The fresco is on the north wall of the Sistine Chapel, up and to the right as the cardinals enter to choose their successor. It depicts a scene from the life of Jesus, as told in the Gospel of Matthew, painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Pietro Perugino in the 15th century.
Jesus, robed in blue, stands just left of center with his disciples in an open piazza, a temple in the background. Just right of center kneels his disciple Peter, reaching up to take what Jesus is handing him, the object of ultimate importance, signified by its placement at the exact center of the painting.
The keys of the kingdom of heaven.
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven,” Jesus tells Peter in the Gospel story.
With those words, one of the most enduring symbols in Christendom, the keys of St. Peter, was created, and the story of the papacy was born.
When the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church gathered for the conclave on Wednesday, they were more than simply casting votes for the Vatican’s next head of state. They were choosing the 266th pope — the 266th successor of St. Peter, who, as ecclesiastical tradition teaches, was chosen by Jesus to be the first leader of the church.
“People, especially now, they say, ‘Well, just who is the pope? Is he like the C.E.O., or is he like the board chairman?’” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York said in an interview at Kennedy Airport, before boarding his flight to Rome after Pope Francis died. “No. He is a successor of St. Peter, and he’s the Bishop of Rome.”
Choosing a pope is a political process, but also a deeply theological one. The symbolic passing of the keys is one of the oldest rituals in Christianity.
The image of two crossed keys is an ancient sign of papal authority. At the Vatican, they are omnipresent. They are crossed in the Holy See’s coat of arms, one gold and one silver. They are on the special-edition Vatican postage stamp, currently marked “Sede Vacante MMXXV,” issued exclusively for the period between Pope Francis’ death and his successor’s election, and currently so popular they are limited to one sheet per customer.
Inside St. Peter’s Basilica, a bronze statue of St. Peter holds the keys in his left hand, and outside in the square, a giant statue of St. Peter grips them in his right.
Just as Jesus changed Peter’s name from Simon, the new pope changes his name, and becomes almost a new person in the eyes of the church, Cardinal Dolan explained. The one with the keys has the power that Jesus had, to preserve and pass on the integrity of the faith.
“The successor of Peter has no armies to set, no arms to sell, no currency to float, no trade, no tariffs to impose,” Cardinal Dolan said. “But yet he has this awesome moral authority, and spiritual authority, that you can see the world craves.”
Today, the office of the pope is widely perceived to be one of moral authority. But the papacy, and the meaning of the keys, changed through the centuries as the church’s political and theological might shifted.
In early Christianity, the keys were largely a theological symbol of forgiveness, and that in giving Peter the keys, Jesus was offering salvation to people. Metaphorically, they unlocked the gates of heaven and everlasting life.
Images of Peter with the keys do not appear before the 4th century, when Constantine, the Roman Emperor, converted to Christianity, and the faith became legal.
“The emphasis is emerging at this time on the status of Peter as a direct recipient of Christ’s authority, and that is occurring at a time when the church is establishing itself as a religion in the empire,” said Felicity Harley-McGowan, an art history lecturer at Yale Divinity School. “In Rome, that imagery takes on particular significance in terms of articulating, ultimately, the authority of the church.”
The first known image of Christ handing the keys to Peter is in Rome, tucked down a quiet path behind a school, in the tomb of Constantine’s daughter, who died in the 4th century.
Inside, the tomb, known as the Mausoleo di Santa Costanza, is cool and dark, away from the blazing Roman sun. In an apse, near the site of the sarcophagus, is a sparkling mosaic of Jesus in reddish and gold robes sitting atop the orb of the world. In his right hand, he gives Peter a key.
Coumba Sall, a tour guide, was there practicing to add the site to her route. She pointed up to the motifs of grapes and Roman winemakers around the apse, noting that for Christians, wine is a reminder of the Eucharist. Jesus, she said, was robed in imperial colors.
“These mosaics are showing us the transition from pagan to Christianity,” she said.
In Egypt, at the ancient Orthodox monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai is an icon of Peter holding the keys from the 6th century, which was used in devotional practices.
The keys are heavy — they are made of metal — but even so they are less about earthly power and submission than about Christian devotion, said Father Gabriel Torretta, an assistant professor of theology at Providence College and a Dominican priest.
“This is Christian hope you are looking at,” he said. “Because Peter has the keys, you are looking at hope, there’s forgiveness of sins, and I can be united with Jesus Christ in eternal life.”
During the medieval period, papal authority became more concrete as the pope obtained sovereignty over territory, or papal states. By some church accounts, the pope received actual keys of conquered cities.
“People see the power of this and are enacting a totally different mode, where now it is political and military,” Father Torretta said.
By the Renaissance, when Perugino created his fresco in the Sistine Chapel, more visuals emerge not just of Jesus and Peter, but of them with all the other disciples. Art scholars say this was a sign that the church was beginning to emphasize papal succession in their social and political environment.
Pope Francis explained his own understanding of the keys last June, as he preached the Gospel text from the window overlooking St. Peter’s Square.
They represent “the ministry of authority that Jesus entrusted to him in the service of all the Church,” he said, carefully describing how to interpret “authority.”
“Authority is a service,” he said, “and authority that is not service is dictatorship.”
It is noteworthy that Pope Francis, the person at the top of the church’s power structure, was concerned about the moral limits of that authority, explained Molly Farneth, an associate professor of religion at Haverford College.
“I think that Francis recognized this distinction and sought to be a good and virtuous leader,” she said, “and also sought to prevent whoever occupied the role of the pope from occupying it in a way that was dominating.”
Ms. Farneth teaches a course on the politics of ritual, and is seeing these politics play out in real time as one papacy ends and another is set to begin.
“To think of a key being handed off as the symbol of this transition of power, I think, is interesting, and raises all these questions,” she said, like will the person occupying the office use the keys to open the door so more people can enter? Will they use it to regulate border crossings? “The person who holds the key has a lot of power over who is in the community,” she said, “and who is out of the community.”
These questions — and the earthly and heavenly power they hold — are at the heart of the cardinals’ decision in the days ahead, as they choose St. Peter’s 266th successor. And it is not only the Perugino fresco and the Gospel of Matthew text that remind them of the import of what they are doing.
Their very ritual involves a conclave, which takes place in the secrecy of the Sistine Chapel. “Conclave” itself is derived from a Latin phrase — meaning, “with key.”
