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How where Peter and Paul martyred?
The Bible tells us nothing of St Peter's fate. However, in the epilogue of the Gospel of John, Jesus hints at the death by which Peter would glorify God( 21: 18-19) sayi…ng "'…when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and take you where you do not want to go.'" This is understood as a reference to Peter's crucifixion. Tradition has it that Peter was crucified upside down in Rome, Italy. The actual date is unknown but is probably around the late 50s to late 60s AD. The Annuario Pontifico gives the year of Peter's death as A.D. 64 or A.D. 67. Early church tradition says Peter probably died at the time of the Great Fire of Rome of the year 64. His co-worker Paul was also executed a little later, but as Paul was a Roman citizen (by right of his ancestry) as well as being a Jew, unlike Peter, he was granted a swift death by beheading by sword - the method used by Rome for its citiens, as opposed to crucifixion which was reserved for foreigners. Peter's request for crucifixion upside down was because he said that he was not worthy to die as Jesus did. The executions took place in Rome, tradition saying that Peter's execution took place on the site of what is now St Peter's Basilica, Vatican City in Rome. Their bodies were taken in secret and buried in the St Sebastian catacombs on the old Appian Way in southern Rome, until Rome itself became Christian under the emperor Constantine, when their remains were exhumed and Peter's interred in the crypt at St Peter's Basilica, in the Vatican, Rome, and Paul's beneath the altar in St Paul's Basilica, also in southern Rome. (MORE)
