The Relic of St Peter’s Chair Exposed in the Vatican Basilica

In preparation for the upcoming Jubilee, a lot of work is being done inside St Peter’s basilica in the Vatican to clean up and restore some of its major features. One of these is the great sculpture in the apse by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which is simply known as the Cathedra. I took this photograph of it decorated for the feast of St Peter’s Chair more than 13½ years ago.

It is often forgotten that this feast is not only the commemoration of St Peter’s ministry as chief of the Apostles, but also the feast of a relic long reputed to be his actual throne. Although it never attained to the popularity of the Veil of St. Veronica, the Vatican Basilica’s relic par excellence in the High Middle Ages, it was regularly seen and venerated by the faithful, being first explicitly named “the Chair of St. Peter” in 1237. Before the long period of the Popes’ residence in Avignon (during which many medieval customs of the Papal liturgy disappeared), the Pope was enthroned on the relic for part of his coronation ceremony, and used it as his liturgical throne in the basilica on the feast of February 22. Since 1666, it has been kept within Bernini’s Cathedra, and very rarely brought out. The magnificence of the sculpture, and its presence as the visual culmination of the church, has overwhelmed its purpose as a reliquary; all the more so since the relic itself cannot be seen within it, and has so rarely been removed from it for viewing. It was last exposed in 1867, at the behest of Blessed Pope Pius IX, during the celebrations of the eighteenth centennial of the martyrdoms of Ss. Peter and Paul. A copy is displayed in the treasury of St. Peter’s, but with little to indicate the prominence which the original formerly held.

This week, however, as the cleaning up of the Cathedra comes to a close, the relic has once again, for the first time since 1867, been put on display for the faithful to venerate, and a friend was kind enough to share his pictures of it with us. It should be pointed out that, as scholars have long acknowledged, the chair was actually made in the time of the Emperor Charles the Bald as a gift for Pope John VIII, who crowned him as the Holy Roman Emperor in the old basilica in 875. However, the ivory panels on the front of it are much older, dating from sometime in the 2nd century B.C. They originally belonged to some other object, possibly also a chair, and showed the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the twelve labors of Hercules: nine of each survive.
 

The great baldachin over the high altar and the tomb of St Peter has also just been unveiled after a good cleaning.

On the right side of the central aisle sits this bronze statue of St Peter made by Arnolfo di Cambio to be displayed in the old basilica for the Jubilee of 1300. The extended right foot of St Peter has been worn away by pilgrims rubbing and kissing it for well over 700 years.