Every year, on June 29th, the city of Rome celebrates its patron saints: Saint Peter and Saint Paul. This liturgical feast honors the martyrdom of the two holy apostles, a martyrdom they suffered in 64 AD, when Emperor Nero accused Christians of being responsible for the fire that devastated Rome.
The emperor’s pretext for this accusation led to a harsh persecution of the early Christians. Some were clothed in the skins of wild animals and eaten by dogs; others were crucified or even turned into human torches to be lit after dark. It was in this context that Saints Peter and Paul were condemned to death.
St. Paul, a Roman citizen, was beheaded. Led in chains under the escort of three soldiers, St. Paul was condemned to death at Acque Salvie, three miles from the city of Rome (today the site of the Three Fountains Abbey). The Abbey’s name comes from the memory of this ‘thirteenth apostle’. According to an ancient tradition, at the moment of his beheading, St. Paul’s head fell to the ground and bounced three times, each time giving rise to a spring of water. This is now made visible by three small shrines in the Church of St. Paul at the Three Fountains.
The martyrdom suffered by St. Peter was different. According to a well-established tradition, St. Peter did not consider himself worthy to undergo the same death as Christ and chose to be crucified upside down. This happened in the Circus of Caligula, which is in the vicinity of where St. Peter’s Basilica stands today. We do have a “silent witness” of this event: the obelisk that stands in the middle of the square. The obelisk arrived in Rome from Egypt, in 40 A.D., at the command of Emperor Caligula and was erected in the middle of his circus. In 1586, during the pontificate of Pope Sixtus V, the obelisk was moved to the center of St. Peter’s Square by architect Domenico Fontana.
The feast of Saints Peter and Paul, which originated in the first Christian communities, in memory of their martyrdom and the veneration of the relics of the two apostles, is still solemnly celebrated today. After almost two thousand years, the city of Rome continues to venerate the saints by laying out carpets of flowers in the small square in front of St. Peter’s.
Edited by Matthew Santucci
