FLORERIA APOSTOLICA. - The f. a. is the pontifical storeroom, where the regent, a palatine official subordinate to the chief foriere of the Sacred Apostolic Palaces, keeps the furnishings, equipment, furniture, linens, silverware, table services, copperware, decorations, and everything needed for pontifical functions; in short, everything movable belonging to the Sacred Apostolic Palaces, except for sacred furnishings and vestments, whose custody is entrusted to mons. Sacrista.
The f. a. also preserves valuable ancient registers and plans of the palatine chapels, basilicas, and churches of Rome where the pope is accustomed to celebrate or attend sacred functions, indicating the decorations and everything that the f. a. must provide in order to adorn and prepare the palatine halls for consistories, congregations, sermons, etc.
In Gattico’s work there is reproduced a Vatican codex in which, among the other palatine offices of the time of Alessandro V, elected in 1409, are found the Florerius Palatii and the f. a., then called floraria. This is one of the earliest certain references to the f. a., whose origin must be placed between the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th.
The most recent regulations concerning the duties of the f. a. were established in the motu proprio of Leone XII of 23 November 1824, in the motu proprio of Gregorio XVI of 12 December 1832, and in his Regulations for the central offices of the palatine administration, published on 2 May 1840.
During the vacant see, custody of the f. a. devolves upon the clerics of the Apostolic Camera.