CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 37
The Last Days of Paul: History and Tradition
1. Persecution under Nero
Our quest for further data bearing on paul’s roman captivity and its aftermath has not been particularly fruitful. If the “captivity epistles” at which we have looked were indeed sent from Rome, they suggest that Paul was about to have an opportunity of declaring “the mystery of Christ”, for the sake of which he was in custody, and was anxious that his friends should pray for him, that he might “declare it boldly” (Colossians 4:3 f.; Ephesians 6:19 f.). He hoped also, through their prayers, to be released and to pay a further visit to the provinces of Asia and Macedonia.
It is probable that Paul’s appeal did come up for hearing at the end of his two years in Rome. But we have no direct information about the outcome.
That Paul’s life was brought to an end in Rome by the executioner’s sword may be confidently accepted, but tradition associates his execution with the persecution of Christians in Rome which followed the great fire of A.D. 64—at least two years after the latest probable date for the hearing of his case.
During the night of July 18/19 in A.D. 64, a fire broke out at the north-east end of the Circus Maximus. The colonnade of shops which stood round the outer face of the Circus was full of inflammable wares; the conflagration secured a hold there and, fanned by the wind, raged for five days until, of the city’s fourteen divisions, three were completely destroyed and seven severely damaged.1
Although Nero, who was at Antium (Anzio) when the fire broke out, hurried back to Rome and instituted energetic relief measures, rumour alleged that he had set the city on fire in order to “re-mould it nearer to the heart’s desire”. Tired at last of being the target for the finger of popular suspicion, he looked around for scapegoats. Tacitus, who is our most reliable authority for these events, continues the story thus:
Therefore, to scotch the rumour, Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, from whom they got their name, had been executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate when Tiberius was emperor; and the pernicious superstition was checked for a short time, only to break out afresh, not only in Judaea, the home of the plague, but in Rome itself, where all the horrible and shameful things in the world collect and find a home.
First of all, those who confessed were arrested; then, on their information, a huge multitude was convicted, not so much on the ground of incendiarism as for hatred of the human race. Their execution was made a matter of sport: some were sewn up in the skins of wild beasts and savaged to death by dogs; others were fastened to crosses as living torches, to serve as lights when daylight failed. Nero made his gardens available for the show and held games in the Circus, mingling with the crowd or standing in his chariot in charioteer’s uniform. Hence, although the victims were criminals deserving the severest punishment, pity began to be felt for them because it seemed that they were being sacrificed to gratify one man’s lust for cruelty rather than for the public weal.2
The same occasion is probably referred to briefly by Suetonius in his Life of Nero, when he says:
Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men addicted to a novel and mischievous superstition.3
Some interesting questions are raised by Tacitus’s account, which may point to tensions within the believing community. We cannot be sure whether those who first “confessed” pleaded guilty to the charge of arson or to the charge of being Christians, nor can we be sure what kind of information they provided which led to the arrest of the “huge multitude”. Christians were generally disliked for what their neighbours regarded as anti-social attitudes, and some of the simpler souls among them may well have thought—and said—that the fire raging through the city was the beginning of the conflagration which was to consume the current world-order and usher in the reign of the saints. The ferocity and malignity of Nero’s attack caught the Christians of Rome unawares, but “the patience and faith of the saints”4 enabled them to stand firm and survive the attack.
2. Evidence from the Pastoral Epistles?
If a firm and acceptable date and life-setting for the Pastoral Epistles could be established, their evidence might prove to be relevant. Even when their Pauline authorship is admitted simpliciter, there is not complete unanimity on their location in Paul’s career. J. Vernon Bartlet’s argument for placing all three in the period before Paul’s appeal came up for hearing appears never to have convinced any one but himself.5 As for placing them in the period following Paul’s postulated release at the end of his two years in Rome, it is no argument against this to describe it as “a flight into terra incognita”;6 Paul’s fortunes at the end of those two years constitute a terra incognita, whatever form they took; and we have to make the best of this frustrating fact.
If the Pastoral Epistles are not Paul’s composition as they stand, but represent disiecta membra of Paul’s correspondence and instruction, collected by one or more of his friends and disciples, and given a continuous form by the provision of editorial transitions, then it is not necessary to date all the authentically Pauline material in them at the same time (and the same is true of P. N. Harrison’s “fragment” hypothesis).7 Some of the passages might then belong to earlier phases of Paul’s career, others to the last phase, like the passage beginning
“I am now ready to be poured out as a libation; the time of my release is at hand” (2 Timothy 4:6) and probably the reference to Onesiphorus (2 Timothy 1:16–18).
