The Acts of Peter, here dated to 181 C.E., should not be read merely as a pious romance about Peter defeating Simon Magus in Rome. It is better understood as a Petrine answer to Marcion and the Marcionite churches. Its drama is carefully arranged: Paul first preaches in Rome, Paul then departs for Spain, Simon enters after Paul’s departure, many of Paul’s converts fall away, and Peter arrives as the apostle who rescues the Roman church from deception. The work therefore grants a Pauline foundation for Roman Christianity, but denies the Marcionite conclusion. Paul may have planted the Roman mission, but Peter is made its restorer, guardian, and final authority.
The key figure is Marcellus. Simon is the obvious mask of heresy, but Marcellus is the deeper anti-Marcionite figure. His name belongs to the same “Mark” field as Marcion: Marcellus is a Latin diminutive of Marcus, while Marcion is likewise associated with the Marc-name tradition. In literary terms, this matters. The story does not give us a neutral Roman patron. It gives us a “little Mark” figure whose house, wealth, and Christian network are captured by the false teacher and then reclaimed by Peter.
The parallel is strengthened by the way Marcellus is described. He is wise, prominent, wealthy, and charitable. The widows depend upon him, the fatherless are fed by him, the poor call him their patron, and his house is called the house of strangers and the poor. This is not incidental characterization. Marcellus’s house functions as a Roman church-house: a center of almsgiving, hospitality, influence, and ecclesiastical life. Whoever holds Marcellus’s house holds a living Christian network in Rome.
This is precisely where the Marcionite connection becomes difficult to miss. The hostile traditions about Marcion also remember him as wealthy, influential, and tied to the Roman church through money. Tertullian calls him a shipmaster of Pontus, and later tradition remembers that he brought a massive gift of 200,000 sesterces into the Roman church, a gift returned after his expulsion. Even in hostile memory, Marcion is not merely a wandering teacher with opinions. He is a wealthy Christian patron whose money, teaching, and influence made him dangerous.
The Acts of Peter appears to transform that historical memory into narrative fiction. Marcion the wealthy donor becomes Marcellus the wealthy benefactor. Marcion’s Roman influence becomes Marcellus’s Roman house. Marcion’s separation from the Roman church becomes Marcellus’s fall under Simon. Marcion’s rival Pauline church becomes the household that Peter must recover. The story’s central victory is therefore not only Peter over Simon, but Peter over the Marcionite patronage-network represented by Marcellus.
Simon’s role sharpens the polemic. He enters Rome after Paul’s departure and deceives those whom Paul had established. The Roman Christians are left vulnerable because Paul is absent. This is a direct narrative answer to Marcionite Pauline priority. The Marcionite claim was that the true Gospel belonged to Paul and had been corrupted by the Judaizing and Petrine tradition. The Acts of Peter reverses that claim: a Pauline community without Peter becomes unstable, exposed, and easily deceived.
The figure of Simon then becomes a caricature of Marcionite teaching. He is treated as a divine power, hailed by many, and placed in opposition to the Christ preached by Peter. This resembles the way Catholic polemic regularly distorted Marcionite confession. Marcion proclaimed the previously unknown God revealed by Jesus Christ; the Acts of Peter recasts the rival proclamation as devotion to a false power who seduces the simple after Paul is gone. The “new God” becomes, in Catholic fiction, the god of Simon.
Peter’s recovery of Marcellus is therefore the heart of the work. Peter does not merely win an argument. He reclaims the patron, the house, the poor, the widows, the charitable economy, and the Roman Christian network. Marcellus is restored from error, his house is cleansed, and his resources are redirected into the Petrine community. The story thereby says, in narrative form, what Catholic polemic wanted to prove historically: the Roman church belongs not to Marcion, not to a rival Pauline stream, but to Peter.
The work also appears to know that Marcionite readers could use Gospel memory against Peter. Peter’s denial, weakness, fear, doubt, and failure to understand Christ were obvious problems for later Petrine claims. The Acts of Peter absorbs that critique by making Peter confess his weakness and then turning it into proof of mercy and restoration. Where the Marcionite reading sees apostolic failure, the Petrine romance supplies repentance. Where the Marcionite reading sees rupture, the Catholic story supplies continuity.
Seen this way, Marcellus is indispensable. He is not decorative. He is the character in whom the whole controversy becomes visible. He is the “little Mark” figure, the wealthy Christian patron, the benefactor of the poor, the Roman householder, the one captured by the false teacher, and the one restored by Peter. He is Marcion rewritten as a repentant Catholic patron.
The Marcionite Church reads this not as evidence against Marcion, but as evidence of Marcion’s power. No one creates such a story against a forgotten opponent. The Acts of Peter witnesses to a time when the Roman church still had to answer the Pauline claim, the Marcionite Gospel, and the memory of a wealthy Christian patron whose canon and church challenged Petrine Rome. Its answer was fiction; its anxiety was historical.
