Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/237

 is not one of the various conjectures offered which is so easily overthrown on examination, from the manner in which it is connected with other notions most palpably false and baseless. The old papistical notion was, that Peter at this time visited Rome, founded the church there, and presided over it, as bishop, twenty-five years, but occasionally visiting the east. As respects the minute details of this journey to Rome, the papist historians are by no means agreed, few of them having put any value upon the particulars of such an itinerary, until those periods when such fables were sought after by common readers with more avidity. But there is at least one hard-conscienced narrator, who undertakes to go over all the steps of the apostle on the road to the eternal city, and from his narrative are brought these circumstances. The companions assigned him by this romance, on his journey, were the evangelist Mark, Appollinaris, afterwards, as the story goes, appointed by him bishop of Ravenna, in Italy; Martial, afterwards a missionary in Gaul, and Rufus, bishop of Capua, in Italy. Pancratius, of Tauromenius, and Marcian, of Syracuse, in Sicily, had been sent on by Peter to that island, while he was yet staying at Antioch, but on his voyage he landed there and made them his companions also. His great route is said to have led him to Troy, on the northern part of the Asian coast of the Aegean sea, whence they seem to have made him cross to the eastern port of Corinth. At this great city of Greece, they bring him into the company of Paul and Silas, who were sent thither, to be sure, on a mission, but evidently at a different time, a circumstance which, among many others, helps to show the bungling manner in which the story is made up. From Corinth they carry him next to Syracuse, as just mentioned. Thence to Neapolis, (Naples,) in Campania, where, as the monkish legend says, this chief of the apostles celebrated with his companions a mass, for the safe progress of his voyage to Italy. Having now reached Italy, he is made the subject of a new fable for the benefit of every city along the coast, and is accordingly said to have touched at Liburnum, (Livorno, Leghorn,) being driven thither by stress of weather, and thence to Pisa, near by, where he offered up another mass for his preservation, as is still maintained in local fables; but the general Romish legend does not so favor these places, but brings the apostle, without any more marine delay or difficulty, directly over land from Naples to Rome; and on this route again, one lie suggesting another, a local superstition commemorates the veritable