In Rome in the yar 68 AD the disciple Simon bar-Jonah, commonly known as Peter, was condemned to death by the authorities. According to popular belief he was curcified upside down, his body was stolen away by his folowers to be buried in secret-and eh site of that secret grave is under the high altar of St. Peter's basilica in Rome. The Bones of St. Pter sets out to show that at least part of the legend is fact. It tells the fascinating story of an archeological excavation which took place not in windy Troy or in the Valley of the Kngs, but in the foundations of St eter's itself.

The investigation started by accident. In 1939 work began on lowering the floor of a crypt behind the high altar in order to convert it into a chapel, and soon a pagan cemetery was uncovered: one splendid Roman mausoleum after another, each fabulously decorated. This was a find in itself, but it was also proof of the traiditon that when the Emperor Constantine built his great basilica in the fourth century, he sited it on a Roman graveyard. Why? It would have provoked bitter resentment among Roman famiies, and it involved a vast earth-moving operation to level the ground. But there was, of course, the tradition that the altar of Constantine's basilica and of its Renaissance successor-the magnificent building we know today-was built over the burial place of St. Peter.

Now, armed with permission from the Pope of the time, the team of archeologists dug down and on towards the high altar, peeling away the layers of the centuries until they came to what had to be the grave of the Apostle. Bones were found there: they were removed by the Pope and taken to his apartments, and that should have been the end of the story. But, as Mr. walsh shows, this was not the case...

In The Bones of St. Peter John Evangelist Walsh tells a story spanning nineteen hundred years and brings into vivid relief the lives of the early Christians, showing the measures they took to practise their faith-and to protect the body of their first Pope.

John Evangelist Walsh is a senior editor at the Reader's Digest in New York. He is the author of several books, among them ones on the Wright Brothers, John Paul Jones, Emily Dickinson and the Turin Shroud.

The front of the jacket shows a detail of a sixteenth-century stained glass scene from the life of St. Peter, originally in a church in Normandy, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Sonia Halliday Photographs).

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
List of photographs
Ilustrations on the text
Prologue: The announcement
1 Buried tombs
2 Street of the dead
3 Beneath the high altar
4 Peter's grave
5 The red wall complex
6 Stroke of fate
7 The wooden box
8 What the graffiti hid
9 The bones examined
10 The Peter theory
11 Decision
12 The ancient silence
Appendices:
A. The surviving skeleton of St. Peter
B. Notes and sources
C. Selected bibiography
Index

This book is an interesting read for those who are interested in this kind of thing. In 1968 Pope Paul VI (1963-1978) officially declared the tomb of Peter had been conclusively identified. This probably settles the issue for Roman Catholics. Those who already agree with the book's conclusion on the burial of the bones of Peter the apostle will find it acceptable and perhaps even "scholarly". Others who are not in agreement with the conclusion likely will not been convinced, and may further agree with one reviewer who wrote that "...Walsh's book neatly, unintentionally describes the rough treatment of the investigation, its poor planning and commission, the ineptitude of some participants and the shear, disquieting lack of professionalism." The belief (or disbelief) of Peter's bones being Rome in is not without bias, neither was this investigation nor the book that came from it. The book offers one point of view on the subject. ( )

The subtitle, "a fascinating account", is a pretty accurate summary. Walsh lays out a compelling narrative of an incredible archaeological discovery that, in its own way, contained as many layers and twists as the edifice that was its focus. One could perhaps wish for better photographs, or disagree with some of the author's personal speculation in the final chapter, but those are minor quibbles. ( )

A very readable account of the archaeological excivations done in the catacombs under the St. Peter's basilica and the discovery of the bones of "St. Peter." ( )