The First Martyrs of Rome

On June 30^th, the day after the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, we remember the Christians of Rome martyred with them in the persecution under the Emperor Nero in the mid 60s, a persecution that shook the early Christian church.

It began with an early morning fire that broke out on July 19, 64 in a small shop by the Circus Maximus and spread rapidly to other parts of Rome, raging nine days through the city’s narrow street and alleyways where more than a million people lived in apartment blocks of flimsy wooden construction.

Only two areas escaped the fire; one of them, Trastevere, across the Tiber River, had a large Jewish population.

Nero, at his seaside villa in Anzio when the blaze began, delayed returning to the city. Not a good move for a politician, even an emperor. The people, angered by his absence, began to believe that he had set the fire himself so he could rebuild the city on grand plans of his own.

To stop the rumors, Nero looked for someone to blame. He chose a group of renegade Jews called Christians, whose reputation was tarnished by incidents years earlier when the Emperor Claudius banished some of them from Rome after rioting occurred in the synagogues over Jesus Christ.

“Nero was the first to rage with Caesar’s sword against this sect,” the early-Christian writer Tertullian wrote. “To suppress the rumor,” the Roman historian Tacitus says, “Nero created scapegoats. He punished with every kind of cruelty the notoriously depraved group known as Christians.”

We don’t know their names. Just how long the process went on or how many were killed, the Roman historians do not say.

There were possibly about 60,000 Jewish merchants and slaves living in the Rome then; some followed Jesus, even before Peter and Paul arrived in the city. At the time of the great fire these Christians had broken with the Jewish community.

Where they lived and met was well known. The Roman authorities, following usual procedure, seized some of them and forced them by torture to give the names of others.

“First, Nero had some of the members of this sect arrested. Then, on their information, large numbers were condemned — not so much for arson, but for their hatred of the human race. Their deaths were made a farce.” (Tacitus)

The Christians were killed with exceptional cruelty in Nero’s gardens and in public places like the race course on Vatican Hill. “Mockery of every sort accompanied their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.” (Tacitus)

Nero went too far, even for Romans used to barbaric cruelty. “There arose in the people a sense of pity. For it was felt that they (the Christians) were being sacrificed for one man’s brutality rather than to the public interest.” (Tacitus)

How did those Roman Christians react as victims of this absurd, unjust tragedy? Did they ask where God was, why did this happen, why didn’t God stop it?  Some believers even turned them in.

Could the Gospel of Mark, which experts say was written shortly after this tragedy in Rome, be an attempt to answer these questions? Jesus, innocent and good, experienced death at the hands of wicked men, the gospel says. He suffered a brutal, absurd death. It gives no answer to the question of suffering except to say that God saved his Son from death.

The Gospel of Mark also presents Peter’s denial of Jesus in his Passion in unsparing terms, without excusing words. Is it calling the Roman church experiencing betrayals to forgive as God forgave his fallen apostle?

Finally, the Christians of Rome would surely ask whether they should stay in this city, this Babylon, a city that meted out so much evil to them. Should we go to a safer, better place?

They stayed in the city to work for its good. God strengthen us through the prayers of the martyrs of Rome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stations of the Cross

We’re reflecting on the Passion of the Lord today at our mission. I mentioned that the early persecution of the church in Rome during Nero’s reign may have influenced the composition of the Gospel of Mark. Is Mark’s passion narrative a response to a church reeling from  Nero’s absurd persecution?”My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus cries from the Cross. His only words.

Probably some of those early Christians were put to death in Nero’s gardens, which now are the gardens of the Passionist Monastery of Saints John and Paul in Rome.

Here are the Stations of the Cross in that garden. 

June 30th

June 30th, following the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, we celebrate the early Christian martyrs put to death by Nero after the disastrous fire that burned down much of the city July 19, 64 AD. If I were in Rome today I would go to the church of Saint Peter in Chains or to the gardens of Saints John and Paul on the Celian Hiill to remember them.

The two apostles were put to death around this time and many (we don’t know how many) followed them.

