ‘the sojourners of Rome’ belonging to the Synagogue of the
Libertines. They would return to the capital inspired by the spirit and
example of St. Stephen to form there the first nucleus of a Christian
community. As I have already suggested, St. Paul’s salutation to
Andronicus and Junias seems to point to these two men as the leaders of
this first missionary band. Among those converted would be, as at Antioch,
both Jews and Gentiles.

Some
time may well have elapsed before any news of these first small beginnings
of Christianity in Rome reached Jerusalem. Possibly St. Peter’s
intercourse with Cornelius the centurion and his relatives and friends at
Caesarea first made him acquainted with the fact that the Gospel had
obtained a foothold in the capital, for the body of troops to which
Cornelius belonged—the Cohors Italica—consisted of volunteers from
Italy.[58]

From
this source too he may in due course have learnt that Simon Magus was in
Rome, and that there as in Samaria previously he was proclaiming himself
‘to be the Great Power of God’ and was leading many astray by his magical
arts.

This
information in any case, whether derived from Cornelius or from Roman
Christians, who came up for the feasts, would reach the Apostles about the
time when their twelve years’ residence in Jerusalem was drawing to a
close, and when, according to tradition, they divided among 58themselves
separate spheres of missionary work abroad. To St. Peter, as the
recognised leader, it may well have been that the charge of the Christian
Church in the Imperial capital should have been assigned as the post of
honour. If so, it will be seen that the persecution of Herod Agrippa only
hastened on a journey already planned. After his imprisonment and escape
St. Peter’s first object would be to place himself out of the reach of the
persecutor and to set about his voyage as quickly as possible. If so, his
arrival at Rome would be in the early summer of 42 A.D.,
the date given by St. Jerome.59

[1] The
Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170, 3rd ed. 1894; St. Paul the
Traveller and Roman Citizen , 7th ed. 1903; A Historical Commentary on St.
Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians ; The Cities of St. Paul; Luke the
Physician and other Studies in the History of Religion , 1908; The First
Christian Century , 1911, etc. etc.

[2] Lukas,
der Arzt, der Verfasser des dritten Evangeliums und der Apostelgeschichte
, 1906; Sprüche and Reden Jesu. Die zweite Quelle des Matthäus and Lukas ,
1907; Die Apostelgeschichte , 1908; Neue Untersuchungen zur
Apostelgeschichte , etc., 1911. All these volumes have been translated
into English and published as vols. xx. xxiii. xxvii. and xxxiii. of the
Crown Theological Library.

[3] “Neue
Untersuchungen zur Apostelgeschichte , pp. 63–81. In this volume Dr.
Harnack completes his defence of the date 62 A.D. for the Acts in favour
of which he had already argued in his Apostelgeschichte , 5 Excurs,
217–221. How strong was the case he made out even in this earlier and more
tentative argument may be judged by the following extract from Neue
Untersuchungen , p. 64: ‘ Nicht auffallend aber konnte es nur sein, dass
andere sich durch die starken Argumente für die frühe Abfassung der
lukanischen Schriften als vollkommen überzeugt erklärten. Nicht nur
Delbrück hielt mir sofort vor, ich hätte mich in einer von mir selbst
sicher entschiedenen Frage mit unnötiger Zurückhaltung ausgedrückt,
sondern auch Maurenbrecher erkannte in meinen Beweisführungen die Lösung
des chronologischen Problems. In seinem Werk “Von Nazareth nach Golgatha”
(1909) S. 22–30, gibt er die wichtigsten der von mir geltend gemachten
Beobachtungen für eine frühe Abfassungszeit der Acta zutreffend und
eindrucksvoll wieder and beschliesst seine Darlegung also: “Die Annahme
(eines späteren Ursprungs and geschichtlichen Wertlosigkeit der
Lukasschriften) ist neuerdings immermehr gefallen and schliesslich durch
eine gründliche Untersuchung von Prof. Harnack in allen Teilen gänzlich
widerlegt and beseitigt worden. Viel mehr hat sich nach jeder Richtung
hin, wenn auch nicht die unbedingte Glaubwürdigkeit, so doch das hohe
Alter der Apostelgeschichte ergeben. Und wenn Prof. H. selbst nur zögernd
und erst nur in letzten Moment seiner Arbeit die Konsequenz seiner
Ergebnisse auch für die Datierung zog, so muss man doch sagen, dass nur in
jener von ihm vorgeschlagenen Weise so wohl der Schlusssatz der Acta wie
die ganze Tenor des Buchs verständlich wird, und dass daher schon um
dieses äusseren Zeugnisses willen die Datierung auf d. J. 62 als bewiesen
und nicht nur als möglich zu gelten hat. ”

[4] Eine
Revolution innerhaib der Kritik , p. 65.