C. F. D. Moule published a “reappraisal” of the problem of these epistles in 1965. Recognizing on the one hand the difficulties in the way of accepting the Pastoral Epistles as completely Pauline in the customary sense, and on the other hand the improbabilities inherent in the “fragment” hypothesis, he suggested that for those letters Paul employed as his amanuensis a man whom he could trust with much greater discretion than could be allowed to any ordinary amanuensis—namely, Luke. The non-Pauline elements in them would then reflect Luke’s thought rather than Paul’s. Greatest freedom was given to Luke for 1 Timothy, which (on Professor Moule’s hypothesis) was written shortly before Paul’s release from his Roman imprisonment, when Paul wanted to send a message to Timothy in a hurry while he himself was particularly busy with preparations for leaving Rome and perhaps with completing judicial formalities just preceding his release. Certainly the Pastoral Epistles have more in common with Acts in matters of style and church polity than have Paul’s earlier letters. In view of the homogeneity of the Pastoral Epistles in style and vocabulary, the reference in 2 Timothy 4:11 to Luke as the only member of Paul’s inner circle present with him at the time of writing may lend some support to Professor Moule’s reappraisal.8
This reappraisal assumes that Paul was released at the end of his two years in Rome and returned for some time to the Eastern Mediterranean, revisiting his friends in the provinces of Macedonia and Asia and conducting a missionary campaign in Crete, where Titus was left behind to consolidate the converts.
Similar conclusions are defended by J. N. D. Kelly in his Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (1963). He argues that, since Paul’s death cannot be dated before the Neronian persecution of A.D. 64/65 and the following years, and since it is difficult to see how his house arrest could have lasted until then, it is most reasonable to infer that he was released after the expiry of the two years, and after a further spell of missionary activity was arrested again and imprisoned in Rome for the second and last time. This is certainly a plausible—perhaps the most plausible—reconstruction of the course of events, although some would not share Dr. Kelly’s confidence that Paul’s “martyrdom cannot in any case be placed earlier than A.D. 64”.9
3. Release and second imprisonment?
It is clear that no dogmatic statements are justified when the sequel to Paul’s first imprisonment is under discussion. Tradition affirms rather confidently that he was released, but Eusebius, who first records this tradition explicitly, introduces it with the expression “report has it”.10 It should be recognized, moreover, that release on the one hand and execution on the other do not exhaust the possibilities. A third possibility is that his libera custodia may have given place to a much stricter confinement, such as P. N. Harrison thinks he was enduring at the time when Onesiphorus took so much trouble to track him down.11 A fourth possibility is that he may have been exiled. Clement of Rome, writing some thirty years after Paul’s death, includes exile among his sufferings.12 This suggests that there was an early tradition of exile—unless Clement, with rhetorical exaggeration, is talking loosely of Paul’s enforced departure from one city after another in the course of his apostolic ministry. If exile in the proper sense is meant, when was he supposed to have been exiled, and what was supposed to be the place of his exile? It would be odd if it was Spain—if Paul, having achieved his ambition of visiting Rome by the unforeseen means of being sent there under armed guard to have his appeal heard in Caesar’s court, later achieved his ambition of preaching in Spain by the unforeseen means of exile.13
If he was released or exiled, he was arrested and imprisoned a second time in Rome, and this time the conditions of his imprisonment were much more stringent than before. Such a stringent imprisonment probably forms the setting for the one mention of Rome in the Pastoral Epistles. Referring to a wholesale defection from loyalty to him in proconsular Asia, Paul goes on (2 Timothy 1:16–18):
May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me; he was not ashamed of my chains, but when he arrived in Rome he searched for me eagerly and found me—may the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that Day—and you well know all the service he rendered at Ephesus.
Onesiphorus appears to have been an Ephesian Christian who had proved very helpful during Paul’s ministry in his home city, and who at a later date had occasion to visit Rome and sought Paul out in circumstances where to do so involved not only trouble and possible loss of face, but no doubt danger too. It is usually inferred from the language of this passage that Paul was no longer enjoying the libera custodia of Acts 28:16 ff. but undergoing more severe restraint. It was not so easy now to discover Paul’s whereabouts in Rome: P. N. Harrison, describing Onesiphorus’s resolute quest for his old friend, draws a moving and vivid picture of “one purposeful face in a drifting crowd”.14 The circumstantiality and incidental nature of this personal reference bespeak a genuine Pauline reminiscence.
