The early Petrine ‘memory landscape’ constitutes the subject of these proceedings of a 2016 colloquium for Swiss doctoral and postdoctoral scholars at the Waldensian (Protestant) theological faculty in Rome.
Christoph Heilig revisits Peter's profile in Galatians ii (‘Älteste Petrus-Tradition und neuste Paulus-Perspektiven’, pp. 9–41). German scholarship's failure to acknowledge the Pauline Peter's proximity to the Lucan one in Acts x–xi owes much, Heilig believes, to a studied neglect or caricature of the (no longer) New Perspective on Paul. His own appeal to ‘newest’ Pauline perspectives still foregrounds the usual suspects like J. D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright rather than more recent debates, for example about ‘faith’ (for example, T. Morgan, J. N. Aletti and N. K. Gupta) or more ‘radical’ new perspectives on ‘Paul within Judaism’ (for example, P. Fredriksen and M. Thiessen).
Benjamin Schliesser documents the reception of Peter's walking on the water in early Christian literature and art (‘Der Seewandel des Petrus [Mt 14,28–31] in frühchristlicher Literatur und Kunst: zur Wirkungsgeschichte einer unbequemen Petruserzählung’, pp. 43–86). Literary sources from the Odes of Solomon to Prudentius and beyond are matched by just three surviving early artistic representations – at Dura Europos, on a sarcophagus in the Catacomb of St Callistus in Rome and in the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte in Naples. Appeals to Peter's exemplary faith coexist with critiques of his lack of it, along with a stress on all-embracing salvation.
Jörg Frey summarises his recent ‘theological’ commentary's (2015; ET 2019) perspective on the composition of 2 Peter (‘Von der “petrinischen Schule” zum “petrinischen Diskurs”: der zweite Petrusbrief und seine literarischen Bezüge’, pp. 87–123). Noting the failure of older hypotheses about a supposedly Roman ‘Petrine school’, Frey observes 2 Peter's surprising autonomy vis-à-vis 1 Peter and adopts W. Grünstäudl's theory of an Egyptian provenance in literary dependence on the Apocalypse of Peter, developing this in analogy to the Mosaic ‘discourse’ of certain post-biblical Jewish sources. For Frey, what makes this wholly vacuous epistolary Peter eminently suitable for such free-ranging ‘discourse’ is that he is emphatically untethered from any residual Petrine memory or tradition.
Thomas J. Kraus's nuanced and refined contribution finds the localised Roman setting of the Acts of Peter to denote legitimately aesthetic and aspirational concerns for ‘concrete remembrance’ (‘Vergegenwärtigende Erinnerung – was die Petrusakten [ActPetr] überhaupt über “Petrus in Rom” erkennen lassen’, pp. 125–57). On this basis Rome remains a plausible provenance for a narrative so firmly tied to the city as a place of memory and present realisation, even though – or indeed because – the storyline exhibits rather more prosopographical than topographical granularity.
That Roman narrative ‘landscape’ of Petrine memory is fruitfully explored in Tobias Nicklas's ‘Antike Petruserzählungen und der erinnerte Petrus in Rom’ (pp. 159–87). Observing a ‘structure of memory’ increasingly connected with the veneration of concrete places, Nicklas begins with Jesus’ prediction of Peter's martyrdom (possibly by crucifixion) in John xxi and ranges across progressively concrete Roman topographical connections in popular (apocryphal) texts to the sixth century and beyond.
Vanessa Bayha examines emerging ideas of papal succession in Hegesippus and Irenaeus as primarily an anti-heretical device, underwriting not a notion of Roman primacy but the assurance of a reliably transmitted teaching tradition (‘Die römische Bischofssukzession als Garant orthodoxer Lehre und apostolischer Überlieferung bei Hegesipp und Irenäus’, pp. 189–218).
Two further essays respectively survey the second- and third-century evidence for burial in Rome. Noting Luther's politically utilitarian scepticism about that tradition, Peter Gemeinhardt recalls the tenuous witness of Gaius and Damasus before rehearsing the standard sources, first archaeological and then literary, regarding a second-century memorial at the Vatican hill (‘Liegt Petrus in Rom, und wenn ja, seit wann? Zur Herausbildung der römischen Petrustradition im 2. Jahrhundert’, pp. 219–54). He concludes that even if the site's association with Peter's death and/or tomb may be secondary, his impact from there on the history of Christianity is not in doubt.
Martin Wallraff revisits the specifically third-century puzzle of the supposed (re-)translation of the bones of Peter and Paul from the Catacombs on the Appian Way to their titular churches on the Vatican and on the Ostian Way, respectively (‘Wo in Rom liegt Petrus? Zur Entwicklung römischer Petrustraditionen im dritten Jahrhundert’, pp. 255–75). While acknowledging familiar challenges, he draws ingeniously on the Acta Petri et Pauli in support of L. C. Mohlberg's old theory that the third-century assemblies at the Via Appia may have involved Latin-speaking Novatianists, suggesting that 258 for the ‘re-translation’ of the apostolic relics marked primarily the ecclesial reconciliation following Novatian's death that year.
Michael R. Jost's concluding essay concerns primarily the afterlife of twentieth-century Petrine scholarship in the twenty-first century (‘Der historische Simon Petrus und seine bleibende Bedeutung für die Kirche der Gegenwart’, pp. 277–304). A sketch of Oscar Cullmann's (1902–99) intellectual biography and his famous mid-century book on Peter (1952, 2nd edn 1960) precedes a useful history of its scholarly reception, as documenting a lasting contribution to contemporary Petrine scholarship and ecumenical theology.
Sustained and learned engagement with Petrine critical matters from a German Protestant perspective marks this volume's welcome contributions to the ongoing rediscovery of Peter's ancient cultural and historical footprint. That said, much of the project feels a little provincial and warmed over. Several chapters show little engagement or even mention of key non-German publications on the topic. Nicklas is the only Catholic contributor. While the introduction plays up its Roman setting and Cullmann is feted at the end, one looks in vain for intellectual investment in the subject matter's wider institutional and ecumenical implications, ancient or contemporary. Historically, too, Roman conversazione about that ‘landscape of memory’ appears to have yielded little critical convergence – on whether, for example, this evolving landscape might bear on topography and prosopography (for example, Kraus) or emphatically not (Frey). Access and exploration of these matters could have been helped by standard editorial courtesies like a bibliography, table of contributors or indices of names and subjects – all of which are absent.
However precarious and (inevitably) subject to ideological distortion, the messy persistence of that Petrine landscape of memory subverts any notion of a mere vacuous ‘discourse’ of either doctrinal hegemony or caleidoscopic diversity. Might not some of those huddled graves on the Vatican Hill or the Ostian Way signal an enduring aesthetic of hope and desire vested in that two-fold apostolic witness? The book's cover image features a contextless Peter cropped from the fourth-century gravestone of six-year-old Asellus. In its entirety that epitaph entrusts the little boy to the joint enterprise of Rome's twin Apostles under the sign of Christ.
