Encyclopedia > Quo Vadis

  Article Content

Quo vadis

Redirected from Quo Vadis

Quo vadis is a Latin phrase meaning Where do you go?. It is used as proverbial phrase from the Bible (St. John ch. 16, v. 5 (http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?jn+16:5)).

Several things have been named Quo vadis

Most famous use of it is when (according to Christian legend) Peter was fleeing Rome on the Appian way, and encountered Jesus. He asked Jesus, "Domine Quo Vadis?", "Lord, where are you going?", and Jesus replied "To Rome to be crucified anew." Upon hearing this, Peter returned to Rome to be crucified upside down. This is the basis of the Annibale Carracci painting mentioned above. The story is contained in many sources, such as the apocryphal Acts of Peter (35):

And as they considered these things, Xanthippe took knowledge of the counsel of her husband with Agrippa, and sent and showed Peter, that he might depart from Rome. And the rest of the brethren, together with Marcellus, besought him to depart. But Peter said unto them: Shall we be runaways, brethren? and they said to him: Nay, but that thou mayest yet be able to serve the Lord. And he obeyed the brethren's voice and went forth alone, saying: Let none of you come forth with me, but I will go forth alone, having changed the fashion of mine apparel. And as he went forth of the city, he saw the Lord entering into Rome. And when he saw him, he said: Lord, whither goest thou thus (or here)? And the Lord said unto him: I go into Rome to be crucified. And Peter said unto him: Lord, art thou (being) crucified again? He said unto him: Yea, Peter, I am (being) crucified again. And Peter came to himself: and having beheld the Lord ascending up into heaven, he returned to Rome, rejoicing, and glorifying the Lord, for that he said: I am being crucified: the which was about to befall Peter.
(M.R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament, Clarendon Press, 1924).


This is a disambiguation page; that is, one that just points to other pages that might otherwise have the same name. If you followed a link here, you might want to go back and fix that link to point to the appropriate specific page.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Quadratic formula

... x-axis in two points.) If the discriminant is negative, then there are two different solutions x, both of which are complex numbers. The two solutions are complex ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 28.3 ms