Everything about Chair Of Saint Peter totally explained
The
Cathedra Petri (
Latin) or
Chair of Saint Peter is usually understood of a particular chair preserved in
St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, enclosed in a
gilt bronze casing that was designed by
Gian Lorenzo Bernini and executed 1647-53.
The chair of a bishop is a
cathedra. The
cathedra in Saint Peter's Basilica was once used by the
popes. It was therefore often thought to have been used by
Saint Peter himself, but was in fact a gift from
Charles the Bald to the Pope in 875.
This wooden chair is enclosed in a
gilt bronze casing designed by
Gian Lorenzo Bernini and executed 1647-1653. Like many medieval
reliquaries that took the form of the relic they protected, it's in the form of a chair. Symbolically, the chair Bernini designed had no earthly counterpart in actual contemporary furnishings: it's formed entirely of scrolling members, enclosing a coved panel where the upholstery pattern is rendered as a low relief of
Christ giving the keys to Peter. Nearly life-size angelic figures flank an openwork panel beneath a highly realistic bronze seat cushion, vividly empty: the relic is encased within. The
cathedra is lofted on splayed scrolling bars that appear to be effortlessly supported by four over-lifesize bronze
Doctors of the Church. The
cathedra appears to hover over the altar in the basilica's apse, lit by a central tinted window through which early morning light streams (
illustration, right), illuminating the gilded glory of sunrays and sculpted clouds that surrounds the window. Like Bernini's
Ecstasy of St Theresa, this is a definitive
Gesamtkunstwerk of the
Baroque, unifying sculpture and richly polychrome architecture and manipulating effects of light.
Jesus' words to Peter in, "You are Peter, and upon this Rock, I'll build my Church and the gates of
Hell shan't prevail against it. To you've I entrusted the keys of the
Kingdom of Heaven and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." These words are inscribed in Latin in the apse, within which is placed Bernini's monument enclosing the wooden chair, both of which are seen as symbolic of the authority of the
Bishop of Rome as
Vicar of Christ and successor of Saint Peter (see
Petrine supremacy).
Liturgical feasts
Early martyrologies indicate that two liturgical feasts were celebrated in Rome, centuries before the time of Charles the Bald, in honour of earlier chairs associated with Saint Peter, one of which was kept in the baptismal chapel of Saint Peter's Basilica, the other at the
catacomb of Priscilla. The dates of these celebrations were
18 January and
22 February. No surviving chair has been identified with either of these chairs. The feasts thus became associated with an abstract understanding of the "Chair of Peter", which by
synecdoche signifies the
episcopal office of the
Pope as
Bishop of Rome, an office considered to have been first held by
Saint Peter, and thus extended to the diocese, the
See of Rome. Though both feasts were originally associated with Saint Peter's stay in Rome, the ninth-century form of the
Martyrologium Hieronymianum associated the
18 January feast with his stay in Rome, and the
22 February feast with his stay at
Antioch. These feasts still appeared in the
General Roman Calendar as in 1954, but, as a result of the changes made by the
motu proprio of
Pope John XXIII Rubricarum instructum
of
July 23 1960, only the
22 February feast was kept in the
General Roman Calendar of 1962 and in the present
Roman Catholic calendar of saints. Some
Traditionalist Catholics continue to celebrate both feasts, rejecting Pope John XXIII's revised calendar, which is included in the 1962 edition of the
Roman Missal, the edition approved for continued use under the conditions indicated in the motu proprio
Summorum Pontificum.
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