[5] St.
Luke, xxiv. 50-53; Acts xxviii. 29-31

[6] Codex
Bezae D and the first hand of the Sinaitic Codex א
‎
1 omit καὶ
ἀνεφέρετο
εἰς
τὸν
οὐρανόν
. The difficulty which these words raised was probably the reason for
their omission.

[7] An
inscription at Pompeii contains the words ‘Synagoga Libertinorum,’
Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome , p. 310.

[8] A
striking testimony to the authenticity of the Johannine account of our
Lord’s ministry. Had our Lord’s mission been confined to Galilee up to the
last week of His life, as the Synoptic narratives appear to suggest, it is
almost inconceivable that the home of the Christian Church should from the
very first have been at Jerusalem

[9] St. Luke xxiv. 52, 53; Acts ii. 46; iii.
1; v. 12, 25, 42.

[10] Acts, ii. 32-36; iii. 14, 15, 20, 21,
26; iv. 10, 33; v.
30-32, 42.

[11] 8383St.
John is singled out on several occasions by name, as being second only to
St. Peter in influence and authority; see Acts, iii. 1; iv. 13; viii. 14. Compare Gal. i. 18; ii. 9; also St. John, xiii. 23-27; xviii. 15; xx. 3-10; xxi. 20-24. Again the history of the
Acts confirms the account given in the Fourth Gospel.

[12] Compare
St. Luke, xxiv. 44–49; St. John, xiv. 26; xvi. 13.

[13]Harnack
( Const. and Law of the Church , p. 31) describes this as ‘a very old and
well-attested tradition.’ Apollonius is stated by St. Jerome ( De viris
illust. ) ‘to have learnt it from the ancients’ and it is found in Clem.
Alex. Strom. vi. 5.

[14] Philo,
In Flaccum and Leg. ad Caium. Philo describes the Jews at this time as
occupying entirely two out of the five districts of Alexandria, and says
that in Egypt their numbers amounted to 1,000,000. See also Josephus,
cont. Apion. ii. 4; B.J. xii. 3. 2.

[15] Josephus,
xiv. 7, Life , 76, B.J. vii. last chapter. In the revolt of the Jews in
the time of Trajan (116–117) the number of Jews who perished in the
district of Cyrene is given as 22,000, no doubt an exaggeration but
pointing to a very large Jewish population.

[16]89πάντες
δὲ
διεσπάρησαν
κατὰ
τὰς
χώρας
τῆς Ἰουδαίας
καὶ
Σαμαρείας
πλὴν
τῶν
ἀποστόλων
.

[17] Acts,
viii. 5-24.

[18] Comp.
Acts ix. 26-31 with Gal. i. 18

[19] καθ᾽
ὅλης
τῆς
Ἰουδαίας
καὶ
Γαλιλείας
καὶ
Σαμαρείας
. ix. 31.

[20] ἐγένετο
δὲ
Πέτρον
διερχόμενον
διὰ
πάντων
. ix. 32. Comp. xv. 41 and xviii. 23.

[21] We
are here in presence of one of those strange psychical communications of
which we have been learning so much in recent years. They are far more
common than most of us dream of, and come we know not how or whence. In
the trance into which Peter, exposed on the housetop to the full heat of
the mid-day sun and faint for lack of food, fell, just in proportion to
the deadening of the ordinary senses would be the sensitiveness of those
faculties which lie below the threshold of wake-a-day consciousness. First
the spirit of the Centurion in his anxious search after truth is moved to
seek out Peter, as his guide and teacher; then the spirit of Peter, while
still unconsciously conscious of the approach of the messengers who were
on their way to seek him, receives the intimation, which is the response
to his own prayers. Men like Peter and John and Paul were in a manner far
beyond the normal, what we should now call ‘sensitives’; their spiritual
faculties attuned to constant and intimate intercourse with that Divine
Spirit who, their Master had promised, should in their hours of doubt and
darkness be their guide and helper towards light and
truth.

[22] 95Acts,
xi. 1-18

[23] 9696Acts,
xi. 19-27.
These men were of those Hellenist Christians who had been driven from
Jerusalem by the persecution which followed the death of Stephen. The
exiles, St. Luke tells, preached the word in Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch
(and no doubt in many other places), but at first to the Jews only. Then,
after an interval probably of five or six years, certain of them, who had
meanwhile settled in Cyprus and Cyrene, came to Antioch, and, finding that
the Greeks were willing to listen to their preaching, began with success a
work of evangelisation among them.

