Peter and Paul

The figures of the two apostles Peter and Paul stand at the approach to Saint Peter’s Basilica. The two are associated with each other on the main portal of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, where scenes of their lives and sufferings are depicted. Fromm the beginning on, the Christian tradition has considered Peter and Paul inseparable from one another. Together they represent the whole Gospel. In Rome, the association of the two brothers in the faith has acquired another quite specific meaning. Christians in Rome saw them as alternatives to the mythical pair of brothers who, according to legend, founded the city of Rome: Romulus and Remus. These two men stand in remarkable correspondence to the first pair of brothers of the biblical narrative, Cain and Abel. One becomes the murderer of the other. Humanly speaking, the word brotherliness leaves a bitter taste. How it can be seen among men is depicted across all religions in such pairs of brothers.

Peter and Paul, who were in human terms so different from one another and, truthfully, not without conflicts, appear as the founders of a new city, as the embodiment of the new and true way of brotherliness that has become possible through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The world is saved, not by the sword of the conquerors, but by the sword of those who suffer. Only following Christ leads to the new brotherliness, to the new city. This is what the pair of brothers says to us through the two great basilicas of Rome.