There’s a blog and a video on the church of St. Peter in Chains here and here.And a video on the Stations of the Cross in the gardens of Saints John and Paul here. There’s also a video on the Quo Vadis story here.

The persecution and martyrdom  in 64 throws light on the creation of the Gospel of Mark, which many think was written in Rome afterwards.

One thing I think this feast and the Gospel of Mark suggests: the Church of Rome did not flee from the uncertainty and persecution it faced then. I think the Quo Vadis story indicates that. It didn’t give up.

We pray today:

Father,

you sanctified the Church of Rome

with the blood of its first martyrs.

May we find strength from their courage

and rejoice in their triumph.

We ask this through our Lord, Jesus Christ, your Son.

The First Christian Martyrs of Rome

The old churches of Rome are wonderful guides to its Christian past. As a student almost 50 years ago I went through them with books like Hertling and Kirschbaum’s The Roman Catacombs and Their Martrys, a book I still keep at hand along with newer ones.

The 5^th century church of Saint Peter in Chains is a church I’ve always associated with the First Marytrs of the Church of Rome, a feast we celebrate today, right after the feast of the apostles, Peter and Paul.

It was built near the Roman Prefecture, where people were dragged in chains to be interrogated, tortured, and made to face Roman justice. The Romans were sticklers for procedure. You had to be tried in court. Many Christians–we are not sure how many–were brought to justice near this church. Those chains above may actually come from the nearby Roman jail.

I wrote about it here , and I have a video you can see here.

more about “untitled“, posted with vodpod

Start Somewhere

I was happy to see the Vatican launch out onto Youtube.  The digital generation spends a lot a time there, so why not reach out to them? Maybe we don’t have all the whistles and bells, but let’s start somewhere.

At the Travel Show in the Javits Center in New York City last Sunday, crowds of people were looking for places to go and see around the world. Some of them may end up in churches and shrines, which have wonderful stories to tell.

Here’s a church in Rome I’ve always liked, and it tells a powerful story.  Saint Peter in Chains.

I have other clips on Youtube. Type vhoagland into the search box and see for yourself.

St. Peter’s Basilica Rome November 15

Tradition says that Peter, whom Jesus made the rock on whom he built his church, came to Rome and died there during a persecution by the Emperor Nero about 64 AD. He was buried in a cemetery on Vatican Hill after being crucified nearby. Tradition also says the apostle was crucified with his head to the ground, because he saw himself unworthy of dying like Jesus.

The Emperor Constantine built a majestic church over the apostle’s grave in the 4th century, one of the first he built for the Christians of the city.

From the beginning Christians honored the apostle’s grave and esteem for him grew as Christianity grew. He was an apostle of Jesus, along with Paul who also died in the same persecution. Like Romulus and Remus, twin founders of the city, they are considered twin founders of the Roman church.

Besides being honored at the Vatican, Peter is honored elsewhere in the city.  His seizure and imprisonment are recalled at the Church of St.Peter in Chains near the Coliseum and at the Mamertime Prison in the Roman Forum. The small Quo Vadis  chapel along the Via Antica recalls the poignant legend of the apostle fleeing from prison, only to meet Jesus going into the city to join his followers condemned by Nero. Turning back, Peter followed  his Lord to martyrdom on Vatican Hill.

Christians cherish his memory. The popes resided at the Lateran from the 4th to the 14th century but moved to the Vatican, not only because the Lateran area had become unsafe, but also to be near Peter’s grave on Vatican hill, where great numbers of Christian pilgrims congregated.

What draws so many to Peter?

He was ordinary enough. Paul boasted that he was a citizen of Tarsus, no mean city. Peter came from Capernaum, an unimportant fishing village along the Sea of Galilee.

Paul had a fine educational and religious training.  A fluent teacher and trained scholar, he dealt with the religious establishment of his day and spoke its language. Peter was unpolished, with little formal education; he spoke like a Galilean peasant. Whatever religious knowledge he had before he met Jesus came from the local rabbis in his synagogue. He was a fisherman at home on the sea.

Why did Jesus make him first among his followers?  It wasn’t brains or talents that won him the place.  Nor his loyalty. The simple explanation may be that God chooses the weak things of this world.