[24] 9797His
aunt Mary resided in Jerusalem, and her house appears to have been used as
a place of assembly ( Acts, xii. 12); indeed there is a
tradition that the upper room of the Last Supper was in this house.
Bamabas himself seems to have had property in Jerusalem or its
neighbourhood. Acts, iv. 37.

[25] 9898Bar-nabas
= son of exhortation; Nabi = a prophet. The Greek form υἱὸς
παρακλήσεως
may be illustrated by Acts xiii. 15, where Barnabas and Paul
are asked by the rulers of the Synagogue if they have any λόγος
παρακλήσεως
to address to the congregation. Compare also παράκλητος
=Comforter, Advocate, Helper, St. John, xiv. 16, 26. In accordance
with his surname we find that on his arrival at Antioch Barnabas
παρακάλει
πάντας.
In Acts xiii. 1 Barnabas is classed as ‘a
prophet and teacher.’

[26] Acts,
ix. 25–27;
Gal. i. 18-21.

[27] Acts,
xi. 26.
This seems to be the force of the words συναχθῆναι
ἐν
τῇ
ἐκκλησίᾳ.

[28] The
population of Antioch at this time was probably about half a million.
Ottfried Müller ( Antiquitates Antiochenae ) has collected all that can be
learnt from ancient sources about Antioch.

[29] Josephus
( Ant. xviii. 8) and Philo ( Leg. ad Caium ) tell the whole story in
detail, and also the fruitless efforts made by Agrippa to induce the
Emperor to abandon his intention.

[30] Jos.
Ant. xix. 4, 5; B.J. ii. 11. H. Lehmann, Claudius und seine Zeit (Leipzig,
1877), 118–121, 161–164. Milman, Hist. of the Jews , ii.
126–158.

[31] Jos.
Ant. xix. 6. Jost ( Geschichte des Judenthums , i. 420 ff.) quotes many
anecdotes from the Talmud of Agrippa’s eagerness to give proof of his
orthodoxy and piety. See also Fouard, S. Pierre , pp.
207–212.

[32] St.
Luke, xii. 1–18.

[33] Supra
, pp. 28–9.

[34] Joyce,
South American Archaeology , 1912, p. 76.

[35] Ramsay,
The Letters to the Seven Churches , 1904, pp. 4, 5.

[36] In
sixteen years three great fires destroyed much of Rome and an enormous
quantity of documents, i.e. in 64, 69 and 80 A.D. There was a most
destructive fire in the reign of Commodus 191 A.D. Think of the meaning of
the following facts: Rome was taken and sacked by Alaric, 410 A.D. ; by
Genseric, 455 A.D. ; by Ricimer, 472 A.D. ; by Vitiges, 537 A.D. ; by
Totila, 546 A.D. In 846 A.D. the Saracens plundered Rome. See Lanciani,
Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries , pp. 147–9; also The
Destruction of Ancient Rome , p. 131.

[37] Horace
Marucchi, Eléments d'Archéologie Chrétienne, vol. i. xiv. writes thus: ‘
Malheureusement les Actes [des Martyrs] authentiques ont presque tous
disparu. . . . L’Eglise romaine non possède aucun. Les actes de
ces martyrs ont dû être détruits pendant la grande persécution de
Dioclétien; il est certain qu’à cette époque on a brûlé les Archives de de
1’Eglise romaine; on a d’ailleurs agi de même en Afrique, ainsi que nous
1’apprend S. Augustin. ’ Of the principal contemporary historians of the
period dealt with in these lectures—Fabius Rusticus, Cluvius Rufus, and
Pliny the Elder—not a single line has survived. A. Peter ( Hist. Rom.
frag. pp. 291–324) gives a list of thirty-five historical writers upon the
period from Caligula to Hadrian (37–138) all of whose writings have
perished. Of the works of Tacitus only a portion have come down to us, and
the Histories in a single MS.

[38] Lanciani,
Pagan and Christian Rome , p. 125.

[39] In
that portion of the fifth book of the Sibylline Oracles which was probably
written 71–74 A.D. the flight of Nero from Rome is thus described; v. 143
φεύξεται
ἐκ
Βαβυλῶνος
ἄναξ
φοβερὸς
καὶ
ἀναιδής.

[40] Clement
Rom. 1 Cor. v.

[41] See
Clemen, ‘ Die Himmelfahrt des Isaia, ein ältestes Zeugnis für das römische
Martyrium des Petrus ’ in Zeitsch. für Wissensch. Theologie , 1896. The
discovery among the papiri of Lord Amhurst of the Greek text of the
Ascension makes the reference clear. καὶ
(τ)ῶν
δώδεκα
(εἷς)
ταῖς
χερσὶν
αὐτοῦ
π(αραδ)οθήσεται
. Grenfell, The Amhurst Papiri. Ascensio Isaiah , etc.,
1900.

