Saint Paul Writing His Epistles by Valentin de Boulogne (1618-1620), Houston Museum of Fine Arts. • WIKIMEDIACOMMONS Paul died a martyr. Beheaded, for such was the privilege of Roman citizens, which he evidently was. But where and when? With what position in the Church and in what context of persecution? So many enigmas, because the last years of the apostle are lost in the unknown and open the way to very diverse reconstructions. Paul's last autobiographical letter dates from the years 55-57. Addressed to the Christian community of Rome, which he did not found, he considers his mission accomplished in the Hellenized East and poses a project of evangelization of the Latin West, which would pass through Rome to reach Spain. It is not known whether this trip ever took place. It was as a prisoner that Paul probably reached Rome around 58, on the occasion of an appeal trial before the imperial tribunal, after his arrest in Judea. We definitely lose track of him in 60, after two years of preaching in Rome under house arrest. Thus ends the end of the Acts of the Apostles. Luke wrote this history of the apostolic generation around 80, but it is doubtful that he had any direct contact with Paul; he gathered local traditions like a good historian by trade, but Rome remains a foreign world to this Eastern Greek, perhaps a Macedonian. The 1960s corresponded to the reign of Nero (54-68), archetype of the "bad emperor", and were marked in Rome by the great fire of 64, for which Christians were held responsible, condemned to be burned alive as arsonists according to the principle of reflexive punishment. This analysis by the Roman historian Tacitus has sometimes been called into question, because the Christians were then immersed in the Jewish community of Trastevere, which was not disturbed. However, their designation as scapegoats responds to a certain logic, if we admit that their community was of apocalyptic sensitivity, that it considered the fire as the sign of the end of time announced by Jesus and that it is spread in the streets to call for conversion, proselytizing and distinguishing itself from the Jews. Also Read:Roman Emperors:When Power Goes to Their Heads The first epistle of Peter, a Roman writing, and the letter of Clement of Rome written around 90 encourage this reading of the "persecution of Nero", but without relating the execution of Paul nor that of Peter. Clément points out that they died martyrs without specifying the place or the circumstances - perhaps because he does not know them or, on the contrary, because everyone knows about them. This uncertainty has allowed some Greek archaeologists to hypothesize that Paul suffered martyrdom in Philippi, Macedonia, after a new arrest in Asia and another momentous trial, after he had been the subject of of a dismissal and left Rome for a fourth mission in the East. Luc, an obscure companion This possibility can be based on the data of the letter to the Philippians, an authentic letter of captivity, but not dated nor localized, and on the second epistle to Timothy, a non-autobiographical Pauline writing, datable to the end of the I er century. It retraces the itinerary of a journey, denounces a vigorous Judaizing offensive against the apostle and lists the defections and betrayals. Only remained, with Paul, Luke, a physician identified by Christian tradition with the author of the Acts of the Apostles, although Loukas is an extremely common Latin diminutive and the figure of the Paul of the Acts, so different from the Paul of the epistles , hardly authorizes to conclude that Luke had known Paul during his lifetime. Read also:The Roman Empire becomes Christian Was Paul a betrayed apostle, condemned on the denunciation of his own, or was he persecuted by power like a philosopher, a schoolmaster? The rout of Paul's disciples appears comparable to that which followed the dissolution of a philosophical school. This refers to the middle of Rome and the end of the reign of Nero, who saw the persecution of the Stoics and the forced suicide of Seneca, the former tutor of the emperor, in 65. The Christians of Rome exalted this figure of Paul “ philosopher", illustrated by the oldest iconography of the apostle, and worked to bring him closer to Seneca by forging in the III th century an apocryphal correspondence between these two personalities. The date of Seneca's death therefore ends up being a chronological marker among Church historians to fix that of Paul - and also that of Peter - two years later, although Nero was then in Greece. But we only lend to the rich! The silence of direct textual and archaeological sources on the last years of the apostle left the field open to Christian memory to elaborate a Roman figure of Paul. It was not so much a question of filling in gaps as of constructing the image of a universal Church, extended to the limits of the empire, whose head was in Rome. However, the Christian community of Rome, which Paul visited, was still in the eyes of the Romans only a messianic movement of Judaism, moreover a troublemaker. In his letter to the Romans, Paul works on the blueprint of a universal Church united in