We know more about Peter than about any of the other early disciples of Jesus. He was a Jew who moved to Capernaum from Bethsaida, another village along the Sea of Galilee, where he fished with others. Historians say that fishing then offered a good enough living. Archeologists today think they can point out in Capernaum’s ancient ruins the house where Peter lived, along with his wife, his mother-in-law and whoever else belonged to his family.

He was forthright, direct and practical, not afraid to speak up or tell you what was on his mind. He wasn’t afraid  to draw a sword or face prison. He saw his own faults and acknowledged them. An observant Jew, but not a professional religious man.

He met Jesus on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, when he stopped at the Jordan River to hear John the Baptist preaching. His brother Andrew brought him to Jesus, after John had pointed him out.

The gospels say that he was a friend of Jesus as well as a disciple. Peter welcomed him to his house in Capernaum.  He became Jesus’ companion as he preached in Galilee and journeyed to Jerusalem. He witnessed his miracles, heard his teaching and was intimately involved in the events of his death and resurrection. When Jesus was arrested, Peter denied three times that he knew him and fled into the night.

Peter saw and heard what Jesus did. He was an eyewitness. After he rose from the dead, Jesus chose him again to shepherd his flock, even though Peter had denied him.

As an eyewitness, he was the first to testify at Pentecost that Jesus had risen from the dead and was indeed the promised Messiah. The Jewish authorities in Jerusalem dismissed him and the rest of the disciples as unlearned men. From Jerusalem, Peter went to the coastal cities of Joffa and Caesarea, then to the main Syrian city of Antioch, and finally to Rome with his message.

When he reached the capital of the empire, he was probably in his 60s. Scientists who examined bones found at his gravesite underneath St. Peter’s in the late 1940s said they belonged to a man of rugged build about that age.

We don’t know what precisely brought Peter to Rome sometime in the 60s AD. Probably it had something to do with the Jewish-Christian controversies going on at the time in the city.  Some twenty years earlier, the Emperor Claudius expelled Jewish dissidents–likely Jewish Christians– because of bitter disturbances in the synagogues of the city. Paul’s letters tell of similar disputes in places where he traveled.

There were about 60,000 Jews in Rome then, among a population of almost one million. Did Peter come to mediate between various Jewish factions? Was he invited as a peacemaker who valued his Jewish roots, yet saw that God had revealed something new in Jesus of Nazareth? Did some who heard him speak in Jerusalem at Pentecost while on pilgrimage from Rome persuade him to come to his people here and tell them what he saw and heard?

From what we know of Peter it was not an easy mission. Not only was he older now, but he was always more at home in his own land, among his own people, than he was in gentile cities. He was limited in his ability to speak their language and understand their customs. He would always be a simple man.

Most likely, he planned to return home before too long, or go to another place where he was needed. We don’t know how long he was there. But he was an apostle, one sent by Jesus to the whole world, and so he would speak of what he had seen and heard, as he had done many times before.

In Rome his memoirs were gathered by Mark and later formalized in one of the gospels. He also wrote a letter from here to other churches he had known, urging them in the face of persecution and alienation to hold fast to the hope they had as God’s people. (1 Peter)

But then, a fire swept through Rome in the early morning of July 19, 64 AD. Peter was among those  identified as Christians caught in Nero’s dragnet and blamed for starting it. Probably his executioners  never knew or cared who he was when they brought him to the Vatican hill and crucified him– one of the ways the Romans executed foreigners.

Some Christian women possibly arranged to bury him in a shallow grave in a cemetery nearby. Women often made sure even those condemned as criminals were buried. As time passed they put up a simple monument to mark the place and Christians came to honor him there. Around the year 200, a Roman priest named Gaius, writes that he has seen the gravesite and can take others to it.

A little over a hundred years later, the Emperor Constantine ordered a massive church built over the apostle’s grave; its main altar situated exactly above the grave itself. The emperor, they say, carried twelve loads of dirt to the building site to honor the twelve apostles.

