Some believe the basilica on Vatican Hill was built over the martyred bones of the apostle Peter—but is that true? After excavations and DNA tests, the Vatican says they reached a conclusion, but some scholars aren't sure.
According to church history, the apostles Peter and Paul arrived in Rome at the time of Nero . There they found a small but committed group of Christians established among the Jewish communities of the city. On Saturdays, Peter and Paul would visit the synagogues, and on Sundays they preached in various homes around the city that doubled as churches. But this way of life was interrupted by the infamous Great Fire of Rome in A.D. 64, which Nero accused the Christians of starting.
Interest in the tomb of St. Peter grew as it became widely accepted that the Church of Rome held primacy over all the other Christian churches. According to the Petrine theory developed in the second century, Peter had received from Jesus Christ himself the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. So, having establishing himself in Rome as the first bishop of the city, Peter was believed to transmit to his successors the highest possible authority over the whole Christian community.
The new Renaissance building was erected on a second platform, some 10 feet above the first, and supported by a system of vaults. These vaults created a space between the fourth-century basilica and the Renaissance one, the so-called Vatican Grottoes that were used as burial places for the popes. The bones of St. Peter, believed to be buried beneath, were left in peace at this point.
Known as the confessio, this sunken space allows the faithful to look down on the section below the high altar where Peter’s tomb is believed to be located. For centuries, the central Niche of the Pallia was venerated for its proximity to Peter’s tomb, a structure described in early Christian documents as the Trophy of Gaius but whose location had long been lost. Following excavations in the 1940s, a structure believed to be the Trophy of Gaius was found immediately behind the niche.
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