On the hypothesis of Paul’s release and second Roman imprisonment, his case came up again for hearing—he was prosecuted (with due regard to his Roman citizenship) on the charge, it may be, of being a leader of the Christians and also of being a persistent disturber of the peace of the provinces. This may be the setting of another passage in the Pastoral Epistles (2 Timothy 4:16 f.):
At my first defence no one took my part; all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength to proclaim the word fully, that all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.
Dr. Kelly understands his “first defence” as the prima actio or preliminary investigation. This had gone more favourably for Paul than he might have dared to hope: he was not discharged but remanded in custody for a further investigation, the verdict being Amplius.15 Not only so, but the hearing gave Paul a welcome opportunity of proclaiming the gospel at the heart of the imperial system, to the cosmopolitan audience present in court.16
Why no one stood by him is not said: if the general persecution of Christians in Rome had broken out, this would provide cause enough. If Onesiphorus receives special commendation for his courage in visiting Paul in prison, to stand by Paul in court at that time would have called for exceptional courage.
For the time being, then, Paul was saved from Nero’s malice: “rescued from the lion’s mouth”, as he puts it.17 But only for the time being: the secunda actio was held in due course, and this time the verdict was “guilty”, and the sentence, death by the sword. Paul’s last words have been preserved in 2 Timothy 4:6–8:
I am now ready to be poured out as a libation; the time of my release is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.18
4. Clement of Rome
We turn now to early evidence outside the New Testament.
The earliest is that provided by Clement of Rome, and it does not add much to our sum of positive knowledge. The letter which, as foreign secretary of the Roman church, he wrote about A.D. 96 in the name of that church to the church of Corinth, begins by warning the latter church of the terrible effects of jealousy and envy. Seven examples are given from the Old Testament; then Clement continues:
But, to leave the examples of former days, let us come to those who were athletes in the days nearest to our own. Through jealousy and envy the greatest and most righteous pillars of the church were persecuted, and maintained their athletic contest unto death. Let us set before our eyes the good apostles. Peter, on account of unrighteous jealousy, underwent not one or two but many toils and, having thus borne witness, he made his way to his allotted place of glory. Paul, on account of jealousy and strife, showed the way to the prize of endurance; seven times he wore fetters, he was exiled, he was stoned, he was a herald both in the east and in the west, he gained the noble renown of his faith, he taught righteousness throughout the whole world and, having reached the limit of the west, he bore testimony before the rulers, and so departed from the world and was taken up into the holy place—the greatest example of endurance.19
In a rhetorical essay of this kind we do not expect the precision which is properly looked for in a work whose primary purpose is the supplying of historical information. Clement is not imparting to the Corinthians facts which they did not know, but drawing morals from facts which, in general outline at least, were common knowledge to him and them. Indeed, even to us he does not say anything concrete about Paul’s later life to supplement the narrative of Acts from the point where it breaks off. That Paul bore his testimony before the rulers could have been an inference from the record of Acts, as well as being a reminiscence of the risen Lord’s prophecy about Paul to Ananias of Damascus: “he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel” (Acts 9:15).20 But what was “the limit (Gk. terma) of the west” that Paul reached? From the standpoint of one who, like Clement, lived and wrote in Rome, would it not indicate some place west of Rome, presumably Spain? Perhaps it would, but even so we cannot be sure that Clement knew for a fact that Paul did go to Spain; if he meant Spain, he might simply have been making an inference from Paul’s statement of his plans in Romans 15:24, 28.
On the other hand, we must give serious attention to the argument for translating the phrase not by “the limit of the west” but by “the goal in the west”—Paul’s western goal. Amid so many other athletic terms, terma might well be intended in the sense of “goal”. But even if we take Clement to mean Paul’s western goal, the phrase is not unambiguous. For Luke, Paul’s western goal was Rome, but for Paul himself it was not Rome but Spain. P. N. Harrison, who argues persuasively for the meaning “goal”, goes on to say: “the goal of this race was certainly not Spain, but Rome, from whatever point in the world-stadium one happened to be regarding it.”21 That, however, is going too far, when we consider that in Paul’s own programme Rome was but a temporary station on his way farther west, or at best an advance base for the evangelization of Spain. Yet it is readily conceivable that, to a Christian of a later generation, in the light of Paul’s martyrdom at Rome, Rome would naturally suggest itself as the “goal” of his race; and it might easily be inferred from Clement’s language that Paul’s western “limit” or “goal” was the place where he “bore testimony before the rulers, and so departed from this world”.
