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edly have included

the celebration of

the Eucharist, in

the place where the

relics of the saint

were deposited.

S i m i l a r o b-

servances were also

being held in Rome

at round the same

time. The Apostle

St Peter had been

martyred in the The Basilica of St Praxedes, Rome. These marble urns,
Va t i c a n c i r c u s in a crypt beneath the high altar, contain some of the
around the year 64 relics of 2300 martyrs brought here from the cata-
or 67, and had been
combs by Pope Paschal I in the year 817.
buried in a neigh-

bouring cemetery. In the mid second century Pope Anicetus built a

monument called a tropaion or trophy over the grave. This was discov-

ered during excavations beneath St Peter’s Basilica in the 1940s. It con-

sists of a stone shelf set against a wall, supported on two pillars at the

front, with the grave beneath12. It resembles an altar for celebrating the

Eucharist, and although this interpretation would be anachronistic it

could still have been used for that purpose. Roman law was very conser-

vative when it came to burial of the dead, and even executed criminals

usually had a right to an undisturbed burial. Moreover, Romans had a

right to form burial societies to tend graves and carry out cultic activi-

ties in cemeteries. Under paganism this included the holding of a re-

freshment meal, the refrigerium, at the grave site. The Christians con-

tinued this. But for them the refreshment meal was the Eucharist, cele-

brated over the tombs of the martyrs.

12 Engelbert Kirschbaum, The Tombs of St Peter and St Paul (J Murray, trans), Secker & Warburg 1959,
p133; see also John Evangelist Walsh, The Bones of Saint Peter, Fount Paperbacks 1984

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