He had indeed failed.
Accused by Jewish scribes of blasphemy, Jesus Christ was crucified by
Roman soldiers on the mount of Golgotha. To all appearances the son
of a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth, he claimed to be the Son of
God, and for this he died in dishonour on the Cross. But something
unheard of happened: three days later, when some women went to his
grave to anoint his body with oil, they met an angel who said to
them: "... Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was
crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said..." (Matthew
28: 5—6). Was Jesus Christ really the Son of God? Certainly his
adherents grew in numbers so rapidly that there were soon several
thousand of them.
The leader within this first Christian community was
Simon, a fisherman from Capernaum. It was Simon whom Jesus Christ
renamed the "rock" (Greek: Petros) on which he would build his
Church. Our picture shows this scene: Jesus Christ has just made
Peter the head of his Church — the first Pope.
Yet Peter had much to overcome and undergo. Forced
to flee Jerusalem in AD 42, he carried his missionary activities as
far as Rome, where Christians were soon to be persecuted. They
refused to practise the cult of worshipping the Emperor, and were
therefore regarded as godless, which provoked the hatred of the
pagans. Christians were accused of the most evil and shameful
things: "When the Tiber rises to the city walls, when the Nile does
not flood the fields, when there is famine and disease, the cry
immediately goes up: 'the Christians to the lions'," wrote the Roman
historian Tertullian. Peter himself was martyred — crucified
upside-down — in 64 or 67, on the place where St Peter's Cathedral
stands today.
Constantine the Great was the first Roman emperor to
be baptised — presumably shortly before he died — and this made it
possible for Christianity to become the state religion of the
Empire. Early in the fourth century a mausoleum was built on the Via
Nomentana, probably as a tomb for Constantine's daughters Costanza
and Helena. Today known as Santa Costanza, this round structure is
one of the oldest and most significant religious buildings in Rome:
here mosaics depicting secular events, such as the grape harvest,
can be viewed as well as the finest surviving examples of early
Christian art, after the catacombs.
