How did Saint Peter die?

What the Bible hints

The book of Acts follows Peter until about AD 49, then turns to Paul and never comes back to him. The Gospel of John only hints at what is coming, in Jesus’s words to Peter by the lake after the resurrection.

Most certainly I tell you, when you were young, you dressed yourself and walked where you wanted to. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you don’t want to go.

John adds the explanation: “he said this, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God” (John 21:19). “Stretch out your hands” was read early on as a reference to crucifixion. A letter in Peter’s name sends greetings from the church “in Babylon” (1 Peter 5:13), early Christian code for Rome.

Nero and the fire

In AD 64 a fire burned Rome for days. The Roman historian Tacitus writes that Nero, to stop the rumor that he had started it, blamed the city’s Christians and had a great many put to death, some crucified, some burned as torches at night (Annals 15.44). Christian tradition puts the deaths of both Peter and Paul in the years soon after, under Nero.

The earliest Christian witness is a letter from the church in Rome, 1 Clement, written around AD 96. It speaks of Peter enduring many trials and going, after his martyrdom, to “the place of glory.” Later writers fill in more. The church historian Eusebius, quoting Origen, says Peter was crucified head downward, at his own request.

Quo vadis and the upside-down cross

The most famous version comes from the Acts of Peter, a second-century tale. Peter flees Nero’s Rome and meets Jesus on the road. “Lord, where are you going?” he asks, in Latin Quo vadis? To Rome, Jesus answers, to be crucified again. Peter turns back, and asks to be crucified head down. The upside-down cross remains his sign of humility. A small church on the Appian Way still marks the spot of the meeting.

Where he was buried

Why does St Peter’s Basilica stand where it does? Cut down through it. At the bottom is Nero’s circus on the Vatican hill. Above it, a cemetery, and a small shrine that a Roman named Gaius called Peter’s “trophy” around 200. Constantine built a basilica over it about 320, and today’s church, finished in 1626, replaced his. The obelisk that stood in Nero’s circus now stands in St Peter’s Square.

Excavations under the altar from 1939 to 1949 found the trophy and a grave. In 1968 Pope Paul VI announced that Peter’s bones had been identified. Many scholars remain unsure, and whose bones lie there is still debated. That Peter died in Rome, though, most historians accept.