Where was Peter imprisoned and freed by the angel?

Question

Accepted Answer

In Jerusalem, at Passover of AD 44 or the year before, under Herod Agrippa I, who had just had James the brother of John beheaded. Acts does not name the prison. The royal palaces stood on the western hill above the Temple, and the Antonia fortress at the north-west corner of the Temple Mount held the garrison; either could have held Peter, and the iron gate “that leadeth unto the city” suggests a place at the edge of the built town. The house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where the church was praying, is claimed by the Syrian Orthodox church of St Mark in the Armenian Quarter, a tradition that cannot be traced earlier than the Byzantine period. Agrippa left for Caesarea, 87 km away, and died there in 44. Luke tells it closely: Herod, having killed James, “proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of unleavened bread.)” He “delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him”. “The same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the keepers before the door kept the prison. And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison”. “When they were past the first and the second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city; which opened to them of his own accord”. Peter went “to the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark; where many were gathered together praying”, then “departed, and went into another place”. Herod “examined the keepers, and commanded that they should be put to death. And he went down from Judæa to Cæsarea, and there abode.” The date is anchored more firmly than most in Acts: Agrippa received Judea from Claudius in 41 and died at Caesarea in 44, struck down at games in the emperor's honour, as Josephus relates in agreement with Acts. Where Peter went is not said; Antioch and Rome have both been guessed. The chains venerated in Rome at San Pietro in Vincoli are said, in a later tradition, to have been sent from Jerusalem by the empress Eudocia in the fifth century. The church of St Peter in Gallicantu on the eastern slope of Mount Zion commemorates not this prison but the house of Caiaphas and Peter's denial.