The Chair of Peter

Most folks have seen some variation of this photo of Bernini‘s “Chair of Peter” in the Vatican. It’s a masterpiece of baroque art, found in every art textbook covering the period.

The chair in question is carried aloft by four saints. The image of the dove in the Holy Spirit window has been duplicated and copied all over the world countless times. It’s located in Saint Peter’s Basilica, in the Vatican.

Here’s what you might not know: it isn’t a statue at all. It’s a reliquary for the actual chair of Saint Peter. And that chair is the subject of today’s feast.

Traditionally, the bishop’s chair has been seen as the symbol of his teaching authority. If you see a bishop preach, he’ll often do so sitting down, unlike anybody else. In fact, the Latin word for this sort of chair is cathedra, which is where we get the word “cathedral” – because that’s where the bishop’s chair is located.

Well, enclosed within Bernini’s masterpiece is the chair said to belong to Saint Peter.

It’s a pretty simple affair, made of wood, and with countless little chunks and slivers removed over the centuries by pilgrims seeking a relic of the great saint.

The venerable Catholic Encyclopedia says this about the chair:

The seat is about one foot ten inches above the ground, and two feet eleven and seven-eighths inches wide; the sides are two feet one and one-half inches deep; the height of the back up to the tympanum is three feet five and one-third inches; the entire height of the chair is four feet seven and one-eighth inches.

According to the examination then made by Padre Garucci and Giovanni Battista de Rossi, the oldest portion is a perfectly plain oaken arm-chair with four legs connected by cross-bars.

The wood is much worm-eaten, and pieces have been cut from various spots at different times, evidently for relics.

To the right and left of the seat four strong iron rings, intended for carrying-poles, are set into the legs.

Over the centuries the chair has been decorated, gussied up, and finally entombed by Bernini.

The next question you’re probably asking yourself is, “is it genuine?” Well, the fact is that nobody knows for sure.

Tertullian mentioned the physical chair in the late 100s or early 200s AD, and there’s a poem from the third century that talks about the chair at that time:

Hâc cathedrâ, Petrus quâ sederat ipse, locatum
Maxima Roma Linum primum considere iussit.

(On this chair, where Peter himself had sat,
great Rome first placed Linus and bade him sit.)

It was hidden away at a “house church” called Santa Prisca in a Roman suburb. When Constantine made Christianity legal, Pope Damasus moved the chair to the new church of Saint Peter on the Vatican Hill, built above the rough tomb where the apostle lay.

So far, so good.

Unfortunately, there’s some circumstantial evidence that the original chair may have been looted or destroyed during the Vandal sack of Rome in 410 AD.

Yet we know that during the middle ages, the chair was exhibited to the faithful every year on this day, the day of the Feast of Saint Peter’s Chair in Rome. If the original was lost in 410, where did this one come from?

The official Vatican web site on the Basilica Church interior states that the current chair is a replacement, “a gift from Charles the Bald to the Pope in 875″.

Certainly, those who have examined the chair say that much of the inlay and decorations are in the style of the Ninth Century. The Catholic Encyclopedia claims, however, that the original chair still existed and was merely augmented during the reign of Charles the Bald:

At a later date, perhaps in the ninth century, this famous chair was strengthened by the addition of pieces of acacia wood. The latter wood has inlaid in it a rich ornamentation of ivory. For the adornment of the front of the seat eighteen small panels of ivory have been used, on which the labours of Hercules, also fabulous animals, have been engraved; in like manner it was common at this period to ornament the covers of books and reliquaries with ivory panels or carved stones representing mythological scenes. …

At the centre of the horizontal strip a picture of an emperor (not seen in the illustration) is carved in the ivory; it is held to be a portrait of Charles the Bald. The arabesque of acanthus leaves filled with fantastic representations of animals, and the rough execution of the work, would make the period of this emperor (884) a probable date. What still remains of the old cathedra scarcely permits an opinion as to the original form.

We may never know this side of heaven if this is the actual chair of the saint, or some part of it, or a later replacement. Of course, it’s not actually the physical chair we honour today, but rather what it stands for: the teaching authority of Saint Peter, and by extension his successors in that chair down to our current Pope Francis now gloriously reigning.

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed.

Tend the flock of God that is your charge, not by constraint but willingly, not for shameful gain but eagerly, not as domineering over those in your charge but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd is manifested you will obtain the unfading crown of glory.

(1 Peter 5:1–4)