Peter of Atroa
Our Venerable Father Peter of Atroa
Venerable · b. 773 — d. 837
Commemorated 13 September — Principal Byzantine commemoration
Peter of Atroa (773–837) was a Bithynian ascetic and hegumen of the monastery of Saint Zachariah at Atroa, at the foot of the Bithynian Olympus, in the generation of the second iconoclast persecution. Given to God from childhood and famed for extreme fasting and unceasing prayer, he led his community through the persecution of Leo V by dispersing it and wandering through Asia Minor working healings — miracles so abundant that rivals accused him of sorcery, until Theodore the Studite examined and publicly vindicated him. He reposed in peace on 1 January 837, and the Byzantine calendar commemorates him on September 13.
Origins and early life
Peter was born in 773 at Elaia near Ephesus in Asia Minor and received the baptismal name Theophylact. His Life — written by his disciple Sabas, a monk of his own community, and preserved in two recensions — relates that he was dedicated to God from childhood by his devout mother, and that from his youth he was marked by an extraordinary temperance, later legendary among the monks of Olympus: prolonged total fasts, a diet at other times of raw herbs, and vigil beyond the common measure.
Ascetic struggle
As a young man he placed himself under the direction of the ascetic Paul, called the Hesychast, took the monastic name Peter, and was ordained to the priesthood. Master and disciple settled about the turn of the ninth century at Atroa, on the north-western skirts of the Bithynian Olympus — the great monastic mountain of the age — where they established the community of Saint Zachariah. At Paul's death (c. 805) Peter succeeded him as hegumen, still a young man, and governed the brotherhood in the tradition of severe Olympian asceticism.
When the emperor Leo V renewed iconoclasm (815), Peter refused communion with the heresy. Rather than surrender his monks to the persecution he dispersed the community, and himself took up the life of a wandering ascetic, moving through Bithynia, Lydia, Phrygia and the Aegean coastlands, hiding, visiting scattered brethren, and healing the sick and possessed wherever he passed. The Life of Sabas is one of the richest miracle-collections of the period: healings, exorcisms, clairvoyance, and deliverances credited to the saint across a quarter-century of persecution. So great was his reputation that envious monks put it about that his wonders were wrought by demonic power — an accusation of sorcery which the fathers of the region took seriously enough to refer to Theodore the Studite, the foremost confessor of Orthodoxy then living. Theodore examined the man and his works, pronounced the accusation groundless, and defended him in writing; the vindication restored Peter's standing among the Olympian communities, and the episode is among the best-documented cases of the discernment of miracles in the middle Byzantine church.
Repose
In his last years Peter returned to the region of his monastery, re-gathered his disciples, and continued to govern the houses that looked to him. He reposed in peace at Saint Zachariah on 1 January 837, still under the iconoclast regime of Theophilus, and was buried at his monastery; Sabas records miracles at his tomb.
Feast and commemoration
September 13 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 26), within the day of the Encaenia of the Church of the Resurrection and the forefeast of the Elevation of the Cross; the venerable is commemorated in the synaxarion of the day, without a proper service in the received Menaion. The commemoration is universal in the Byzantine calendars, though overshadowed by the feasts of the day.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
With the streams of thy tears thou didst till the barren desert, and by thy groanings from the depths thou didst make thy labours bear fruit a hundredfold, and becamest a beacon to the whole world, shining with miracles. O Peter our venerable father, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Peter would be depicted as a Byzantine hegumen-ascetic: aged, in the monastic schema with koukoulion or mantle, bearing a cross or scroll, in the manner of the Olympian fathers. No storable pre-modern image identified with this saint has been found; the entry is listed among the wanted icons.
Disputed questions
- Date of repose. The Life of Sabas fixes the saint's death on 1 January 837, and modern scholarship (the critical edition of V. Laurent) follows it. The OCA notice instead states that he reposed "in the time of Patriarch Tarasius of Constantinople (784–806)" — three decades earlier, and incompatible with the Life's iconoclast-era narrative. The Life's dating is followed here and the divergence recorded.
- Name of the place. The Greek synaxarion notice for September 13 calls him "Peter in Agrea" (ὁ ἐν τῇ Ἀγρέᾳ); Agrea is generally identified with Atroa, and the September 13 saint with the hegumen of Saint Zachariah, though the variant has caused occasional confusion in the calendars.
- Calendar placement. His repose fell on January 1; the fixed Byzantine commemoration is kept on September 13 (with the January date noted in some calendars), presumably because January 1 is occupied by the Circumcision and Basil the Great.