Not surprisingly, there are several accounts of Simon Magus’s death, and many of his encounters both with Saint Peter and Saint Paul, who seem to have put their theological and ideological differences aside at least long enough to team up against the common enemy. One story tells of Magus riding a chariot through the air pulled by demons (uh-huh) which the two saints bring crashing to the ground by the power of prayer, killing Magus or, as it puts it in the writings of Cyril of Jerusalem (346 AD)
“their prayers brought him to earth a mangled corpse.” Then there were the
Acts of Peter, believed written by Photios (c. 810/820 - 893) in which Peter actually challenges Magus to what amounts to I guess a magical smackdown. Magus is performing magic such as levitating himself from a tower (which might be slightly - but only slightly - more believable and explainable than riding through the air in a chariot pulled by demons!) and declaring he is going to Heaven. Peter throws down the gauntlet, praying to God to fix this imposter, and so he does. Magus falls mid-flight and breaks his leg in three places. Reading between the lines, it seems the inefficiency or ineptitude of the local doctors exacerbated the problem, and he died in pain.
The
Acts of Peter and Paul, not to be confused with the above, author unknown but sometimes attributed to some head called Marcellus, note that the emperor Nero was a believer in Magus and had Peter and Paul imprisoned for three days, expecting Simon Magus to rise, Jesus-like, after three days. Needless to say, he was ever so slightly disappointed, so much so that he ordered the crucifixion of the two lads.
Though he didn’t cheat death, necessitating the stowing by a crestfallen and angry Nero of the banner WELCOME BACK SIMON MAGUS I ALWAYS BELIEVED IN YOU and his cancellation of the ticker-tape parade, there are many accounts of Simon Magus’s supposed magic. Mind you, it’s important to be careful here. We have about as much evidence for them as we do for the works or miracles of Jesus, and who can say for sure what, if anything, happened, especially given that the accounts are all written by friendly hands, men who would want to place their leader in the best possible light? With that in mind though, here’s what Magus is reputed to have done.
Seizing the chance to take over from him while he was away in Egypt at some magic symposium or other, one of his followers took it into his head to pronounce himself the leader, or as Simon Magus had described himself, the Standing One (I would assume some early Biblical times version of last man standing?) and when Simon came back and challenged him, here’s what apparently happened.
"Dositheus, when he perceived that Simon was depreciating him, fearing lest his reputation among men might be obscured (for he himself was supposed to be the Standing One), moved with rage, when they met as usual at the school, seized a rod, and began to beat Simon; but suddenly the rod seemed to pass through his body, as if it had been smoke. On which Dositheus, being astonished, says to him, 'Tell me if thou art the Standing One, that I may adore thee.' And when Simon answered that he was, then Dositheus, perceiving that he himself was not the Standing One, fell down and worshipped him, and gave up his own place as chief to Simon, ordering all the rank of thirty men to obey him; himself taking the inferior place which Simon formerly occupied. Not long after this he died.”
From what I can work out, this account comes from something called
Histories and Recognitions, by a guy called Clement, who is believed either not to have existed or to have been someone who just wrote stuff down without any proof. They call this a “romance”, which I guess is as close as it comes to describing it as fiction. He also (Magus, not the possible Clement) did a Dorian Grey by enslaving the soul of a young boy to act as his familiar, keeping it trapped by use of the boy’s image in his room. Right.
When Simon Magus again debates Peter on the nature of Jesus, and how he, Simon, is better placed to know the mind of the Saviour (despite having, he says, only conversed with him in dreams and visions, whereas Peter has spoken to him literally in the flesh - and denied him, though I think he leaves that part out) Peter takes him apart philosophically and theologically thus:
“But can any one be educated for teaching by vision? And if you shall say, "It is possible," why did the Teacher remain and converse with waking men for a whole year? And how can we believe you even as to the fact that he appeared to you? And how can he have appeared to you seeing that your sentiments are opposed to his teaching? But if you were seen and taught by him for a single hour, and so became an apostle, then preach his words, expound his meaning, love his apostles, fight not with me who had converse with him. For it is against a solid rock, the foundation-stone of the Church, that you have opposed yourself in opposing me. If you were not an adversary, you would not be slandering me and reviling the preaching that is given through me, in order that, as I heard myself in person from the Lord, when I speak I may not be believed, as though forsooth it were I who was condemned and I who was reprobate. Or, if you call me condemned, you are accusing God who revealed the Christ to me, and are inveighing against Him who called me blessed on the ground of the revelation. But if indeed you truly wish to work along with the truth, learn first from us what we learnt from Him, and when you have become a disciple of truth, become our fellow-workman.”
And mic drop.
But we have got a little off the beaten path here, and this is supposed to be about Saint Peter. His battles, both physical and philosophical, with Simon Magus are only a small part of his story, though they do come near its end, as he ends up being crucified a matter of days after Simon’s death. But let’s not forget Simon Magus was in Rome long before Peter, who was hanging out at Antioch for seven years. What did he do in that time, between kicking out Simon Magus and later facing him down in the final confrontation? Well he seems on the face of it to have been quite a pragmatic man. Judaism is notorious for its insistence on adherence to its rites - no Jew can eat pork, all Jewish boys must go through the Bah Mitzvah and so on, but this wasn’t Judaism, or if it was, it was a new offshoot of it, and Peter must have known that, like every new idea, it was going to take some persuading before people would try it.
