Peter

Is one of Jesus's Twelve Apostles, foundator of the Roman Catholic Church and also a saint. Peter was executed during the late 1st century A.D., and when Emperor Constantine first recognised Christianity was in the early 4th century, and the Frankish king, Papal the short, gave up this land in the 8th century.

Peter wasn’t on good terms with the Roman empire at that time, for he was enemies with the high magician of the empire, Simon Magus, and in the end, killed him. (Note: Legend had it that the magician Simon wanted to show that his power exceeds those of the Apostles, and thus let himself float in the air. As Simon was floating in the air, Peter kneeled down and asked God for a miracle. In the end, Simon immediately fell down and ended up dead). To do that sort of thing when Christianity was being persecuted, one can imagine what sort of end he would meet.”

There are many legends about Peter when he was executed. Besides the just stated one, there’s also the famous ‘Quo Vadis (Where are you going?)’ legend (Note: At first, Peter was convinced by his fellow believers to escape to the gates of Rome, and saw Jesus. He asked Jesus, “Where are you going?” Jesus replied, “I’m going back to Rome, to be nailed on the Cross again.” Thus, Peter understood what he meant, and went back to pay the price of his faith with his life). As Peter was being pursued by the Imperial soldiers, he was saved by his fellow believers, who begged him to run onto the streets. He already reached the gates, only to let himself get captured by the soldiers. Furthermore, he saw a vision of the ‘Son of God’ at the exit, realising that that is the time when he has to be the martyr.

On the day that Peter was executed on the Cross, he made this request, ‘I don’t dare to die the same way as my Lord, so please turn the Cross over.’ As one of the twelve Apostles, Peter must have known that no matter what action he took, he would be executed one day. So, he could have used what he could have done with his own death and tried to get the best out of it, even considering what might happen several hundred years later.

Even so, it was after Peter’s death that people first erected ‘a Cross to commemorate Peter,’ and state that ‘this land is Peter’s inheritance,’ which led to a long road that ended up with 2 billion believers forming the nucleus of the Roman Catholic Church.

Actually, Peter did think through it, where he would be killed. As you all know, where Peter is resting today is at the centre of the Vatican. He knows that the place where he’s going to be killed would be closely linked to the history after that, so it ended up inheriting the ‘Apostle’s Cross’ to the future Roman Catholic Church.