Peter the Aleut

The Holy New Martyr Peter the Aleut of San Francisco

New Martyr · Martyr · d. c. 1815

Commemorated 24 September — Commemoration with the Synaxis of the Saints of Alaska, 12 December — Commemoration in Antiochian usage

Peter, whose native name was Cungagnaq, was a Kodiak Aleut of the Russian-American mission territory, baptised into the Orthodox faith, who about the year 1815 was seized with a party of Alaskan hunters by the Spanish authorities in California and, refusing under torture to renounce Orthodoxy for the Roman Catholic faith, was put to death. He is the first-glorified martyr of the Americas; the account of his suffering was carried to St Herman of Alaska, who blessed his memory, and he is honoured among the Saints of Alaska on September 24 (in Antiochian usage on December 12).

An Aleut of the Russian-American mission

Peter belonged to the Aleut (Alutiiq) people of Kodiak Island, the heart of the Russian-American Company's territory and of the Orthodox mission that St Herman and his companions had brought from Valaam in 1794. Converted and baptised Peter, he was one of the native Christians of the new Church of Alaska — a Church that from its first years counted its own among the faithful, and was soon to count its own among the martyrs.

The Russian-American Company sent parties of Aleut hunters far down the Pacific coast after the sea-otter, into waters claimed by Spain. About 1815 a party that included Peter was taken by the Spanish and held near San Francisco.

Martyrdom in California

The account, as it reached St Herman, is this. The captors — the tradition names Roman Catholic priests urging on the soldiers — pressed the Aleuts to renounce their Orthodox faith and become Roman Catholics. Peter and his companion refused, answering that they were already Christians and would not deny their faith. To break them, the captors tortured Peter: they cut off the joints of his fingers and toes one by one, and finally disembowelled him, so that he died of the torments. His companion, spared further torture by an order that came the next day, survived to tell what had been done.

The witness of St Herman

The surviving Aleut brought the account to the Russian mission, and it was set down by Simeon Yanovsky, the manager of the Russian-American Company (later the monk Sergius), who told it to St Herman of Alaska. When Herman heard how Peter had died confessing Christ, he crossed himself and said, "Holy new-martyr Peter, pray to God for us." It is from this — the word of a saint over the death of a native Christian — that Peter's veneration springs; St Herman's own Life is the earliest and chief witness to him.

Feast and commemoration

September 24 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 7), on which he is kept with the Synaxis of the Saints of Alaska — the day of the arrival of the Valaam mission in 1794. The Antiochian Archdiocese commemorates him on December 12. He was glorified by the Orthodox Church in America in 1980, and is honoured throughout American Orthodoxy as the protomartyr of the New World.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a new-martyr)

Thy martyr Peter, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.

Original translation from the English

Appointed readings

Epistle — Romans 8:28–39

²⁸And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. ²⁹For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. ³⁰Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. ³¹What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? ³²He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? ³³Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. ³⁴Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. ³⁷Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. ³⁸For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, ³⁹Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Gospel — Luke 21:12–19

¹²But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake. ¹³And it shall turn to you for a testimony. ¹⁴Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer: ¹⁵For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist. ¹⁶And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death. ¹⁷And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake. ¹⁸But there shall not an hair of your head perish. ¹⁹In your patience possess ye your souls.

Iconography

Peter is shown as a young Aleut layman in the dress of the Alaskan natives, a new-martyr bearing the cross of witness; his icons, all modern, often set him against the Kodiak shore or show the instruments of his torture. Being a saint glorified in 1980, he has no pre-modern iconography, and no freely-licensed modern icon has been secured for this collection.

Disputed questions

The documentary basis. Peter's martyrdom rests on a single strand of testimony — the surviving companion's account, transmitted through Yanovsky and the Life of St Herman — and no Spanish record of the episode has been identified. Some historians have therefore questioned its details or its date. The Orthodox Church, weighing St Herman's own witness, received Peter as a martyr; his glorification followed in the twentieth century.
Date and place. "About 1815," near San Francisco (the tradition sometimes says at the mission of Dolores), is the received setting; the exact year and station are not fixed by an independent document.