<p style="clear:both;"><img class="size-full wp-image-570 alignright" title="peter1" src="http://www.davidhewson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads//2009/02/peter1.jpg" alt="peter1" width="265" height="207" />Imagine yourself back a couple of thousand years. You’re on a ridge overlooking the various forums that make up the heart of the greatest city in the world, on a spot now marked by the beautiful church of Santa Franscesca Romana, seen here. Two very famous people are there, and one who was notorious in his day but is unknown now.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">The first is Nero, yes <em>that</em> Nero, the bonkers emperor (though not as bonkers as his successor Caligula who married his own horse). The second is a Jewish evangelist who’s come from Israel to spread the news about a new and controversial religion called Christianity. His name is Peter. The third is a famous magician, Simon Magus, who boasts of supernatural powers which Peter believes come from the Devil.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">Nero has called the two together for a contest to see which has the greatest power. Simon gets first shot in the dual of the magicians. With the aid of spirits — or demons as Peter’s followers would later have it — he takes off and begins to fly over the glorious buildings in front of him. Peter simply gets down on his knees on the Via Sacra, the Sacred Way through the forum, and prays for the downfall of Simon Magus. He gets his wish: the wizard tumbles out of the sky and dies a bloody death on the ground.</p>

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<p style="clear:both;"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-575" title="peter2" src="http://www.davidhewson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads//2009/02/peter2.jpg" alt="peter2" width="310" height="233" />Nero is furious. Peter is put on trial and then crucified, upside down, because he feels he is unworthy to die in the same position as Christ. The location of his death is reputed to be on the Gianicolo hill, a common place for crucifixions, now marked by the beautiful little tempietto of Bramante seen here at the church of Pietro in Montorio.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">This story comes from the apocryphal <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Peter" target="_blank">Acts of Peter</a> and for me the most fascinating aspect of it is the intriguing claim that Peter was not simply crucified for being a Christian. Nero also, and perhaps principally, put him on trial for the murder of Simon Magus, and found him guilty of that, a capital offence, too. You don’t hear that much at Sunday school, do you? And perhaps you shouldn’t, since this is an apocryphal book after all probably written in Greece a couple of hundred years after the event. If, of course, the event existed because there is a large body of scholars who will tell you that Peter’s presence in Rome is, at best, exaggerated, and at worst a complete invention.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">As an atheist I find religion fascinating. Faith is an incredibly powerful instrument, a way in which human beings are able to believe what they wish, in spite of the ‘facts’, with such devotion that the myth itself takes on a kind of super-reality all of its own.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">There may be no firm evidence the historical Peter ever visited Rome. But stand in front of Michelangelo’s dome for the basilica in which he is supposedly buried and ask yourself: does it matter any more? Myth begets reality, repeatedly. Cross the street from Santa Francesca Romana and you will soon find the church of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Pietro_in_Vincoli" target="_blank">San Pietro in Vincoli</a>, with a famous statue of Peter by Michelangelo and, in a glass case, the chains that supposedly bound him in captivity. Walk up the road towards the Piazza Venezia and you can visit the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamertine_Prison" target="_blank">Mamertine prison</a> where Peter, and supposedly Paul, were both imprisoned.</p>
<p style="clear:both;"><a href="http://www.davidhewson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads//2009/02/cara1.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-576" title="cara1" src="http://www.davidhewson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads//2009/02/cara1-231x300.jpg" alt="cara1" width="231" height="300" /></a>Peter is surrounded by apocryphal stories. In fact you could say he’s an apocryphal story himself, if that matters. But before you dismiss the tale of Simon Magus completely let me point out a couple of things. First, some of the stories we now take as fact come from apocryphal sources. The image of Peter crucified upside down for example is commonplace throughout art this staggering Caravaggio from Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome shows. It comes solely from The Acts of Peter. The Book of Revelation is of dubious authenticity too and without that a million horror stories would be somewhat lacking in inspiration. What matters over the period of time is not authorship and accuracy but the massed power of belief, backed by fragments of ‘proof’, from holy shrouds to chunks of the true cross, that stand witness in moments of doubt.</p>
<p style="clear:both;"><a href="http://www.davidhewson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads//2009/02/peter3.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-577" title="peter3" src="http://www.davidhewson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads//2009/02/peter3-300x225.jpg" alt="peter3" width="300" height="225" /></a>Here, in Santa Francesca, is one such fragment that most visitors simply never see. Walk to the altar and then look to your right. On the wall, behind iron bars, you will find two pieces of stone with distinct impressions. According to the legend these are the marks the knees of St. Peter made in the Via Sacra that day two thousand years ago, physical imprints left by his exertions against the devilish powers of Simon Magus.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">It’s a beautiful church, and one that usually gets few visitors. The 12th century Byzantine mosaics are particularly lovely. Another oddity is that Saint Francesca, a benevolent Roman lady of the 15th century, became the patron saint of motorists when the car was invented.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">On her saint’s day, March 9, motorists come here from all over the city to have their vehicles blessed. Her skeleton is usually on show in the rather creepy crypt beneath the altar, though it was missing when I went there the other day and frankly I didn’t have the courage to ask the very friendly church warden why.</p>

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