By the 15th century, Constantine’s church was near collapse, so the popes of the time began building another in its place, which took over a hundred years to build. This is the church we enter today, honoring Peter, the fisherman from Galilee and a disciple of Jesus.

Website:  http://www.stpetersbasilica.org/

Reading:

The Bones of St. Peter, ,John Evangelist Walsh,  Garden City, NY  1982

An Introduction to the New Testament, Raymond Brown, NY, NY  1997  pp 705-725

From Apostles to Bishops, Francis Sullivan, SJ, Mawah, NJ  2001

Antioch and Rome, Raymond Brown and John Meier, Ramsy, NJ  1982

The Petrine Ministry, Walter Kasper,ed.  Ramsey, NJ 2006

St. Peter in Chains November 14

more about “Saint Peter In Chains, Rome, Italy on…”, posted with vodpod

The Vatican Basilica of St. Peter, the burial place of the Apostle, is a prime destination for pilgrims to Rome. Another memorial of Peter, not so well known, is the Church of St.Peter in Chains,

Built by the Empress Eudoxia in the 5th century on the western slope of the Esquiline Hill, not far from the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, the church holds the prison chains from Jerusalem and Rome that held Peter, the Apostle. Many modern visitors wonder how authentic the chains are, of course, and turn to admire Michelangelo’s statue of Moses, located in the same church.

Whatever one thinks of the chains, Eudoxia  chose a good place to house them. The Roman Prefecture, where justice was still being dispensed even in Eudoxia’s day, once stood just south of the church. Rome’s main prison was nearby, where suspected criminals were tortured, questioned and judged. Not far away from here, the condemned were summarily beheaded or strangled.

Christians were convicted and executed in this area from the second half of the 1st century till the early 4th century, and so this church, now surrounded by modern office buildings and shops, is holy ground. It recalls especially those who died in the first great persecution of Christians by the Emperor Nero around 67, which claimed the lives of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

Nero’s persecution was occasioned by an early morning fire on July 19, 64, which broke out in a small shop by the Circus Maximus and spread rapidly to other regions of Rome, raging for nine days and destroying much of the city. This was the worst in a series of fires that beset the crowded city where more than a million people were packed tightly into apartment blocks of wooden construction, among narrow streets and alleyways.

Only two areas escaped the fire; one of them, the Transtiberum region, Trastevere, across the Tiber River, had a large Jewish population.

Nero was at his seaside villa in Anzio when the blaze began, but he delayed returning to the city. They say that when he heard the news, he began composing an ode comparing Rome to the burning city of Troy. His absence during the tragedy stirred resentment among the people. Rumors began that he himself set the fire in order to rebuild the city from plans of his own.

To stop the rumors, Nero decided to blame someone else, and he chose a group of renegade Jews called Christians, who had caused trouble before, and already had a bad reputation in the city. Earlier, about the year 49, the Emperor Claudius had banished some of them from Rome for starting upheavals in the Jewish synagogues of the city with their disputes about Christ.

“Nero was the first to rage with Caesar’s sword against this sect,” wrote the early-Christian writer, Tertullian. “To suppress the rumor,” the Roman historian Tacitus says, “Nero created scapegoats. He punished with every kind of cruelty the notoriously depraved group known as Christians.” Just how long the process went on and how many were killed, the Roman historian does not say.

The early Roman Christians were mostly from the large community of about 60,000 Jewish merchants and slaves with strong ties to Jerusalem. Even before Peter and Paul arrived in Rome, Jewish-Christians, clearly identified as followers of Jesus Christ, were counted among the city’s Jews.

At the time of the fire they had become alienated from the larger Jewish community and were beginning to separate from it. Where they lived and met was well known. The authorities, following the usual procedure, seized some of them, brought them to the Prefecture and forced them by torture to give the names of others.

