Life of Saint Peter

The story of St. Peter, as recounted in the gospels, is so familiar that there can be no need to retrace it here in detail. We know that he was a Galilean, that his original home was at Bethsaida, that he was married, a fisherman, and that he was brother to the apostle St. Andrew. 

His name was Simon, but our Lord, on first meeting him told him that he should be Cephas, the Aramaic equivalent of the Greek word whose English form is Peter (i.e., rock). No one who reads the New Testament can be blind to the predominant role which is everywhere accorded to him among the immediate followers of Jesus. It was he who, as spokesman of the rest, made the sublime profession of faith: "Thou are the Christ, the son of the living God." 

No less familiar is the story of Peter's triple denial of his Master in spite of the warning he had previously received. The very fact that his fall is recorded by all four evangelists with a fullness of detail which seems out of proportion to its relative insignificance amid the incidents of our Savior's passion, is itself a tribute to the position which St. Peter occupied among his fellows. 

After the Ascension we still find St. Peter everywhere taking a leading part. Almost all that we know for certain about the later life of St. Peter is derived from the Acts of the Apostles and from slight allusions in his own epistles and those of St. Paul. Of special importance is the account of the conversion of the centurion Cornelius; for this raised the question of the continuance of the rite of circumcision and the maintenance of the prescriptions of the Jewish Law in such matter as food and intercourse with Gentiles. 

The passion of St. Peter took place in Rome during the reign of Nero (A.D. 54-68), but no written account of it (if there was such a thing) has survived. According to an old but unverifiable tradition, he was confined to a Mamertine prison, where the Church of San Pietro in Carcere now stands. Terullian (d.c. 225) says that the apostle was crucified; and Eusebius adds, on the authority of Origen (d. 253), that by his own desire he suffered head downwards. 

The generally accepted tradition that St. Peter's pontificate lasted twenty-five years is probably no more than a deduction based upon inconsistent chronological data. 

The joint feast of SS. Peter and Paul seems always to have been kept at Rome on June 29, and Duchesne considers that the practice goes back to at least the time of Constatine; but the celebration in the East was at first commonly assigned to December 28.

_{Reprinted from Butler's Lives of the Saints}