The Myth of Cathedra Petri
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | The wooden throne decorated with ivory, Cathedra Petri, was rediscovered for scientists in year 1968, when it was, for a while, taken out of the Bernini’s reliquary. The throne was made available for research to the team of scholars under a coordination of Michele Maccarrone. The results of their examination were printed in 1971’s compendium La cathedra lignea. This examination represents a very important gesture – the Catholic Church has admitted officially that the relic of Cathedra is not an original object used by St. Peter. This approach was caused by a new position in which the Church placed itself after the Vatican II. It abandoned old-fashioned Petrine relic, which authenticity was unsustainable, in a favor of bones of St. Peter’s. Moreover, Cathedra Petri had a strong connotation with the Vatican I and with an unwanted authoritative pope’s manner. In the 1971’s book, M. Maccarrone had published a text La storia della Cathedra describing origins and development of the veneration to the Cathedra. It was, from a certain perspective, a way to justify the status of the object as a relic. The origin of veneration was found in a popular devotion developed further by Vatican curia. Subsequently, the paper is focused on the rhetorical and theoretical frame of the Vatican II, which had affected the current bibliography on Cathedra, because it was the main impulse to the scientific research published in 1971. Under cover of scientific methods and so called objectivity it has created a new historiographical myth. The Maccarrone’s text entirely omits the role of Innocent III, which seems to be the crucial moment in the process of the relic creation. The Pope used a liturgical throne of the Feast of Cathedra Petri, preserved in the Vatican Basilica, for his self-representation, as the written sources testimony, and it represents the moment of transformation. |