“First, Nero had some of the members of this sect arrested. Then, on their information, large numbers were condemned — not so much for arson, but for their hatred of the human race. Their deaths were made a farce.” (Tacitus)

Instead of executing the Christians immediately at the usual place, Nero executed them publicly in his gardens nearby and in the circus. “Mockery of every sort accompanied their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.” (Tacitus)

Most thought Nero went too far. “There arose in the people a sense of pity. For it was felt that they (the Christians) were being sacrificed for one man’s brutality rather than to the public interest.” (Tacitus)

Late in the persecution, the apostles Peter and Paul, were martyred. An unquestioned tradition among early Christian communities — affirmed today by many historians and archeologists — says that Peter met his death at Nero’s circus on the Vatican and Paul was beheaded along the Via Ostia near the place where Constantine later built a church in his honor. Details of their martyrdom are unknown, but like others they must have been arrested, put in chains, questioned, and sentenced before being executed.

There are later legends, of course. One says they were imprisoned in the Mamertime Prison, near the Capitoline Hill, where they converted and baptized their jailers. Peter escaped and fled along the Via Appia until he reached the place where the chapel, Domine, Quo Vadis? now stands. There he met Jesus coming into the city. “Where are you going, Lord?” Peter asked. When Jesus told him he was going to join those suffering, the apostle turned to embrace the same fate.

But let’s return to the chains under the main altar of the church. In the 5th century the Empress Eudoxia brought two chains to be enshrined here. (There’s a picture of her presenting them to the pope in the 16th century paintings in the apse of the church) According to some 8th century homelies, one is from a Jerusalem prison, the other from a Roman prison, possibly the one nearby.

Suppose the chains are from those prisons?  Prisons weren’t remodeled often then, nor are they now. Indeed, some believe that the majestic columns of this church are from the ancient Roman prefecture that once stood nearby, where Roman justice was meted out–another link to those fearful days.

These ancient chains, then, held countless frightened people awaiting Roman justice. They probably held faithful Christians, maybe even Peter and Paul. Who can say?

We celebrate the memory of those who suffered in Nero’s persecution, our ancestors in faith, on June 30th, following the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. This church is a good place to remember them along with the apostle who was their shepherd.

Further Reading

It would be good to have two New Testament writings in mind as you visit this church– the Gospel of Mark and the First Letter of Peter.

Many scholars believe the Gospel of Mark was written in Rome following Nero’s persecution and before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. What would the city’s Christians, reeling from persecution and fearing troubles ahead, learn from this gospel?

Most belonged to a Jewish community that enjoyed extensive privileges under Rome’s emperors; they felt safe and secure– until Nero’s reign. There were brave martyrs, but there were others who betrayed their fellow Christians.

Mark’s Gospel presents the Passion of Jesus as a stark, brutal martyrdom that can’t be explained. How appropriate for Christians facing absurd, unmerited suffering meted out by a capricious emperor. At the same time, more than other gospels, Mark portrays Peter as a disciple who fails his Master and then receives his mercy. He seems to remind Rome’s Christians that not only the strong, but the weak are part of their church.

Mark’s Gospel is meant for hard times, with its hard, uncompromising message of Jesus Crucified, who calls his disciples to follow him to the Cross.

First Letter of Peter

Another New Testament writing offered a similar message to the Roman community and Christians beyond the city. Like Mark’s Gospel, the First Letter of Peter, written in Rome, calls for courage in suffering, even unjust, absurd suffering.

“Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps. He committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth. When he suffered he did not threaten; instead he handed himself over to the one who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2, 21-23)

Those who follow Jesus should stay the course when suffering comes. No need to flee– always a temptation for those hurt by it. Rather, stay where you are, the letter says, and “maintain good conduct among the Gentiles,” (1 Peter 2:12) “give honor to all, love the community, honor the king.”(1 Peter 2:17)

Following Nero’s persecution, Jewish Christians fled from Jerusalem before advancing Roman legions and other Christians interpreting the persecution as a sign of the last times, prepared for the end.

Rome’s Christians stayed where they were, it seems, and with their neighbors rebuilt their burnt city, toiling there until God’s kingdom would come.

Reading

Basilica di s.pietro in vincoli, A.P.Frutaz, Rome

The Roman Catacombs and Their Martyrs, l. Hertling SJ and E.Kirschbaum,SJ, Milwaukee, USA 1956