For one thing, you have to consider the times. Jews had clung desperately to their religion in the face of an occupying force who believed in multiple gods, and while in general the Empire recognised that to try to force all Jews to convert would kick off riots across the entire region, they were still made to feel like they were ignorant, superstitious fools. So, considering how important their religion was to them, is it any wonder they resisted the idea of another new guy on the block, who seemed to take the best of their religion but add some of its own, and asked them to convert? They wouldn’t exactly have been lining up, especially since the new sect was already outlawed and unrecognised by Rome, given that its now-dead leader had been classified and executed as an enemy of the state. Why should they ally themselves with such rebels and bring trouble down on their heads, when the Romans were - grudgingly - allowing them to pursue their own religion?
If he was to get anyone to sign up, Peter must have realised that he had to make it as attractive as possible, and placing restrictions on membership was not going to help. Besides, Jesus had not mentioned any such terms and conditions, had he? So while Jews had to eat “kosher” meat, why should Christians? Was it necessary for Christians to be circumcised? This was a big bone (sorry) of contention between Peter and Paul, the latter of whom thought the snip was definitely in order, but Peter knew most men would not go for this, and would then say “nah you’re all right mate I’ll stay where I am”. Of course then Jews converting were going to be pissed, as they would already have lost their outer shell, as it were, and would probably resent that the new guys hadn’t to go through the same no doubt painful process (so much more for them, one would shudderingly imagine, than for the Jewish lads, who would not even remember the ceremony, having been babies at the time).
So Peter did what he could to make joining up as easy and hassle-free as possible, though of course there were still rules that had to be followed. One god, lads. Just the one. Leave the others behind. No, you fu
cking
can’t have just Mercury too. I don’t give a
toss if he’s only a little one, he’s not welcome. Aphro-what? Goddess of love? Do me a favour.
Paul did not agree. Paul was, I guess what we’d call a hardliner, a traditionalist. Not forgetting of course that all the Disciples were Jews originally, Paul believed all Jewish traditions and conditions should be brought forward into the new religion, making it more an offshoot of Judaism than a totally new religion. He therefore reviled the Gentiles (non-Jews) who refused to do the things mentioned above, and more, and decreed they should be shut out of the new religion, not allowed to follow Jesus. But as I say, Paul and Peter obviously reconciled, or at least declared a truce, as they’re depicted as working together for much of the accounts that mention them.
They are, for instance, both said to have founded the Church of Corinth (in ancient Greece) and Rome:
“You have thus by such an admonition bound together the planting of Peter and of Paul at Rome and Corinth. For both of them planted and likewise taught us in our Corinth. And they taught together in like manner in Italy, and suffered martyrdom at the same time” - (Dionysius of Corinth, Fragment of a Letter to the Roman Church, Chapter III). However there may be doubt about this, as apparently in his Epistle to the Romans, Paul namechecks his homies in Rome but Peter is conspicuous by his absence. Three to five years later, about AD 60 - 62, again no mention of Peter during Paul’s two-year stay in Rome.
The death of Peter or rather, his acceptance of it - is commemorated in story and in a painting by the fifteenth-century artist Annibale Carrachi, which depicts the legend. Christ is seen carrying his cross towards Rome, while Peter, under sentence of death, is getting out of Dodge. He asks his master
“Domine, Quo Vadis?” (Lord, where are you going?) to which Jesus replies
“Eo Romam vado iterum crucifigi” (I am going to Rome to be crucified again). On realising that Jesus has to die twice because of his cowardice (what?) Peter decides to return to Rome and face his fate. All highly idealised, as is the idea he was then crucified upside-down, possibly due to the incompetence of Lucius Malefistus Stupidus, an intern on his first day on the job who had held the instructions the wrong way up. Or, according to various Christian dogmas, because he did not believe himself worthy of dying as Christ did, or again to illustrate that the Romans had everything upside-down, arse-about-face, and that he was, even right up to the end, a f
ucking clever clogs who never knew when to shut his fool mouth.
Whatever the truth, that was the end (at least, the human end - don’t ask me about what happened next, if anything) of Saint Peter, the first Bishop of Rome, and the first Pope of the new Christian Church. Of course, back then the word pope was not even invented and the Church was still a persecuted sect, but later, when things cooled down and it became accepted, legal and then official, and eventually the most literal example of local boy done good as Christianity became the biggest religion in the entire world, there was time to write about Saint Peter and to adopt him as being the very first pope.
As something of a postscript to this, in 1939 fragments of bone were unearthed in what was believed to be a shrine just beneath St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, said to be the grave of the saint himself. Now, it was apparently the current pope at the time, Paul VI, who confirmed the bone fragments were those of Saint Peter. What exact skill a pope has in archeology, forensics or anthropology I don’t know, but he was seen as the central authority and almost thirty years after their excavation the bones were pronounced as being those of the first pope of the Christian Church. More tricky was working out whether this was indeed the place of the saint’s burial or just the site of his execution, and that, well, they’re still working on that. Still, it does seem to prove, if nothing else, that the man actually existed. Of course, technically speaking these bones surely can’t be identified (DNA would be useless, as I doubt the Roman Empire kept a database to check it against) so they could in all likelihood be the bones of anyone. Like almost everything to do with the Church, and religion in general, I guess it’s a matter of faith. You either believe or you don’t.
Following Peter the line of succession is a little blurred, a lot disputed and not very well documented, but in general these are the more or less agreed-upon men who took up the baton, sometimes called the “shadow popes”, which, though it sounds like some sort of cabalistic organisation working dark deeds in the Vatican, merely refers to their doubtful provenance. I suppose as the Christian Church was then a) new and b) under persecution by Rome, the chances of anyone writing down for instance minutes of meetings wherein a new pope was elected were slim, and even if anyone did, they’re lost to history now, so we go with what we have.