Protomartyrs of Rome

According to tradition, the city of Rome was founded on April 21, 753 BC, by twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, whose father was Mars, the god of war. But the two argued about which hill to build on; and, when Romulus began building his city wall, Remus ridiculed his work by jumping over the wall. Romulus responded by killing him - thus determining which one Rome would be named after! In time, Rome would become the greatest city in the world, the capital of the greatest empire the world had ever yet known.

 

To that same city, some eight centuries later, came two men, Peter and Paul, brothers not by blood, but by their common faith in Jesus Christ, who had called them to be apostles. The Christian community they found in Rome was small, socially and politically insignificant - an easy target when the Emperor needed scapegoats to blame for a destructive fire. Among those martyred in that 1st Roman persecution of the Church were the apostles Peter and Paul. The anonymous early Roman martyrs we commemorate today were martyred before Saints Peter and Paul. Their martyrdom was famously  documented by the secular Roman historian Tacitus .

 

The old Rome of Romulus – proud, powerful, pagan Rome, based on the murder of one brother by another – was, for all its accomplishments and authentic grandeur, a human state like any other, a warring conqueror conquered in turn by other warring conquerors. The new Christian Rome of Peter and Paul conquered that old Rome, but in a new way. Proud, powerful, pagan Rome, founded on the murder of one brother by another, was in turn conquered by the faith that empowered Peter and Paul as brothers-in-Christ to evangelize an empire and die, along with so many other early Roman martyrs, together as witnesses to a new way of life.

 

As we recall these first Roman martyrs, let us in turn – as Saint Augustine once recommended recalling their leaders Peter and Paul this – “embrace what they believed, their life, their labors, their sufferings, their preaching, and their confession of faith” [Sermon 295, 8].

 

Homily for the Protomartyrs of Rome, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, June 30, 2026.

Photo: Robert Reid (1862-1929), The Martyrdom of St. Paul, based on 2 Timothy 4:7, "I have kept the faith."