Archaeologists have found evidence supporting a traditional belief that St Peter was jailed in Rome’s maximum security Mamertine Prison before he was crucified and buried on the hill where St Peter’s Basilica was later built. The prison, which lies beneath the Church of St Joseph of the Carpenters facing the Roman Forum, was closed for the past year as experts dug up old floors and picked away plaster, CNS reports.
They found and restored a 14th-century fresco of Jesus with his arm around a smiling St Peter and an 11th-century fresco of Jesus with the oldest known image of the Campidoglio, Rome’s city hall, behind him.
Patrizia Fortini from the city of Rome’s department of archaeological heritage led the excavation and restoration project.
She told journalists late last month that they found proof that the site had been a place for venerating St Peter by the seventh century, lending support to historical accounts that he had been incarcerated there.
The prison has two levels: the upper chamber called the “Carcer” and the lower chamber called the “Tullianum,” (pictured) which was built in the sixth century B.C.
In the Tullianum, Fortini said, they found “traces of a basin that must have been where water was collected — water which, according to tradition, sprang forth after St Peter pounded on the stone floor.”
Tradition holds that after he miraculously made the water gush forth, he converted and baptized his two prison guards as well as 47 others while he was imprisoned there.
Near the basin, archaeologists found a trough which, centuries later, the faithful may have used to sprinkle themselves with water, she said.
The stone walls had been painted, she said, but time and humidity took their toll.
SIC: CTHAS