At the risk of stating the obvious, the Bishop's chair or throne is the place where the Bishop sits.

It usually the most stately or officious of all the church's furnishings, often towering above other chairs in the sanctuary and surmounted by or embellished with a mitre, the crowning symbol of the Bishop's authority.

In short, the Bishop's throne is typically "the best seat in the house", so to speak.

There is a sense in which its status and stature are entirely justified, not due to some misplaced notion of the importance of the Bishop, but because it is from the Bishop's chair that sacraments, such as baptism, confirmation are bestowed and ordination conferred.

Moreover, in the early church it was from the throne that the Bishop not only preached but also declared what was normative for the church's worship and belief.   Thus, in every sense, the Bishop's throne was the seat of his authority.

In the contemporary church, the Bishop's chair has become such a ubiquitous fixture that it is hardly possible to visit a church that does not have one gracing its chancel or sanctuary.

However, this was not always the case.   In the early church, there was only one Bishop's throne which was found in the cathedral, the seat of the Bishop's authority, both spiritual and temporal, within a diocese*.

However, as the church began to expand, both numerically and geographically, it became difficult for the faithful to make their pilgrimage to the, often distant, cathedral.   To resolve this problem, the Bishop brought the cathedra to them.

But since the Bishop's throne was of sufficient size and opulence to make frequent transport impractical, a portable, folding, chair, called a faldstool, was employed.

In this way, the Bishop literally toted the seat of his authority with him from parish to parish as he carried out his Episcopal ministry.

Consequently, the many Bishop's Chairs' that one finds in most churches are the offspring of the union between cathedra and faldstool.

Rather than moving the throne from place to place, even if, like the faldstool, it was little less trouble than lugging a lawn-chair from hither to yon, the church developed the practice of having a Bishop's chair in each parish.

As with the Incumbent's stall, much confusion exists around who may or may not sit in the Bishop's chair.

Extremists would suggest that the Bishop's chair should never be sat in by anyone but the Bishop.   For example, It many church's well intentioned laity and clergy would not deign to sit in the Bishop's chair, despite his/her absence, even when if it were "the last seat in the house."

As the careful observer will have noted, here at Trinity, there is no deep-seated superstition surrounding the Bishop's chair.

In fact evidence that we take a much more reasoned and reasonable approach is that, on any given Sunday, one may find a server or chalice bearer sitting in the Bishop's chair with contented impunity.   This is meet and right so to do.

For, while it is the rightful seat of the Bishop when he or she is present, the Bishop's chair is not sacrosanct, as though it were some holy relic that needed to be safeguarded from being soiled by any save the episcopal bottom.

On the contrary, in the absence of the Bishop, the chair is just a chair. In other words "a throne by any other name would serve as sweet."

* As an interesting aside, the Bishop's chair was called the cathedra, deriving from the Latin word for "seat" which is the origin of the terms "cathedral", mentioned above, and "ex cathedra" – i.e, the phrase used, to this day, to describe those official pronouncements made by the Bishop by the authority vested in his/her status as a successor of the Apostles.   As an illustration of the weight carried by such proclamations, in the Roman Catholic Church statements made by the Pope, ex cathedra, i.e., from "the chair of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles" are considered infallible.