=St Peter and St Paul= (June 29). There is no question that at an early date this festival was celebrated at Rome. The belief was entertained by several ancient writers that these two Saints suffered death upon the same day of the month, but in different years. We have seen already (p. 33 f.) that in the East at an early date there was a commemoration of St Peter in close connexion with the commemoration of the Lord’s Nativity. But at Rome in the earliest Western Kalendar (the Bucherian) we find two festivals that deserve consideration: (1) _Natale Petri de Cathedra_ at Feb. 22; and (2) _Petri in Catacumbas et Pauli Os[t]iense_, at June 29, to which are added the words, _Tusco et Basso Coss_. To deal first with the latter entry; as the consulate of Tuscus and Bassus marks A.D. 258, it has been not unnaturally conjectured that the record marks the date of some translation of the Apostles’ relics. But that conjecture does not absolutely exclude the supposition that the day chosen for the translation was the day which was believed to have been the day of their martyrdom. The translation, as Bishop Pearson[88] long ago supposed, was the removal, perhaps with a view to safety, of the remains to a place at the third milestone on the Appian Way, called ‘Ad Catacumbas,’ during the heat of the persecution under Valerian. The observance of a commemoration of St Paul on June 30 (still so marked in the Roman Kalendar), has been accounted for by the fact that the bishop of Rome celebrating mass first at the tomb of St Peter, and afterwards on the same day having to go a long distance to the tomb of St Paul, there to celebrate again, it was arranged to observe the festival of St Paul on the day after June 29, with a view to avoiding the fatigue and inconvenience of the two functions on the one day. =Cathedra Petri.= The entry cited above from the Bucherian Kalendar, _Natale Petri de cathedra_, ‘the Festival of Peter of the Chair,’ looks very like the record of the dedication of a church, where perhaps a seated statue of the Apostle was placed[89]. We are at once reminded of the large seated figure of Hippolytus discovered in 1551 on the Via Tiburtina. Or, as De Rossi supposes, the festival may have had to do with the actual wooden chair (as was supposed) which St Peter had used, and of which we hear in the time of Gregory the Great. But, whatever may have been the origin of the festival, it came at a later time to be regarded as marking the date of the beginning of St Peter’s episcopate; and there is some evidence that the festival was made much of as a Christian set off against the popular pagan solemnity of _Cara cognatio_ on Feb. 22, when the dead members of each family were commemorated.