As for the time of Paul’s martyrdom, Clement may be thought to say something with a bearing on this when he goes on:
To these men of holy life was gathered together a great multitude of the elect, who through their endurance amid many indignities and tortures because of jealousy presented to us a noble example.…22
That this is a reference to the persecution of Christians in Rome under Nero is hardly to be doubted: with Clement’s “great multitude” may be compared Tacitus’s almost identical wording.23 If we took Clement’s language au pied de la lettre it would imply that Peter and Paul had suffered martyrdom before the persecution which followed the great fire and, so far as Paul is concerned, that he was executed on conviction some time after the end of his two years’ house arrest in Rome. But, although Moffatt and others were inclined to deduce this from Clement’s language,24 to insist on it demands from him an exactitude in the use of terms which he probably did not intend. Moreover, “these men of holy life” should not be restricted to Peter and Paul, mentioned in the immediately preceding sentences; they include the Old Testament heroes of endurance who are listed before Clement turns to “the good apostles”. The most that can safely be said is that Clement bears witness to Paul’s death at Rome under Nero.25
Rome: St. Paul-Without-the-Walls: inscription above Paul’s tomb (see p. 451)
Rome: Tre Fontane: Church of St. Paul, exterior (see p. 450)
5. The Muratorian canon
The Muratorian fragment is a Latin list of New Testament books drawn up in Rome towards the end of the second century, a corrupt seventh-or eighth-century manuscript of which was discovered and published by Cardinal L. A. Muratori in 1740. After its account of the Gospels, the list has this to say about Acts:
Then the “Acts of all the Apostles” were written in one book. Luke tells the “most excellent Theophilus” that the various incidents took place in his presence, and indeed he makes this quite clear by omitting the passion of Peter, as well as Paul’s journey when he set out from Rome for Spain.
The author takes Paul’s Spanish journey for granted. There is no indication that he had any independent evidence of this; in itself, the mention of this journey could be nothing more than an inference from Romans 15:24, 28. But since it is mentioned along with “the passion of Peter”, another source is indicated—the apocryphal Acts of Peter.26
This gnostic work was probably composed about A.D. 180, shortly before the Muratorian list was drawn up. It is extant only in fragments in various languages. The best known fragment is the Vercelli manuscript (in Latin), which begins by describing Paul’s departure from Italy by sea for Spain, and goes on to recount Peter’s controversy in Rome with Simon Magus, ending with a description of Peter’s crucifixion.27 It looks as if the Muratorian compiler is trying (ineptly) to explain why the contents of the Acts of Peter do not appear in the canonical Acts. If we are right in identifying the Acts of Peter as the source of his reference to Paul’s departure for Spain, it is not an authority which inspires great confidence, although it may reflect Roman tradition in the latter half of the second century.28
As for the fourth-century authors who report Paul’s release from his first Roman imprisonment—Eusebius, Jerome,29 etc.—they were merely repeating inferences of their predecessors, and doing so with proper caution: Eusebius, as we have seen, says that “rumour has it” that he resumed his ministry of preaching after his first appearing before Caesar. Our literary sources, therefore, leave us with a verdict of “not proven” in this regard.
6. The Ostian Way
The hypothesis which is provisionally entertained here is that Paul was released after his appeal was heard by the supreme court, and subsequently arrested a second time, imprisoned, put on trial, sentenced to death and beheaded. On this hypothesis, his execution was most probably an incident in Nero’s persecution of the Roman Christians, and to be dated in or shortly after the year 65.
One way or the other, it is scarcely to be doubted that Rome was the place where he was executed. As regards the more precise location of his death or burial, our earliest witness is the Roman presbyter Gaius, at the end of the second century. In the course of a controversial correspondence with the Phrygian Montanist Proclus, Gaius says that, if Proclus can invoke in support of his views the names of distinguished early Christians (Philip and his daughters, and others) whose tombs can still be pointed out in the province of Asia, he can improve on that, for (says he) “I can point out the trophies of the apostles: for if you will go to the Vatican hill or to the Ostian Way, you will find the trophies of those who founded this church”30 By “the apostles” Gaius meant Peter and Paul, claimed by the Roman church as its joint founders. By “trophies”31 he means monuments (memoriae) marking the traditional sites either of the martyrdom or of the burial of the two apostles—probably the latter, since he is countering Proclus’s claim to show the tombs of early Christians in his homeland. In any case, that Peter and Paul were actually buried at the places mentioned became a matter of general belief, on the strength of which the Constantinian basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls was built on the Ostian Way and that of St. Peter on the Vatican hill.
