Apostle Peter

Simon, afterward called Peter (Greek Petros, rendering the Aramaic Kepha, “rock”), was a Galilean fisherman of the early first century and one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of John identifies Bethsaida as the city of Andrew and Peter; the Synoptic Gospels present him as living and working at Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus is said to have healed his mother-in-law—an incidental notice that establishes that Peter was married. The Synoptics describe a call by the lakeshore in which Simon and his brother Andrew left their nets to follow Jesus; John places an earlier encounter through Andrew, then a disciple of John the Baptist. Jesus gave Simon the name Cephas/Peter and, in the tradition preserved in Matthew 16, declared him the rock on which the church would be built and entrusted him with the keys of the kingdom. Across the Gospel narratives Peter is a leading and often impulsive figure: he walks on the water, confesses Jesus as Messiah, protests the prediction of the Passion, denies Jesus three times during the trial in Jerusalem, and, in the epilogue of John, is restored by a threefold commissioning from the risen Christ beside the lake.

In the Acts of the Apostles Peter is the principal public leader of the Jerusalem community in the earliest period. He preaches at Pentecost, is associated with healings in the Temple precincts, confronts Ananias and Sapphira, and, after a vision at Joppa, admits the Gentile centurion Cornelius at Caesarea, a decisive step toward the inclusion of non-Jews. Paul, writing in Galatians, names Cephas as one of the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church, records a confrontation with him at Antioch over table fellowship with Gentiles, and implies that Peter travelled with a believing wife. Later first- and second-century Christian writers associate Peter with missionary work beyond Palestine. First Clement, a Roman letter commonly dated to the late first century, already alludes to Peter’s witness and death; second-century authors including Ignatius of Antioch, Dionysius of Corinth, Irenaeus of Lyons, Gaius of Rome, and Tertullian place him in Rome and treat his martyrdom there as established church memory. The death is set in the reign of Nero, most often in connection with the persecution that followed the fire of 64 or, in the chronology of Eusebius and Jerome, around 67. Later tradition, reported by Origen as cited in Eusebius, holds that Peter was crucified and asked to be placed head downward as unworthy to die in the same posture as Jesus. A burial on the Vatican hill is attested by the second-century “trophy” mentioned by Gaius and by continuous Roman cult; excavations in the mid-twentieth century beneath St. Peter’s Basilica uncovered a mid-second-century memorial and human remains that the Vatican associated with the apostle, though scholarly identification of those bones remains cautious.

Catholic succession lists count Peter as the first Bishop of Rome and therefore the first pope. Antiochene tradition, shared by the later Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox patriarchates of that see, likewise regards him as the first bishop of Antioch before his departure for Rome, and he is accordingly listed as first patriarch of that church, even though the later title “patriarch” is anachronistic for the first century. He belonged to no monastic or mendicant religious order. Because the Gospels mention his mother-in-law and Paul refers to his wife, his marriage is historically documented; the wife’s name is not preserved in early sources. Clement of Alexandria, quoted by Eusebius, states that Peter had children and recounts a tradition that his wife was herself led to martyrdom. No medieval or modern papal canonization applies to an apostolic martyr of the first century; his cult is among the oldest in Christianity and arose by continuous veneration rather than by a formal process of beatification or canonization.

His principal feast, shared with the Apostle Paul, is kept on 29 June in both East and West. Other traditional commemorations include the Chair of Saint Peter and the Dedication of the Basilicas of Peter and Paul in Rome. Because of the keys in Matthew 16 and his former trade, he has long been invoked as patron of the papacy and of Rome, of fishermen, net makers, and shipwrights, and of trades associated with keys, locks, clocks, bridges, and shoes, as well as of harvesters, stationers, bakers, butchers, and those seeking longevity. Interpretations of his primacy among the apostles later diverged among Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions, but the New Testament portrait of a married Galilean fisherman who became the leading apostle in Jerusalem and, by early and widespread tradition, a martyr in Rome is the core on which later hagiography was built.