DeGoesbriand: St. Peter’s Chains

Chronology of the Chains of St. Peter
and the link brought to Burlington, VT

According to Bishop DeGoesbriand’s Publication

100s AD: In the early 2nd century, St. Balbina found the chains of St. Peter’s Mamertine Imprisonment, hidden by Peter’s contemporaries, and that they were given to Theodora, who built a church on the Equiline Hill for veneration. This is according to The Acts of the Martyrdom of St. Alexander.

437 AD: Eudoxia, wife of emperor Valentinian III in Rome, receives one of the two Jerusalem chains (of Peter’s Jerusalem imprisonment) from her mother Eudocia, who obtained them on a pilgrimage in Jerusalem.

437 or 438 AD: Leo the Great joins the two chains in Rome: i.e. one of the chains from the Jerusalem imprisonment, and the chain of the Mamertine imprisonment. Legend states the two chains joined miraculously.

438 AD: Eudoxia patronizes the building of a new church, the Church of St. Peter in Chains, in Rome. (This is the foundation for the current church, mostly now redone).

500s-700s AD: Some links were granted by popes as relics individually, and filings from the links were sometimes encased in keys made of gold, as papal gifts.

772 AD: Pope Adrian I sends seven (7) links to Didier (Desiderius), King of Lombardy, and father-in-law of Charlemagne.

969 AD: Devotion grows when Pope John XIII uses the chains to exorcise evil spirits from the count of the emperor Otho. (*Details of this story are hard to come by, but it is certainly that which is pictured in the ceiling of the current church.)

1592 AD: The seven links were returned to Rome under Pope Clement VIII, by the work of Cardinal Sfondrati, then Cardinal Protector of the church of St. Cecilia, who brought the links to the same church.

1877 AD: Paul Mencacci writes a book about the chains of St. Peter, containing the account of the seven separated links.

1893 AD: The trip of Bishop Louis DeGoesbriand

February 4th – Bishop DeGoesbriand leaves USA, via NYC, with Fr. Audet
Feb. 17th – Bishop DeGoesbriand arrives in Rome for the Feb. 19th Jubilee of Pope Leo XIII
February or March – Bishop DeGoesbriand visits the church of St. Peter in Chains, and asks for a “Fac Simile” of the chains to be made, to bring to Vermont.
Early April – Bishop DeGoesbriand happens upon Mencacci’s book, and speaks to Cardinal Rampolla, Vatican Secretary of State and Cardinal Protector of St. Cecelia’s Church. Bishop DeGoesbriand shares the book of Mencacci, and asks for a link to bring to America. Cardinal Rampolla deferes to the necessity of the pope’s permission.
April 20 – Bishop DeGoesbriand meets Pope Leo to ask for a link, from the links at St. Cecilia’s. Pope Leo says a decision will be made later.
April 21 – Bishop DeGoesbriand touches the Fac Simile chains “to the tomb of St. Peter.”
April 22 – Bishop DeGoesbriand leaves Rome for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
Bishop DeGoesbriand touches the Fac Simile chain to the holy gounds/sites at Mount Carmel, Nazareth, Gethsemane, the Altar of the Scourging, Calvary, the Holy Sepulcher.
May 28th – Bishop DeGoesbriand returns to Rome.
June 4th – Bishop DeGoesbriand again meets Pope Leo XIII, and obtains permission to take a link of the chains in St. Cecelia’s.
June 8th – Bishop DeGoesbriand gets a link from the reliquary chapel in St. Cecelia’s. An official letter will testify to the relic, signed on June 12th.
(Chapel pictured below).
Mid June – having returned to Vermont, a “booklet” is printed in Burlington, summarizing the life of St. Peter and briefly relating that the fac simile and the relic were obtained in Rome. (This corresponds to pgs. 5-23 of the 1897 book: see below.)
August 1st – The Diocese of Burlington is consecrated to Saint Peter, after processing the link around Immaculate Conception Cathedral.
November 21 – additional notes are added to the “booklet,” resulting in the first publication of a book about the relics in Burlington.

1894 AD: On August 4th, a year after the August 1st consecration to St. Peter, a public “translation” is done with the relics into the newly made reliquary altar piece. (Pgs. 35-53 in the 1897 book give the sermons and letters delivered on the occasion, as printed the next day in the Burlington Free Press.)