[42] Ep.
S. Ignatii ad Romanos , c. iv: οὐχ
ὡς
Πέτρος
καὶ
Παῦλος
διατάσσομαι
ὑμῖν·
ἐκεῖνοι
ἀπόστολοι,
ἐγὼ
κατάκριτος.

[43] Quoted
by Eus. Hist. Eccl. ii. 25: ταῦτα
καὶ
ὑμεῖς
διὰ
τῆς
τοσαύτης
νουθεσίας
τὴν
ἀπὸ
Πέτρου
καὶ
Παύλου
φυτείαν
γενηθεῖσαν
Ῥωμαίων
τε καὶ
Κορινθίων
συνεκεράσατε.
A comparison with the passage from the Ascension of Isaiah , from which a
quotation has already been made, is most interesting. ὁ
βασιλεὺς
οὗτος
(Nero the matricide) τὴν
φυτείαν
ἣν
φυτεύσουσιν
οἱ
ἀπόστολοι
τοῦ
ἀγαπητοῦ
διώξει
καὶ
τῶν
δώδεκα
εἷς
ταῖς
χερσὶν
αὐτοῦ
παραδοθήσεται
.

[44] Irenaeus, Adv. Haereses , iii. 3; Eus. Hist.
Eccl. v. 6.

[45] Eusebius,
Hist. Eccl . v. 6, see also iv. 22. Hippolytus’ Chronicle was written
during the first quarter of the third century and was undoubtedly used by
Eusebius. For an account of this learned and essentially Roman writer see
Lightfoot’s Apostolic Fathers , part i. vol. ii. pp. 317–477. The original
Greek of Eusebius’ Chronicle or Chronography is lost, but it survives in
three translations, a Latin version by Jerome, a Syriac and an Armenian.
The Hieronymian and Syriac versions give twenty-five years as the length
of Peter’s episcopate. On the other hand the Armenian has twenty years,
but Duchesne ( Liber Pontificalis , p. v) says: ‘ Ann. XX dans le texte
arménien, évidemment fautif. ’ The Armenian version has in fact many
divergences from the Hieronymian, but Lightfoot, who has discussed the
matter very thoroughly ( Apost. Fathers , part i. vol. i. pp. 212–246),
comes to the conclusion that these divergences are due ‘probably to the
errors and caprice of transcribers’ (p. 245). Duchesne, Mommsen, and
others hold the Latin Chronography, known as the Liber Generationis , to
be a translation from the Greek of Hippolytus’ Chronicle dating from about
234 A.D.

[46] Eus.
Hist. Eccl. ii. 14—the whole of this passage will be considered later. For
the death: Hist. Eccl. ii. 25, iii. 1, 4.

[47] Jerome,
De Viris Illust . i. Jerome must have had access to the Chronography of
Julius Africanus, the Chronicle of Hippolytus, the Memorials of
Hegesippus, and other lost works.

[48] P.
Martin, ‘ S. Pierre, sa venue et son martyre à Rome ,’ Rev. des Questions
historiques , xiii. 5, xv. 5, xviii. 202. This writer gives an array of
quotations from Armenian and Syrian (Jacobite and Nestorian) authors from
the fifth to the thirteenth centuries.

[49] The
oldest parts of the Catacomb of Priscilla are regarded by De Rossi,
Marucchi, Lanciani and the best authorities as dating from the middle of
the first century. The most ancient inscriptions are in red and many in
the Greek language. Among them is one containing only the single word .
Another on the left side of the main gallery thus:— a third:— In this
catacomb is the mausoleum of the Acilii Glabriones, the family of the
consul M. Acilius Glabrio, put to death by Domitian in 95 A.D. His own
tomb has been destroyed. According to the Liber Pontificalis Pope Leo IV,
in the ninth century, removed from this catacomb the bodies of Aquila and
Priscilla, with others, into the city to protect them from profanation at
the hands of the Saracen invaders. Marucchi, Archéologie Chédtienne , vol.
ii. pp. 586 ff; Le Memorie degli Apostoli Pietro e Paolo in Roma , p, 119,
pp. 160–164. On p. 162 may be seen a copy of the beautiful medallion
containing the heads of SS. Peter and Paul found by Boldetti in the
first-century catacomb of Domitilla and now in the Museo Sacro delta
Biblioteca Vaticana.

