Martyrdom of Peter (Greek Acts of Peter) (complete)

The Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle Peter in Rome.

… ten thousand pieces of gold; for you owe them to him.' So I have brought them, fearing that I might suffer some harm from the one who appeared to me as he was going away into heaven." And having said this and laid down the money, she departed. And Peter, seeing it, glorified the Lord, because those in distress were going to be relieved. So some of those present said to him: "Peter, have you not done wrong in accepting this money from her? For she is notorious throughout all Rome for sexual immorality, and because she does not keep to one man; she even goes to her own young slaves. So do not share Chryse's table, but let what came from her be sent back to her." And Peter, hearing this, laughed and said to the brethren: "What she is in the rest of her life I do not know. But in accepting this money I did not accept it in vain; for she offered it as a debtor to Christ, and she gives it to the servants of Christ; for he himself has provided for them."

And they also brought the sick to him on the sabbath, begging that they might be freed from their diseases. And many were healed, paralytics and those with gout and those with tertian and quartan fevers; and they were healed of every bodily disease, believing in the name of Jesus Christ; and very many were added every day to the grace of the Lord.

And after a few days had passed, Simon the magician promised the crowd to prove that Peter believed not in the true God but in one who had deceived him. So when he performed many illusions, those of the disciples who were already firm laughed at him. For in dining rooms he caused certain spirits to be brought in before them, which only appeared and did not really exist. And why say more? Though he had been thoroughly exposed for magic many times, he made the lame seem whole for a short time, and the blind likewise, and once he seemed to bring many dead to life and make them move, as with Stratonicus. But Peter, following him in all this, exposed him before those who saw. And as he was always disgraced and mocked by the Roman crowd, and disbelieved because he did not succeed in doing what he promised, at length he said to them: "Men of Rome, you now think that Peter has overpowered me as the stronger, and you pay more attention to him. You have been deceived. For tomorrow I shall leave you, most godless and most impious as you are, and fly up to God, whose Power I am, though I have been weakened. If then you have fallen, see, I am the Standing One; and I am going up to the Father and will say to him: 'Me too, your Standing Son, they wished to bring down; but I did not agree with them, and …'" … "Simon, if the Power of God is falling, will not God himself, whose power you are, be blinded?" … And Gemellus too followed Peter, saying to him: "I too pray to be one of those who believe in Christ." And Peter said: "What grudge could there be, my brother? Come and sit with us." And Simon, in his calamity, found some who carried him by night on a pallet from Rome to Aricia; and having stayed there he was carried to Castor, who had been banished to Terracina on a charge of magic; and there, under the surgeon's knife, Simon, the angel of the devil, reached the end of his life.

And Peter was in Rome rejoicing in the Lord with the brethren, and giving thanks night and day for the multitude brought daily to the holy name by the grace of the Lord. And the concubines of the prefect Agrippa also came together to Peter, four of them: Agrippina and Nicaria and Euphemia and Doris. And hearing the word of chastity and all the oracles of the Lord, they were struck to the soul; and agreeing with one another to remain pure from Agrippa's bed, they were harassed by him. So Agrippa, perplexed and grieved about them, for he loved them greatly, had them watched; and sending someone secretly to see where they went, he learns that it was to Peter. So he said to them when they came back: "That Christian has taught you not to have intercourse with me. Know that I will destroy you and burn him alive." They then endured to suffer every evil from Agrippa, if only they might no longer be driven by his passion, being strengthened by the power of Jesus.

And one woman in particular, very beautiful, the wife of Albinus the friend of Caesar, Xanthippe by name, came with the other matrons to Peter, and she too withdrew from Albinus. He therefore, raging and in love with Xanthippe, and amazed that she would not even sleep in the same bed with him, grew savage like a wild beast, wishing to make away with Peter; for he knew him to be the cause of her separation from his bed. And many other women too, enamoured of the word of chastity, separated from their husbands, and men separated their beds from their own wives, because they wished to worship God in reverence and chastity. So when there was very great commotion in Rome, and Albinus made known his affairs to Agrippa, saying to him: "Either you avenge me on Peter, who separated my wife from me, or I will avenge myself," Agrippa said that he had suffered the same from him, since he had separated his concubines from him. And Albinus said to him: "Why then are you waiting, Agrippa? Let us find him and put him to death as a meddler, so that we may have our wives, and avenge also those who are not able to put him to death, whose wives too he has separated from them."

While they were deliberating these things, Xanthippe, learning of her husband's counsel with Agrippa, sent and made it known … Peter said to them: "Shall we run away, brothers?" And they said to him: "No; but go, as one who is still able to serve the Lord." And persuaded by the brethren he went out alone, saying: "Let none of you go out with me; I will go out alone, having changed my dress." And as he went out of the gate, he saw the Lord entering Rome. And seeing him he said: "Lord, where are you going here?" And the Lord said to him: "I am entering Rome to be crucified." And Peter said to him: "Lord, are you being crucified again?" He said to him: "Yes, Peter, I am being crucified again." And Peter came to himself, and having seen the Lord going up into heaven, he returned to Rome rejoicing and glorifying the Lord, because he had said: "I am being crucified," which was about to happen to Peter.

