During the reign of Theodosius the younger, his wife Eudoxia went to Jerusalem to fulfil a vow, and while she was there she was honoured with many gifts, the greatest of which was given to her by Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem in about 439 AD. This was an iron chain adorned with gold and precious stones, and said to be that with which Saint Peter had been bound by Herod in Jerusalem. Eudoxia piously venerated this chain, and then sent it to Rome to her daughter Eudoxia. The latter took it to the Sovereign Pontiff Pope Saint Leo I (440‒461), who in turn showed her another chain which had bound Peter, under Nero, in the Marmetine Prison in Rome. On being brought together, the two chains miraculously united. On account of this miracle the holy chains began to be held in so great honour that a church at the title of Eudoxia on the Esquiline was dedicated under the name of Sancte Pietros ad Vincula (San Pietro in Vincoli), and the memory of its dedication was celebrated by a feast on the Kalends of August. From that time Saint Peter’s chains began to receive the honours of this day, instead of pagan festival which it had been customary to celebrate in honour of the emperor Augustus, after whom the month was named. Contact with the chains healed the sick and put demons to flight. In 909 a certain count who was very intimate with the Emperor Otho was taken possession of by an unclean spirit, so that he tore his flesh with his own teeth. By command of the emperor he was taken to the Pontiff John, who had no sooner touched the count’s neck with the holy chain than the wicked spirit was driven away, leaving the man entirely free. On this account devotion to the holy chains was spread throughout Rome.
The chains are kept in a gold reliquary case. One portion has 11 links of lengthened chain to bind the hands. The second portion has 23 links, to the last of which is affixed two half circles to hold the next. The feast of Saint Peter’s Chains was observed throughout the Universal Church until it was replaced in the General Roman Calendar of 1962 by the commemoration of the Seven Holy Maccabees.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Rome, making a god of the man who had subjugated her, consecrated the month of August to Caesar Augustus. When Christ had delivered her, she placed at the head of this same month, as a trophy of her regained liberty, the feast of the chains with which, in order to break hers, Peter the Vicar of Christ had once been bound. O Divine Wisdom, who has a better claim to reign over this month than had the adopted son of Caesar, you could not have more authentically inaugurated your empire. Strength and sweetness are the attributes of your works, and it is in the weakness of your chosen ones that you triumph over the powerful. You yourself, in order to give us life, swallowed death. Simon, son of John, became a captive to set free the world entrusted to him. First, Herod, and then Nero showed him the cost of the promise he had once received of binding and loosing on Earth as in Heaven: he had to share the love of the Supreme Shepherd, even to allowing himself, like Him, to be bound with chains for the sake of the flock, and led where he would not.
Glorious chains, never will you make Peter’s successors tremble any more than Peter himself. Before the Herods and Neros and Caesars of all ages you will be the guarantee of the liberty of souls. With what veneration have the Christian people honoured you ever since the earliest times!
One may truly say of the present feast that its origin is lost in the darkness of ages. According to ancient monuments, Saint Peter himself first consecrated on this date the basilica on the highest of the seven hills where the citizens of Rome are gathered today. The name Title of Eudoxia, by which the venerable Church is often designated, seems to have arisen from certain restorations made on occasion of the events mentioned in the Lessons. As to the sacred chains which are its treasure, the earliest mention now extant of honour being paid to them occurs in the beginning of the second century. Balbina, daughter of the tribune Quirinus, keeper of the prisons, had been cured by touching the chains of the holy Pope Alexander. She could not cease kissing the hands which had healed her. “Find the chains of blessed Peter, and kiss them rather than these,” said the Pontiff. Balbina, therefore, having fortunately found the Apostle’s chains, lavished her pious veneration on them, and afterwards gave them to the noble Theodora, sister of Hermes.
The irons which had bound the arms of the Doctor of the Gentiles, without being able to bind the word of God, were also after his martyrdom treasured more than jewels and gold. From Antioch in Syria, Saint John Chrysostom, thinking with holy envy of the lands enriched by these trophies of triumphant bond age, cried out in a sublime transport: “What more magnificent than these chains? Prisoner for Christ is a more beautiful name than that of Apostle, Evangelist, or Doctor. To be bound for Christ’s sake is better than to dwell in the heavens, to sit on the twelve thrones is not so great an honour. He that loves can understand me, but who can better understand these things than the holy choir of Apostles? As for me, if I were offered my choice between these chains and the whole of Heaven, I should not hesitate, for in them is happiness. Would that I were now in those places, where it is said the chains of these admirable men are still kept! If it were given me to be set free from the care of this Church, and if I had a little health, I should not hesitate to undertake such a voyage only to see Paul’s chains. If they said to me: Which would you prefer, to be the Angel who delivered Peter or Peter himself in chains? I would rather be Peter, because of his chains.”
Though always venerated in the great basilica which enshrines his tomb, Saint Paul’s chain has never been made, like those of Saint Peter, the object of a special feast in the Church. This distinction was due to the pre-eminence of him “who alone received the keys of the kingdom of heaven to communicate them to others,” and who alone continues, in his successors, to bind and loose with sovereign power throughout the whole world. The collection of letters of Saint Gregory the Great proves how universally, in the sixth century, was spread the cultus of these holy chains, a few filings of which enclosed in gold or silver keys was the richest present the Sovereign Pontiffs were wont to offer to the principal churches, or to princes whom they wished to honour. Constantinople, at some period not clearly determined, received a portion of these precious chains. She appointed a feast on the 16th January, honouring on that day the Apostle Peter as the occupant of the first See, the foundation of the faith, the immovable basis of dogma.
“Put your feet into the fetters of Wisdom, and your neck into her chains,” said the Holy Spirit under the ancient alliance, “and be not grieved with her bands.... For in the latter end you will find rest in her, and she will be turned to your joy. Then will her fetters be a strong defence for you... and her bands are a healthful binding. You will put her on as a robe of glory” (Ecclesiasticus vi. 25‒32). Incarnate Wisdom, applying the prophecy to you, O Prince of Apostles, declared that in testimony of your love the day would come when you should suffer constraint and bondage. The trial, O Peter, was a convincing one for Eternal Wisdom, who proportions her requirements to the measure of her own love. But you found her faithful. In the days of the formidable combat in which she wished to show her power in your weakness, she did not leave you in bands: in her arms you slept so calm a sleep in Herod’s prison, and going down with with you into the pit of Nero, she faithfully kept you company up to the hour when, subjecting the persecutors to the persecuted, she placed the sceptre in your hands, and on your brow the triple crown.
From the throne where you reign with the Man-God in Heaven, as you followed Him on Earth in trials and anguish, loosen our bands which are not glorious ones such as yours: break these fetters of sin which bind us to Satan, these ties of all the passions which prevent us from soaring towards God. The world, more than ever enslaved in the infatuation of its false liberties which make it forget the only true freedom, has more need now of enfranchisement than in the times of pagan Caesars: be once more its deliverer, now that you are more powerful than ever. May Rome especially, now fallen the lower because precipitated from a greater height, learn again the emancipating power which lurks in your chains. They have become a rallying standard for her faithful children in these latter trials. Make good the word once uttered by her poets, that “encircled with these chains she will ever be free.”
