Venerable Peter of Galatia, Hermit of Antioch

Saint Peter of Galatia and Antioch

I have been doing this series on præ-Schismatic saints of Britain – saints like Brigid – for over a year now, and I have only just started doing this series on Syriac and Antiochian saints, so I’m really excited about this one. The first of February in the Orthodox Church is the feast day of a Celtic saint of Antioch. Venerable Peter of Galatia – called ‘the Hermit of Antioch’ to distinguish him from the later Peter of Galatia, who was a ninth-century cœnobite – lived during the fourth and fifth centuries and made his home in Antioch. Blessed Theodoret of Kyrrhos wrote the Life of this Saint Peter, and I rely on his account here.

First, a note about the name Galatia: this region was settled in the third century BC by survivors of a failed military campaign waged against the Greeks by the barbarian Gauls – several tribes of Celtic people who lived in central Europe. These tribes were called the Tektósagoi, the Trókmoi and the Tolisóbioi.

Settling as they had in north-central Asia Minor on the coast of the Black Sea, surrounded by people who spoke Greek, they desired to hold onto their unique heritage and identity. However, they quickly began to adopt Greek customs and conventions of speech. By the time of Christ they were already being called ‘Gallo-Greeks’, or ‘Ellenogalátai. These semi-Hellenised Celts faced considerable pressure from their Greek neighbours, and clearly questions of assimilation and cultural belonging were at the forefront of many minds and hearts when Christianity arrived among them in the person of the Holy Apostle Paul. The Epistle to the Galatians which is preserved in Holy Scripture deals with the themes of cultural identity and how Christianity relates to them. The Celtic language of the Galatians, which was related to if not identical to Gaulish, survived well into the sixth century among the cultural élite of the territory.

The Dying Galatian, Hellenistic sculpture from 3^rd century BC
‘They knew how to die, barbarians that they were.’ - Dr HW Janson

Blessed Theodoret informs us that Saint Peter’s parents belonged to this Gallo-Greek stem. He was born in 330, and they raised him in Galatia until he was seven years old, after which point he ‘spent the whole of the rest of his life in the contests of philosophy’. He entered a monastery at this point, but when he was still a child he conceived a desire to visit the Holy Land. Somehow he made good that desire, and came unto Palestine a pilgrim, ‘to see the places where occurred the sufferings of salvation and to worship in them the God who saved us’. Saint Peter did not superstitiously believe that God could be bounded within a building or a territory; however, he had on account of his love for Christ also a love of those real places where Christ had lived, suffered and died. Despite having left his home and gone on pilgrimage, he was a localist in the best sense: a lover of the place in its concreteness, transparent to the One who is beyond all places.

Leaving the Holy Land, he passed through Antioch, and again fell in love with the place. Now it must be borne in mind what has been said above about the endurance and the strength of feeling the Gallo-Greeks had for their language, customs and unique heritage. These feelings of Celtic patriotism were without a doubt rooted strongly in our Galatian Saint Peter. But he observed in Antioch a ‘love for God’ which exceeded anything he had observed at home. Above race, above even family, he came to love the Syrian Antiochians who exhibited a love for God as dearly as though they were kin. Settling in Antioch, he set up his home in a tomb that had been built for another. He lived on bread and water there, and ate only once every two days, and kept his mind upon his own death.

In the Gospels of Saint Mark and of Saint Luke, the dæmoniac who came out to Christ dwelt in the tombs, and came out from the tombs to meet Christ. Perhaps in imitation of the Gadarene dæmoniac, Saint Peter went into the tomb and lived there, out of the empty noise and bustle of the city, to seek out Christ. There also went another such dæmoniac – a man named Daniel who was known to Theodoret in later days. Raving and harming himself, he begged Saint Peter to release him from his devil, and he did so. In exchange, Daniel became Saint Peter’s devoted disciple.

