reek text there exists a Slavonic version.
(ii.) Substance. The outline of the story is as follows : (a) Paul arrives in Rome (Cod. E alone adds ἀπὸ τῶν Σπανιῶν). The two apostles meet with great joy. Paul stills a dispute between Gentile and Jewish Christians. The preaching of the apostles converts multitudes, and in particular ‘Livia the wife of Nero and Agrippina the wife of Agrippa’ [note the confusion] leave their husbands, while not a few soldiers withdraw from military service. (6) Simon Magus now begins to traduce Peter, and
rforms magical tricks. He is summoned before
ero, and claims to be the Son of God. The two great we pels and Simon hold a disputation and a trial of strength in miracles before Nero. At length Simon requests that a wooden tower may 4e erected, from which he undertakes to throw him-
self, that his angels may bear him to heave. When the day arrives, Simon begins to fly, to tae great distress of Paul. Peter, however, ailjures the angels of Satan to help him no longer. Simon falls in the Via Sacra and dies. (c) Nero there- upon commands that the apostles should be thrown into prison. At Agrippa’s suggestion Paul is be- headed in the Via Ostiensis. Peter, when he is brought to the cross, asks that, being unworthy to hang as his Lord hung, he may be crucified head downwards. He then relates to the people the Quo vadis story, and, after having prayed to the Good Shepherd, he gives up the spirit. (d) Three legends follow: (a) The legend of Perpetua, the three executioners, and Potentiana—in part closely akin to the Veronica legend—is rather Pauline than Petrine (comp. the Plautilla story in the Passio S. Pauli, ed. Lipsius 8 38 ff.). (8) Certain holy men appear, saying that they have come from Jerusalem; they, with Marcellus, bury the apostle’s body ‘under the terebinth near the
aumachia, at the place called the Vatican.’ (y) Certain men from the East carried off the bodies of the two apostles. They were overtaken at a place called Catacumbas at the third mile- stone along the Appian Way. There the saints’ bodies were kept for a year anda half. Then the body of Peter was transferred to a tomb on the Vatican near the Naumachia, that of Paul to the Ostian Way. At their tombs great benefits were frames to the faithful through their prayers.
he day of their martyrdom was June 29.
(iii.) History and date. The story of the men from the East who endeavoured to carry off the apostles’ bodies arose, as is now generally agreed (see, 6.9. Lipsius, Apokr. Apostelg. p. 312; Light foot, Clement ii. p. 500), from a misunderstanding of the inscription of pope Damasus (366-384) ; see above, p. 772. Thus we must allow time for the circumstances which Damasus commemorates to have been forgotten, and for the meaning of his lines to have chananye obscure. The Acts, there- fore, in their present oe can hardly be much earlier than the middle of the 5th cent. On the other hand, many indications (e.g. the relics of early confessions of faith embedded in the Acts, chs. 58. 69) point to the conclusion that the Grundschrift, on which interpolations from other sources have been engrafted, was a document similar to the Predicatio Petri, and, with it, is to be assigned to the middle of the 2nd cent. (Lipsius p. 333 ff.). The further problem as to the relation of the Grundschrift of the catholic Acts to the Grundschrift of the Gnostic Acts appears to elude criticism.
A Latin Passio Apostolorwm Petri et Pauli (Lipsius, Acta PP. 223-234) need not be discussed at any length. It gives an account of the conflict between the apostles and Simon Magus, dealing rather with miracles than with theology. Clement (not Agrippa) appears as the prefectus urbis. The date, according to Lipsius, is the end of the 6th or the beginning of the 7th century.
The Quo vadis legend. The story is found in the Gnostic Acts—in the Linus-text (vi) and in the μαρτύριον (vi); there is a lacuna here in the Cod. Vercellensis. It runs thus in the Linus-text, the important words in the Greek text bese, added ; ‘Ut autem portam ciuitatis uoluit egredi, uidit sibi Ohristum oceurrere. Et adorans eum ait: Domine quo uadis? (Kipu, ποῦ ὧδε). Respondit ei Christus: Romam uenio iterum cruc’ (εἰσίρχομαι εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην σταυρωθῆναι). Et ait ad eum Petrus: Domine, iterum crucifigeris? (Κύριε, πάλιν σταυρὸῦσαι 3). Et dixit ad eum dominus: Etiam iterum crucifigar. Petrus autem dixit: Domine, reuertar et sequar te. Et his dictis dominus ascendit in cwlum.’ In the catholic Acts Peter relates the story after he has been nailed to the cross. The Latin (61) is: ‘Dixi: Domine, quo uadis? Et dixit mihi: Sequere me, quia uado Romam iterum crucifigi. Et dum sequerer eum, redif Romam. Et dixit mihi: Noli timere, quia ego tecum sum, quousque introducam te in domum patris mei.’ In pseudo-
Ambrose (Serm. contr. Auz. ii. 867, ed. Bened.) the words are : ‘Domine, quo uadis?’ ‘Venio iterum crucifigi.’ Tt seems
PETER (SIMON)
probable that the story had its origin in a reminiscence of the conversation recorded in Jn1 (Kipu, τοῦ ὑπάγειε, Latt. Domine, quo uadis?) and an agraphon preserved by Origen (in Joan xx. 12, ed. Brooke ii. p. 61)—‘If any one will accept the saying recorded in the Acts of Paul as spoken by the Saviour, ἄνωθιν μέλλω σταυροῦσθα,." The Acts of Paul is apparently an early 2nd cent. document of orthodox origin, and belongs toa different group of writings from the Gnostic Acts of Peter Zahn, Ges. Kan. τι. ii, p. 865 ff.). 10 is plain from the context in ἢ that in the Acts of Paul the saying had no application to St. Peter. Origen quotes in the context He 6°, Gal 219, Possibly the Acts of Peter and the Acts of Paul alike derived the saying from ‘an earlier document, probably the Preaching of Peter’ (Zahn, Find. ji. p. 25). It seems probable, then, that the conversation of our Lord and St. Peter in Jn 13 suggested @ scene in which this saying was dramatized. Further, Zahn e) is inclined to think that the ambiguous word ἄνωθεν = , desuper) Gn a the story that Peter was crucified ead downwards. e@ explanation does not seem a natural one. It is far more likely that the mode of death was one of the ‘addita ludibria’ of which Tacitus speaks.