or whether they were even there at all.28 If the physical remnants of Peter’s presence and death in Rome could be found, it would tend to validate numerous Christian and Catholic beliefs. It could provide the power of archeological and physical evidence to support early Christian writings. On the other hand, if the search failed to find evidence of Peter, it would tend to validate the skepticism of Luther and many others toward the Catholic Church and Catholic accounts of early Christian history in general.
If Peter’s relics could somehow be identified, they could answer these questions across the long millennia separating his death from Pius’s search. Were the descriptions of him accurate? Did he really go to Rome during the persecution of Nero? Was he crucified upside down and buried in Rome? Did his friends honor him, and how?
Chapter Four
The Great Fire of Rome
(July 18–19, A.D. 64)
The monster Nero ruled the Roman Empire from A.D. 54 to 68. He is most notable to history for his unbelievable cruelty. It is rumored that he was involved in the poisoning of his adopted father (in order to become emperor) and joked about it.29 He executed his own mother and his wife. He is said to have poisoned his brother and personally killed his pregnant second wife by kicking her to death.30 Nero unleashed a sea of blood in the city of Rome, not sparing any class or person. He was famous for his cowardly pretensions and even awarded himself first place in an Olympic chariot-racing competition — even though he had dropped out of the race. He was a poor singer whose most notable song is said to have played while Rome burned. He was the last of the great dynasty started by Julius Caesar, a dynasty once much loved by the Roman people. Nero’s reign was marked by notable military triumphs and distributions of food, treasure, and wealth to the people of Rome. But his cruelty and evil madness made him much-hated in Rome. In A.D. 68 he would be driven from power, unable to find a single friend to shelter him. Ironically, he would, like Adolf Hitler in the twentieth century, exit this world with a cowardly suicide while still proclaiming his own greatness.
In the hot summer of 64, Nero planned to build the largest palace in human history in the crowded center of Rome. In addition to a large lake and gardens, he planned to construct a massive, 100-foot statue of himself, the so-called Colossus Nero, portraying him as the sun god with a rudder steering the world under his feet. To build his palace he needed land — lots and lots of land — in the densely populated center of Rome, a city of a million or more and at the time the largest city in the world.31
Thus the Romans and most of their contemporary historians believed it no coincidence when, on the evening of July 18, 64, a massive fire broke out in many different shops southeast of the Circus Maximus. It was an extraordinarily hot night, even for Rome, with high winds blowing. The fire rushed up Rome’s fashionable Palatine Hill, destroying the most ancient parts of the city. The ancient temple of Rome’s patron god, Jupiter, burned, along with the Forum. The fire also reached the Subura District crowded with wooden, multistory apartment houses. The fire burned for six days and seven nights — in the end damaging or completely destroying ten of the fourteen districts of Rome.32
Reports of fires set by systematic arsonists swept through Rome. Nero claimed much of the destroyed area for his grand palace, leading Romans to suspect that Bloody Nero himself, despite his hypocritical protestations of concern for the victims, had set the Great Fire.33 To save face, Nero (like Hitler centuries later) settled upon a small, unpopular cult to blame for the fire.34 The Christians, who worshipped as God an alleged criminal executed by the Romans, were a perfect target. Nero unleashed upon the Christians an incredibly cruel persecution, even by ancient standards.35
The place of their torture and execution was Nero’s gardens and circus, built in anticipation of the grand palace, known as the Domus Aurea — the Golden House.36 He had the Christians (men and women) dipped in oil and then wrapped in flammable cloth and materials, hoisting them in the air on posts and burning them alive as human candles to light his gardens. He sewed women and children into animal skins and released dogs to tear them apart. He crucified Christians by the hundreds, sometimes upside down. Even hardened Romans like the historian Tacitus found his treatment of the Christians extraordinarily cruel.37 His cruelty apparently did not offend the large, cheering Roman crowds.
Christian tradition and later writings relate that during this persecution Nero located, condemned, and executed the two great leaders of the early Christian Church — Peter and Paul.38 These traditions hold that Peter, after long, horrible imprisonment, was crucified upside down, at his request.39 He did not consider himself worthy to die as Jesus had. Tradition further relates that the Roman executioners discarded Peter’s body on the ground on a nearby, vacant hill used as a dumping ground for waste, but that Christians secretly recovered and buried Peter’s body on that hill.40 The traditions claimed the site became almost immediately a secret place of worship for the Christians. The name of that place was Vatican Hill.
Chapter Five
Vatican Hill
Today Vatican City, measuring 110 acres, is the seat of the Catholic Church, home of the pope, and the smallest sovereign state in the world. More than half of it consists of gardens, some dating back to A.D. 1200. In addition to St. Peter’s Square and the Renaissance-era St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City contains perhaps the greatest collection of historical art and statuary in the world. In the Vatican Museum, the history of the West is contained in ancient statues like the Three Graces weaving, nurturing, and finally cutting the Thread of Life. The full-size statue of Caesar Augustus (Prima Porta Augustus) stares down as if frozen in the first century, while Madonnas by Titian and Raphael are mixed with Da Vinci’s St. Jerome in the Wilderness, leading to Michelangelo’s great ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.
Immediately outside the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo executed his last great fresco, The Crucifixion of St. Peter. The image depicts Peter crucified upside down on Vatican Hill. Michelangelo even depicted himself as a sad bystander, observing Peter’s death. Little did he know that his painting would become both a clue and a confirmation in the search for Peter centuries later.
A gallery of more than three thousand stone tablets and inscriptions describes history, along with the funeral sarcophagus of Roman Empress Helena of the West (who also played a part in the story of the search for Peter). But amazingly and totally unknown to the world until the Apostle Project, the greatest historical gallery of the Vatican was not in the Vatican but under it, where the history of an age lay silent, frozen, and inviolate for almost two thousand years.
To understand the complexity of the Apostle Project undertaken by Pius XII, one must travel back almost two millennia. In fact, Vatican Hill has a complex history and structure. The hill that now boasts the enormous St. Peter’s Basilica was once a worthless, sandy hill located outside the walls of Rome. Unusable for farming, for uncounted centuries it had been used as a dumping ground for bodies of slaves, animals, and the poor. It lay west of the Tiber River and the heart of Rome. Caligula built a racetrack near the hill during his reign, and nearby were the gardens where Nero would inflict his cruelty.
Within a short time after Peter’s death, Christians began to worship secretly at a spot on Vatican Hill where they believed Peter had been buried.41 Through waves of persecution as the years went on, Christians would climb the hill to the place where they believed Peter had been buried. But the hill did not long remain vacant. Prominent pagan families began to use the area as a burial ground, and the hill gradually became