diversity. We know from the Epistle to the Romans that Paul is integrated into it through networks formed in the diaspora:family, political, professional. Aquila and Priscilla lead an itinerant Jewish workshop, but the Herodians and people of the house of Narcissus, a very high-ranking freedman during the reign of Claudius, are milestones towards imperial society. This letter-treaty inscribes Pauline Christianity in the geopolitical framework of a unified world, affirming the legitimacy and the providential destiny of Rome. Paul appears sensitive to the risk of a break between a Christian community attached to its Jewish matrix and another, cut off from the former and unrelated to the past. In his letter to the Romans, Paul works on the blueprint of a universal Church united in diversity, which the Church of Rome pursued by associating his figure with that of Peter. Two apostles for a city No text of the New Testament suggests the meeting of Peter and Paul in Rome, which results from a memorial construction from the end of the II e century. According to Paul, who distinguishes two fields of apostolate - that of the Jews, entrusted to Peter, and that of the non-Jews, entrusted to him -, their paths had crossed in Antioch, where they had clashed, and in Corinth . In Roman memory, Peter and Paul first function as two parallel and unequal referents. Acts of Paul and Peter, composed around 180, paint a romanticized picture of the respective roles of the two apostles in Nero's Rome, showing no collaboration and leaving Paul only a secondary public role. Clement of Rome's letter confirms this, suggesting a Roman Christianity much more faithful to Jewish traditions than were the converts of the Pauline missions. The two apostles were first brought together by their martyrdoms, to which places of memory and pilgrimage were dedicated from the end of the 2nd th century - what the excavations of the Vatican necropolis have verified for Peter. At IV e century, they were brought together by the institution of a common feast on June 29, which celebrated them as co-founders of the Church of Rome through their martyrdom, while Roman hagiography reworked their Acts to include Paul and recompose stories of martyrdom. Paul's beheading is now located in Rome, near the Ostia gate, at the site known as the "Three Fountains", because his head is said to have bounced there three times, squirting milk. Christianity had to promote the figure of Paul, the universal apostle,who had already understood that Rome, the center of the world, had a vocation to become the head of the Church. Christianity, which had become the religion of the Empire, had to promote the figure of Paul, the universal apostle, symbol of a Christian culture open to Greco-Roman values, who had already understood that Rome, the center of the world, was destined to become the head of the Church. The primacy of the Church of Rome was established from the 4th th century on a double martyrdom and on the unique and strictly local association of two co-founders, Peter and Paul, symbolic and contradictory figures, henceforth placed on an equal footing. Local legend then filled in the gaps in the story. Find out more • St. Paul, M.-F. Baslez, Pluriel, 2012.• Life and death of Paul in Rome, C. Reynier, Editions du Cerf, 2016. Timeline 41 (or 49) First testimony on the faction of "Chrestos" (Christ) within the Jewish community of Rome. Expulsion by the Emperor Claudius of certain Jews from Rome, including Aquila and Priscilla, who would become Paul's collaborators.Towards 55-57 Letter from Paul to the Romans, which notes the end of his missions in the East and prepares his passage to Rome as well as the evangelization of the Latin West. The apostle promotes a Christianity integrated into the Roman Empire.Towards 58-60 According to the Acts of the Apostles, Paul arrives in Rome for an appeal trial. He preached there for two years under house arrest. We then lose track of him.64 Voluntary fire in Rome, which was attributed to the Emperor Nero and for which Christians served as scapegoats. Roman Christian sources confirm the testimony of the historian Tacitus, but none relate it to Paul's mission.65 Suicide of the Stoic philosopher Seneca, at the height of Nero's persecution against the philosophers (65-66), which served as a chronological marker for the first historians of the Church to date Paul's death in 67 or 68. A Cinematic Vision Alone in his prison awaiting his execution, while the Emperor Nero persecutes the disciples of Christ in Rome, the Apostle Paul receives a visit from Luke the Evangelist who has come to comfort him... Even if he wants to be faithful to the New Testament by filling the holes with the imagination, the film by Andrew Hyatt (Paul, apostle of Christ , released in 2018, with Jim Caviezel and James Faulkner), filmed in Malta, is not a pure historical re-enactment, as some assumptions remain debatable. Instead, it can be seen as a dramatic reflection on how believers can respond to persecution. Should we, for example, rise up against the tyrant? Beyond the hagiographic aspect, we let ourselves be carried away by the story. M.-F. B.
