In the New Testament book of Matthew, Jesus tells Saint Peter:
Matthew 16:19
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
That
statement above all others has been said the legitimize the Papacy. By
implication, the Pope is said to control the Keys to Heaven and Earth.
Images of the two keys have since been worked into the coats of arms of the Holy See, and the coats of arms of most of the Popes, and into many religious works of art.
At some point the story of the individual keys was refined, as described by Wikipedia:
Jesus's definition of Petrine authority ("whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven") established two jurisdictions, Heaven and Earth; the silver and gold keys are said to represent these two jurisdictions. The silver key symbolises the power to bind and loose on Earth, and the gold key the power to bind and loose in Heaven.
The Portrait of Celestine V has the Hermit Pope holding only the gold key, not the silver one. I don't know if there is a traditional reason why a Pope might hold only one of the two keys, since the photos I've seen of more recent coronations always show the two keys together.
Symbolically the artist might have been saying that the pious Pope Celestine V only had the Key of Heaven, and he was not bound to this Earth.
This could have been a commentary on Celestine's general incompetence as a manager the worldly concerns of the Church.
However you could put a dualist, Cathar-style spin on this too. Perhaps the gold key represents the purely spiritual good, and the silver key represents the material evil. Celestine V then, one of the most spiritual and close-to-Gnostic Popes, could only hold the gold Key of Heaven. He would let a materially corrupt successor grab for the silver.
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