Paul was beheaded, tradition asserts, at Aquae Salviae (now Tre Fontane) near the third milestone on the Ostian Way.32 By Gaius’s time a monument had been erected on the reputed site of his tomb, about a mile nearer the city (as one was erected on the Vatican hill, probably in the time of Marcus Aurelius, c. A.D. 160, to commemorate Peter).33 On the same site Constantine built a small basilica in Paul’s honour (c. A.D. 324); this was replaced at the end of the fourth century by a larger one, which survived substantially until it was destroyed by fire during the night of July 15/16, 1823. The present basilica was reconsecrated by Pope Pius IX on December 10, 1854.34 Some details of the substructure were preserved in sketches made by the architect of the new building, Virgilio Vespignani, when a new confessio was constructed in front of the altar, instead of behind it (where the confessio in the old basilica had been).35
The floor of the confessio underneath the high altar is formed by two slabs, discovered in 1835 during the excavations preceding the erection of the present basilica—one bearing the inscription PAVLO and the other completing it with a second line of letters, APOSTOLO MART (“To Paul, apostle and martyr”). The lettering belongs to the fourth century, and has been assigned by some epigraphists to a Constantinian date. There are several indications that the two slabs are no longer in their original position: it has been suggested that at one time they stood upright, alongside each other, so as to present one line of writing, or even at right angles, forming two of the four sides of the apostle’s memoria.36
It is a point in favour of the authenticity of the site that Paul’s memoria, like Peter’s, was located in a pagan necropolis, not the environment which later piety would have chosen.
7. The Appian Way
Mention should be made of what was for a time a rival tradition—not for the site of Paul’s martyrdom but for that of his burial. In the Calendar of Philocalus (A.D. 354) and thence in the earlier part of the Liber Pontificalis (c. A.D. 530) Peter and Paul are associated with the site later occupied by the basilica of St. Sebastian on the Appian Way.37 In the Depositio Martyrum included in the former document, an entry under June 29 (III Kal. Iul.) mentions that the remains of Peter were deposited in Catacumbas in the consulship of Tuscus and Bassus (A.D. 258), a date probably denoting the establishment of an apostolic memoria and cult on this spot. (This general area was then known as Ad Catacumbas, “By the Hollows”. Since the underground galleries there were the only early Christian cemeteries known in the Middle Ages, the term “catacombs” was extended from these cemeteries to denote others which were discovered from the sixteenth century onwards.) Paul is mentioned along with Peter in this entry for June 29, but in association with the Ostian Way, not with the Catacumbae. The text of the entry, however, is probably corrupt and originally mentioned three cultic sites—Peter’s on the Vatican hill, Paul’s on the Ostian Way, and Peter and Paul’s together at the Catacumbae.38 Certainly the belief that Paul’s remains as well as Peter’s were deposited at the Catacumbae is attested by a large number of graffiti on the site, of the later third and early fourth centuries, invoking the names of Peter and Paul and mentioning refrigeria (cultic meals) held there in their honour. The hymn Apostolorum Passio, dating from the mid-fourth century and traditionally ascribed to Ambrose of Milan, describes how on June 29 the martyrdom of Peter and Paul was commemorated at three sites—the Vatican hill, the Ostian Way and the Appian Way.39 This attempt to meet the competing claims of rival sites was judged unsatisfactory: when Pope Damasus (A.D. 366–383), in the course of restoring the Christian cemeteries of Rome, turned his attention to the Memoria Apostolorum ad Catacumbas, he indicated what was henceforth to be the official line in a metrical inscription set up in the Basilica Apostolorum which was built over the memoria:
Here you must know that the saints formerly dwelt, whosoever you are who ask for the names of Peter and Paul. These disciples were sent from the east, as we readily admit, but because of the merit of their blood they followed Christ through the stars and reached the ethereal bosom and the realms of the holy ones; and Rome has acquired the prior right to claim them as her citizens. Let Damasus thus record your praises, ye new constellations.40
The latter part of this inscription affirms that the two apostles’ martyrdom in Rome gives the church of that city a superior right to speak with apostolic authority, even though they belonged originally to the east. But the opening couplet means: “their bodies once lay here, but are here no longer.” These words, with their implication of a transference of the two bodies from the Appian Way to the Vatican hill and the Ostian Way respectively, represent an attempt to harmonize the conflicting traditions and divert the attention of pious pilgrims to the Constantinian basilicas. Some students of later days, beginning apparently with John Pearson, seventeenth-century bishop of Chester,41 envisaged a temporary translation of the apostles’ bodies from the original sites to the Appian Way because of the circumstances of the persecution under Valerian (A.D. 258), when Christians were forbidden to hold their ordinary public meetings and access to their cemeteries was prevented. But this harmonistic reconstruction of two separate traditions, the one enjoying official approval and the other popular favour, has no independent evidence in its support.