[50] Allard,
Hist. des Persécutions, vol. i. p. 15.

[51] Roma
Sotterranea Christiana (nuova serie) Tom. I.: Monumenti del Cemitero di
Domitilla sulla Via Ardeatina descritti da Orazio Marucchi , 1911, p.
9.

[52] Marucchi,
Le Memorie degli Apostoli Pietro e Paolo in Roma , pp.
180–182.

[53] G.
B. de Rossi, Bullettino di Archeologia Christiana , 1868, p. 1 ff.; 1874,
p. 174; 1877, p. 77 ff. In the Vatican museum this scene is depicted on
two glasses. Behind the figure striking the Rock is written the word
‘Petrus.’ There is no doubt a reminiscence here of St. Paul’s words, 1 Cor. x. 4: ἔπινον
γὰρ
ἐκ
πνευματικῆς
ἀκολουθούσης
πέτρας·
ἡ
δὲ
πέτρα
ἦν
ὁ
Χριστός
, and of the declaration of Christ: Σὺ
εἶ
Πέτρος
καὶ
ἐπὶ
ταύτῃ
τῇ
πέτρᾳ
οἰκοδομήσω
μου τὴν
ἐκκλησίαν
, St. Matt. xvi. 18.

[54] Les
Actes des Martyrs. Supplément aux Acta sincera de Dom Ruinart,’ par Edmond
Le Blant. Mémoires de l’Institut Nat. de France , tom. xxx. part 2, p. 81:
‘ Les gentils, aux temps de Dioclétien, avaient recherché, pour les
anéantir, les livres, les écrits religieux des fidèles. Cette destruction,
qui nous est attestée par des procès-verbaux contemporains, fut
rigoureusement poursuivi, et l’Eglise, après la tourmente, dut pourvoir à
la réfection de ses archives dévastées. Ce fut souvent à l’;aide de
souvenirs de traditions orales, que l’on dut réconstituer alors nombre d’
Acta et de Passiones et souvent . . . ces rédactions nouvelles
furent accommodées, pour le détail, à la mode du temps où elles étaient
faites ’; p. 81: ‘ Ces interpolations, à mon avis, ne doivent donc ni
déconcerter ni rébuter la critique. Sous la couche des inventions, les
traits originaux existent, et un grand nombre d’entre eux apparaissent
come à fleur de sol. Il les faut dégager patiemment ,’ p.
87.

[55] G.
B. de Rossi in an Archaeological Conference held at Rome, December 11,
1881, said: ‘ Che nella formazione degli Atti dei martiri devono esser
distinti e considerati molti periodi successivi; it primo della relazione
contemporanea dei testimoni oculari; il secondo delle interpolazioni fatte
al testo originale fino dal seculo incerca quarto e forse prima: poi
vengono le amplificazioni e parafrasi composte dai retort nei secoli
quinto e sesto: finalmente le abbreviazioni delle prolisse parafrasi ad
use delle Lectiones liturgicae , e le nuove forme di stile date alle
vecchie leggende dal seculo decimo in poi per opera di scrittori diversi,
i cui nome in parte conosciamo; i quali vollero togliere ogni oscurità e
rossezza al dettato e vestirlo di nuove fogge di lingua. In tutte queste
trasformazioni naturalmente si venne assai alterando l’indole genuina dei
documenti; furono aggiunti prolissi discorsi, circostanze meravigliose,
leggende strane, ma generalmente rimase sempre il fondo e la sostanza del
primitivo discorso. ’ Bullettino di Arch. Chr. serie IV. 1882, p.
162.

[56] Clem.
Alex. Strom. vi. 5. 6. 15; Origen, tom. xiii., comment on St. John, c. 17.
It is from Origen we learn that the κήρυγμα
was known to Heracleon. Clement regards the work as genuine, but Origen
doubted.

[57] Carlo
Macchi, La Critica Storica e l’origine della Chiesa Romana , 1903, p. 93:
‘ Non tutte le memorie di S. Pietro in Roma hanno per se stesse il
medesimo valore. Altre sono d’indubitata autenticità; altre sono
d’autenticità probabile, altre per se stesse neppur di probabile. Ma
quando anche si prescinda dai monumenti per se stessi autorevoli, l’unione
di tante memorie in Roma e nella sola Roma è un fatto che non può
spiegarsi, se non si ammetta quel che abbiamo già dimostrato con
argotnenti, i quali crediamo the non possano venir dispregiati da una
critica veramente sincera. ’

[58] Cohors
Italica. Vid. Gruter, Inscr. p. 434: ‘ Cohors militum Italicorum
voluntaria, quae est in Syria. ’