Lesser Feasts and Fasts’ introduction to today’s feast begins with these words, “Peter and Paul, the two greatest leaders of the early Church . . . are commemorated together on June 29 in observance of the tradition of the Church that they both died as martyrs in Rome during the persecution under Nero, in 64.”[1] For many years I haven’t paid any real attention to the quotation on the same page from the document we know as the First Letter of Clement, written to the Church in Corinth—“usually dated from around [the year] 96 [of the Christian Era].”[2]
Read more