In the mid-third century the Roman Christians who wished to honour the apostles at the site of their tombs may not have had easy access to the Vatican hill or to the Pauline memoria on the Ostian Way, whereas there were fewer hindrances to their doing so ad Catacumbas. But why choose that particular spot? We do not know: there may already have been a popular tradition of the apostles’ burial there; it may have been revealed to someone in a vision that this was where their bodies lay. Whatever the origin of the tradition was, it strongly influenced popular devotion for nearly a century. But it was bound to weaken after the erection of the Constantinian basilicas in honour of Peter and Paul. The cult of the apostles on the Appian Way was increasingly displaced by that of St. Sebastian, who is said to have been buried in their vicinity late in the third century; and Damasus eased the situation by explaining that while the bodies of Peter and Paul had indeed once lain by the Appian Way, they now lay on the sites covered by their respective basilicas.
8. Paul in Roman memory
These, however, are relatively unimportant matters compared with the real memorials to Paul in Rome—those which he might have been gratified, though surprised, to foresee. The church and city of Rome have not forgotten their association, brief and limited as it was, with the apostle to the Gentiles. Although Paul himself makes it plain that Roman Christianity flourished years before he first visited the city, the Roman church has claimed him as one of its two apostolic founders. Clement of Rome, as we have seen, appeals to the example of Peter and Paul.42 Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Christians at Rome a decade or two later, will not lay commands on them, as Peter and Paul did; they were apostles, he is “a convicted criminal”—although they were no more than that in Roman law.43 Dionysius of Corinth (c. A.D. 170), writing to Pope Soter, sees a special bond between the churches of Corinth and Rome in that each was founded by Peter and Paul and profited by the teaching of both apostles.44 (While Paul would have deprecated nomination as one of the founders of the Roman church, he must have turned in his grave at the suggestion that Peter was joint-founder with him of the Corinthian church!) Gaius of Rome points to the “trophies” of Peter and Paul as the most illustrious material monuments of Roman Christianity. Irenaeus of Lyons, about the same time, reviewing the churches which were founded by apostles, gives pride of place to that “very great, very ancient and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul”,45 and adds that they committed the episcopate in that church to Linus.46 This is in keeping with early tradition which names Peter and Paul as founders not only of the church of Rome but also of the Roman succession of bishops. Irenaeus’s informant may have been Hegesippus,47 although Irenaeus himself was in sufficiently close touch with the Roman church to know directly what its local tradition was. Down to the middle of the third century the two apostles are regularly conjoined as joint founders of the Roman church; even Eusebius, in the fourth century, can on occasion name them in a Roman context in the order Paul-Peter48 (although in his Chronicle he mentions Peter only: “After Peter Linus was the first to occupy the Roman see”).49 Later still in that century Damasus, as we have seen, lays claim on behalf of the Roman church to their joint prestige.
But, as C. H. Turner put it, “in transcribing a catalogue it was easier to use one name than two, and as soon as the habit grew up of including the name of the Apostle-founder as the first of the list rather than as a title at the head of it, … the use of a single name was dictated by the principle that there could only be one bishop at a time.”50 The naming of Peter alone is first attested in Hippolytus, who calls Pope Victor (c. A.D. 190) “thirteenth from Peter”51—although this leaves Peter outside the numbered episcopal list. The first to attach dogmatic significance to the name of Peter alone at the head of the Roman list is Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (died A.D. 258).52 So Paul’s contribution to early Roman Christianity was in practice increasingly overlooked. To be sure, Paul with the sword of the Spirit stands in the forecourt of St. Peter’s, alongside Peter with the keys of the Kingdom, just as Peter faces Paul in front of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls—more congenial associates in death, perhaps, than they were in life. But there may be a symbolical fitness, it has sometimes been said, in the location of St. Paul’s basilica outside the walls. Paul might have understood and approved; he was well accustomed to being odd man out. It would be pleasant to think that such a minister of reconciliation as Paul was there in spirit in March, 1966, when his namesake Paul VI and Michael Ramsey chose his basilica for the signing of their Common Declaration, asking their respective communions to engage in “a serious dialogue based upon the Holy Gospels and ancient common traditions”.53