. If St. Peter ever was at Rome, it must have been for the Jewish converts or
convertendi
exclusively, and on what do the earliest Fathers rest the fact of Peter's being at Rome? Do they appeal to any document?
; but to their own arbitrary and most improbable interpretation of the word Babylon in St. Peter's first epistle
. I am too deeply impressed with the general difficulty arising out of the strange eclipse of all historic documents, of all particular events, from the arrival of St. Paul at Rome as related by St. Luke and the time when Justin Martyr begins to shed a scanty light, to press any particular instance of it. Yet, if Peter really did arrive at Rome, and was among those destroyed by Nero, it is strange that the Bishop and Church of Rome should have preserved no record of the particulars.
Ib.
s. xv. p. 71.
But what shall we think of that decretal of Gregory the Third, who wrote to Boniface his legate in Germany, quod illi, quorum uxores infirmitate aliqua morbida debitum reddere noluerunt, aliis poterant nubere.