Peter's bones

While excavating the grave of Pope Pius XI, under the floor in St. Peter’s Basilica the bottom fell out of the hole revealing grave chambers of ancient Romans.  Vatican Hill was once a sort of ancient body dumping grounds for humans without means.  Peter’s post-crucifixion body was dumped there in 66 AD. Pius XII began a quest.  Houston oil tycoon, George Strake, a Catholic philanthropist was asked to secretly fund the dig.  Monsignor Kaas, supervised a young priest named Ferrua who headed an excavation crew.  WW II had started.  It had to be hand dug, secret from Mussolini and the press.

            Ferrua wanted fame.  He egotistically kept results hidden from Kaas and dug fast.  Emperor Constantine had built the original St. Peter’s Basilica (337 AD) over Peter’s grave.  This was the request of his mother Helena, a faithful Christian convert.  But Romans held ancestors in great honor and built family mausoleums which had come to be placed all over the hill.  Most of the families had passed-on so Constantine decided to backfill nearly one million cubic yards of earth onto the hill to make it flat-topped. Much earlier, about 100 AD, a presbyter, Gaius left a letter that explained to a pagan that the graves of Paul along the Appian Way and Peter’s grave, secretly marked on Vatican Hill could be easily visited.  Other writings said that Constantine later put the bones in a bronze burial vessel and placed this in a marble grotto along with a fortune in gold.  The basilica was rebuilt in 1520. So Ferrua, found an older altar under the present one and dug beneath it.   The enormous St. Peter’s basilica had to be buttressed by cement piles so that they could dig out a hollow under the floors.  What was revealed was a necropolis of streets lined with splendid family vaults, frescoes and mosaics from the 2^nd century.  And once in awhile there were also Christian niches, secret and small, lest they gain attention. . Most human bones were discarded and no photographs taken by Ferrua’s team—horrid archeological practices. Kaas objected to the desecration of the dead and each day collected discarded bones and put them in labeled boxes to be stored . One set of bones had been covered by royal purple cloth with dye stains still intact.  Two very old hillside retaining walls were found and for some inexplicable reason, the Roman engineers had left them intact, making the building whose foundation encompassed them assymetrical—very odd for Roman construction. And in a niche at the foot of a red brick wall, beneath the altars, they found bones, surrounded by Christian votives and coins.  Peter was found! The discovery was announced in 1949. And the bones were given to the Pope who kept them in his apartment.

            Emperor Nero had started a runaway fire, July 18-19, 64 AD to clear buildings for a palace.  The implicated ruler blamed the fire on Christians and many were executed. Among them, Paul and Peter who was crucified upside down.

            After Pius XII and his successor, John XXIII had passed on, Giovanni Montini, papal secretary, rose after many ballots to become Pope Paul VI.  He had doubts about the results of the dig because he had seen the internal bickering of the parties involved.  So he brought in a respected archeologist skilled in the new science of forensics, who judged the ‘Peter’ bones to be 2 young men and an elderly woman. Ferrua protested.  The Pope brought in an expert in epigrahy—a skilled linguist who also knows slang, usages, and monument inscriptions of the time.  Margherita Guarducci had deciphered a Minoan language and other unknown Greek.  Her faith was agnostic.  But as she read the hastily scratched words of graffiti on the retaining wall, she was stunned.  Here were written prayers of the early Christians, “Peter, pray for me”, “Spirit, show Severus the gospel,” and finally, “Peter is within.” Plus, it was written in the graffiti code of persecuted Christians. Guarducci said she realized the incredible bravery of these early Christians and it reconnected her to the Christian faith of her youth.  Then she found an officially chiseled Roman inscription, “In Hoc Vince” [In this conquer] the words Constantine heard in his vision of the cross. (as if he’d put his own prayer with that of the saints)  “Peter is within” implies Peter’s bones were buried in the wall. And beneath a section where hundreds of names followed by AΩ [names of deceased Christians], were scratched was a marble niche. No bones? Kaas had stored them, purple-stained with a label.  It was the skeleton of a 60 to 70 year old robust male whose feet had been cut off, common practice of Roman soldiers in removing an inverted body which had been crucified.  Modern DNA Forensics has shown these bones are that of a Jew.  All of this took place after much bickering among Vatican bureaucrats and was not resolved conclusively until 2012. 

            So now we know why Constantine left the old walls, counter to normally good engineering. He read the prayers too. No bronze sarcophagus, just the precious gold of inspired Christians who passed on and were buried around Peter.  One world-renowned archeologist came to know Jesus as her Lord and Savior who was inspired by all the” graffiti” she read.  And Severus?  He’s later listed as SeverusAΩ.