So going up again to the brethren he told them what he had seen; and they mourned in their souls, weeping and saying: "We beseech you, Peter, take thought for us younger ones." And Peter said to them: "If it is the Lord's will, it happens, even if we do not wish it. But the Lord is able to establish you in his faith, and he will lay your foundation in himself and enlarge you in himself, you whom he himself planted, so that you too may plant others through him. As for me, as long as the Lord wills me to be in the flesh, I do not object; and again, when he wills to take me, I rejoice and am glad." And while Peter was saying these things, and all the brethren were weeping, behold, four soldiers took him and led him away to Agrippa. And he, because of his malady, ordered him to be crucified on a charge of godlessness. So the whole multitude of the brethren ran together, rich and poor, orphans and widows, weak and strong, wishing to see Peter and to snatch him away, while the people shouted irresistibly and with one voice: "What wrong has Peter done, Agrippa? What harm has he done you? Tell the Romans!" And others said: "We must be afraid that, if this man dies, his Lord may destroy us all." And Peter, having come to the place, calmed the crowd and said: "Men who serve as soldiers for Christ …" [8] … "… grace unspeakable, spoken over the name of the cross! O nature of man, which cannot be separated from God! O love unspeakable and inseparable, which cannot be shown forth through unclean lips! I lay hold of you now, as I stand at the end of my release from here. I will declare what you are; I will not keep silent the mystery of the cross, long closed up and hidden in my soul. Let not the cross be to you, who hope in Christ, this thing that appears; for it is something other than what appears, in accordance with the passion of Christ. And now above all, since you who are able to hear can hear it in the last and final hour of my life, hear: separate your souls from every thing of sense, from every thing that appears and does not truly exist; blind these eyes of yours, close these ears of yours, separate yourselves from the actions that are in …"

And when they had hung him up in the way he had asked, he began again to speak: "Men, whose part it is to hear, give ear to what I shall now above all announce to you as I hang here. Know the mystery of all nature and the beginning of all things, how it came to be. For the first man, whose race I bear in my form, falling head downward, showed a birth that was not so before; for it was dead, having no motion. So he, being dragged down, and having cast his beginning onto the earth, established this whole ordering of the world, being hung up as an image of the calling, in which he showed the things on the right as left, and those on the left as right, and changed all the signs of their nature, so that people think fair the things that are not fair, and good the things that are really evil. Concerning these things the Lord says in a mystery: "Unless you make the things on the right as those on the left, and those on the left as those on the right, and those above as those below, and those behind as those before, you shall not know the kingdom." This thought, then, I have brought before you; and the posture in which you see me hanging is a representation of that man who first came into being. You therefore, my beloved, both those who hear now and those who will hear, must cease from the first error and run back again; for it is fitting to mount upon the cross of Christ, who is the Word stretched out, one and only, of whom the Spirit says: "For what is Christ but the Word, the sound of God?" So that the Word is this upright beam on which I am crucified; and the sound is the crosspiece, the nature of man; and the nail that holds the crosspiece to the upright beam in the middle is the turning and repentance of man.

Since then you have made these things known and revealed them to me, O Word of life, now called by me "wood", I give thanks to you, not with these lips that are nailed, nor with the tongue through which truth and falsehood come forth, nor with this word that comes forth by the art of material nature; but I give thanks to you, O King, with that voice which is understood through silence, which is not heard openly, which does not come forth through the organs of the body, which does not travel into ears of flesh, which is not heard by corruptible substance, which is not in the world nor uttered upon earth, nor written in books, nor belongs to one and not to another; but with this, Jesus Christ, I give thanks to you: with the silence of a voice, with which the spirit within me, loving you and speaking to you and seeing you, makes intercession. You are known to the spirit alone. You are to me father, you are mother, you brother, you friend, you servant, you steward; you are the All, and the All is in you; and you are what is, and there is nothing else that is except you alone. To him then you also, brothers, flee for refuge, and learning that in him alone you have your being, you will obtain those things of which he says to you: … [11] … from the cross, he washed it in milk and wine; and having … seven minae of Chian mastic, and fifty others of myrrh and aloes and spice, he embalmed his body, and having filled a costly stone trough with Attic honey, he laid it in his own tomb. But Peter stood by Marcellus by night and said: "Marcellus, have you heard the Lord saying: 'Let the dead be buried by their own dead'?" And when Marcellus said, "Yes," Peter said to him: "Those things, then, which you spent on the dead, you have lost; for you, though alive, cared for the dead like a dead man." And Marcellus, waking up, told the brethren of Peter's appearance, and was with those who had been strengthened by Peter in the faith of Christ, being himself strengthened still more, until Paul's coming to Rome.

And Nero, learning later that Peter had departed this life, blamed the prefect Agrippa, because he had been put to death without his consent; for he had wished to punish him with greater chastisement and more severely; for Peter had made disciples of some of his own attendants and had caused them to leave him; so that he was angry and for a long time did not speak to Agrippa. For he was seeking to destroy all the brethren who had been made disciples by Peter. And by night he sees someone scourging him and saying: "Nero, you cannot now persecute or destroy the servants of Christ; keep your hands off them." And so Nero, terrified by such a vision, let the disciples alone at that time in which Peter departed this life. And thereafter the brethren were of one mind, rejoicing and exulting in the Lord, glorifying the God and Saviour of our Lord Jesus Christ with the Holy Spirit, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.