Today, February 22, is the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter.
The feast of the Chair of Saint Peter is about the formation of the Church when Christ said, “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church.”
It has been celebrated at Rome, Italy from the early days of the Christian era, in commemoration of the day when Saint Peter held his first service in Rome.
The feast of the Chair of Saint Peter at Antioch, commemorating his foundation of the See of Antioch, has also been long celebrated at Rome, on February 22. At each place a chair (cathedra) was venerated which the Apostle had used while presiding at Mass.
One of the chairs is referred to about 600 by an Abbot Johannes who had been commissioned by Pope Gregory the Great to collect in oil from the lamps which burned at the graves of the Roman martyrs. One of these phials, preserved in the cathedral treasury of Monza, Italy, had a label reading, “oleo de sede ubi prius sedit sanctus Petrus” (oils from the chair where Saint Peter first sat).
The image is a portable chair preserved at the Vatican and believed to be a chair used by Saint Peter, the extant testimony referring to it dating from the 2nd century.