CATENE OF ST. PETER. — Those preserved in Rome in the basilica of St. Peter in Chains as relics of the Apostle’s imprisonment. The church was entirely rebuilt by Sixtus III (432–40), and from that time onward it has preserved and venerated these relics. Indeed, even Bishop Achilleus of Spoleto dedicated, in the first half of the 5th century, a church in which he states that, as in the Roman one, “Peter and his chains reign.” Moreover, in an apse of the Roman church there was a distich written in mosaic, which seems to be of primitive origin:
Unharmed once, these chains preserve the relics,
The sacred bonds of Peter, iron more precious than gold.