Monday after the First Sunday of Lent

Monday after the First Sunday of Lent.

Station at St. Peter in Chains.

(S. Petrum ad Vincula.)

This church is also known as the Basilica Eudoxiana, it was first rebuilt on older foundations in 432-440 to house the relic of the chains that bound Saint Peter when he was imprisoned in Jerusalem. The Empress Eudoxia (wife of Emperor Valentinian III), who received them as a gift from her mother, Aelia Eudocia, consort of Valentinian II, presented the chains to Pope Saint Leo the Great. Aelia Eudocia had received these chains as a gift from Iuvenalis, bishop of Jerusalem. History relates that when St. Leo, compared these chains to the chains of St. Peter's final imprisonment
in the Mamertine Prison in Rome, the two chains miraculously fused together.

The chains are kept in this reliquary under the main altar in the basilica.

The basilica, consecrated in 439 by Pope Saint Sixtus III, has undergone several restorations, among them a restoration by Pope Adrian I, and further work in the eleventh century. The front portico was added in 1475, and the cloister between 1493 and 1503. There was also a renovation in 1875. Two popes were elected in this church : Pope John II in 533 and Pope St. Gregory VII in 1073.