Peter of Alexandria

Peter of Alexandria, known in later tradition as Peter the Seal of the Martyrs, was the seventeenth Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria in the early fourth century. Surviving sources do not record the year of his birth; they present him as a native of Alexandria in Roman Egypt, formed in that city’s clergy and in its famous Catechetical School. He became a priest and was placed at the head of the school, the principal theological academy of Greek-speaking Egyptian Christianity. His predecessor Theonas ordained him and designated him as successor. Upon Theonas’s death, around the year 300, Peter succeeded to the bishopric of Alexandria and thereby to the title of Pope of Alexandria used by the occupants of that see. Eusebius of Caesarea, writing within a few years of Peter’s death, praised both his learning and his pastoral care.

Peter’s episcopate coincided with the last and most severe phase of the Diocletianic persecution. For long stretches he governed the Egyptian church from concealment, issuing disciplinary instructions on the treatment of Christians who had lapsed under torture, threat, or the demand to sacrifice. Fragments of his writings survive, most importantly a Canonical Epistle containing fourteen penitential canons. These graded the reconciliation of the lapsed according to the nature of their fall: those who had actually sacrificed, those who had obtained certificates of compliance without sacrificing, and those who had sent pagan slaves to sacrifice in their place. The canons were later received into Eastern canonical collections and remain an important witness to early fourth-century penitential practice. Peter also wrote on doctrinal questions, taking a cautious distance from certain Origenist opinions on the pre-existence of souls and on the resurrection body; most of those treatises are lost and are known only from later citations and from the use made of them in subsequent controversy.

The same years saw the outbreak of the Meletian schism. Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis in Upper Egypt, began ordaining clergy in dioceses that were not his own, including Alexandria, while Peter was in hiding. Peter excommunicated Meletius; the resulting schism lasted for decades and complicated Egyptian church life well into the episcopate of Athanasius. Later Alexandrian and Coptic tradition further holds that Peter at first received the young presbyter Arius with favor but subsequently excommunicated him after discerning the direction of his teaching. Hagiographical accounts, of uncertain historical weight, add a vision in which Christ appeared to Peter in a torn garment and identified Arius as the one who would rend the Church. Whatever the legendary coloring of that story, Peter’s opposition to Arius is firmly embedded in the Athanasian tradition that followed.

In 311 the emperor Galerius issued an edict of toleration, but in the eastern provinces Maximinus Daia soon renewed measures against Christians. Peter was arrested in Alexandria and, according to contemporary and near-contemporary accounts, was executed by beheading without a public trial, the authorities fearing a popular demonstration in his favor. The date commonly given is 25 November 311. Because he was among the last, and the most prominent, of the Alexandrian martyrs of the Great Persecution, Coptic tradition named him the Seal of the Martyrs. He was buried in Alexandria, by tradition in or near the church of Boucolia associated with the tomb of Saint Mark. The churches of East and West have commemorated him as a bishop and martyr; his principal feast is 25 November, corresponding to 29 Hathor in the Coptic calendar.