Roman-era necropolis in Antioch, modern-day Turkey
Theodoret describes Peter the Hermit’s tomb as having a balcony and a ladder

At this point, Theodoret’s hagiography of Saint Peter takes on a deeply personal and moving tone, as he describes how Saint Peter sat the young Syrian child on his knee and fed him with grapes and bread, and how he played with him, and how his mother sent him to receive the holy man’s blessing once each week. Blessed Theodoret’s mother had once suffered from an ailment of the eyes, for which no sæcular doctor had been able to find a cure. His mother, who was then twenty-three years of age and remarkably beautiful, thought it would be fitting and respectful for her to go to the holy man heavily made-up and wearing a sumptuous silken dress and rich jewellery of gold on her arms and in her ears. Upon beholding her, Saint Peter smiled somewhat and told her:

Tell me, child: if some painter well-trained in his art painted a portrait as the rules of the art prescribe and exhibited it to those who wanted to view it; and someone else who had no accurate knowledge of the art but dashed off according to his fancy whatever he chose to paint, came along and criticised the artistic painting – added longer lines to the eyebrows and eyelashes, made the face whiter, put red colouring on the cheeks – does it not seem to you that the first painter would rightly be indignant at his skill being grossly insulted and undergoing useless additions by an unskilled hand?

And so believe too, that the Maker of the Universe, the Sculptor and Painter of our nature, is rightly indignant at your accusing His ineffable wisdom of a lack of skill. For you would not have poured on red, white and black colouring if you had not thought you needed this addition: by supposing your body to require them, you condemn the Creator for deficiency. But one ought to recognise that He has power corresponding to His will, for, as David says, the Lord ‘has done whatever He chose’.

Devising beforehand what will benefit every being, he gives nothing that is harmful. Therefore do not ruin the image of God, or try to add what He has wisely not given, or devise this spurious beauty which harms even modest women by laying snares for the beholder!

Then Theodoret’s mother threw herself at the feet of the holy man and begged of him a cure for her eye. Saint Peter protested meekly that he was only a man like herself, a sinner, without any privileged access to the Most High. But Theodoret’s mother implored him with tears and told him she would not leave until her eye was cured. And Saint Peter, comforting her, told her that it would not be him, but God who would heal her, and that seeing her faith He would doubtless give as she had asked. Saint Peter made the sign of the Cross upon her afflicted eye, and the disease was driven out.

Having received this gift from God by His holy hermit, this strange foreigner who lived in a tomb, Theodoret’s mother went home at once and washed off her make-up, took off her silken dress and lay aside her golden ornaments, and would not wear them again. She had no need of them. She and her husband, Theodoret’s father, attended Saint Peter in his tomb, and there he instructed them in the ways of uprightness and the love of Christ. She did not conceive Theodoret, however, for another seven years after that. However, Theodoret relates that she kept a linen girdle from Saint Peter, that she lay upon any in her household – her husband or her son – when they fell ill, and that this had curative powers.

Saint Peter the Galatian also performed an exorcism upon the cook of Theodoret’s household, who had been possessed. Saint Peter ordered the devil in him, like a criminal brought before a judge, to name himself and confess his crimes. The devil said that he had entered the cook in Ba‘âlbak, where he had been visiting the house of his friends. The maidservants of the house were speaking about exorcisms, and describing how the monks who lived in Antioch were able to expel devils by their prayers. The girls then began to play-act the part of dæmoniacs, while the cook put on a mock hair-shirt and pretended to exorcise them. The devil had been standing by the door, and was piqued into possessing the cook to see how well the Antiochian monks could perform exorcisms. At last the devil acknowledged that he was no match for Saint Peter and departed at the hermit’s command. Theodoret’s cook was thus healed.

Saint Peter also healed a fallâh who was possessed, whom Theodoret’s grandmother had brought to him. Saint Peter sat with the farmer for nine hours, abjuring the devil in various ways to reveal himself; it was only when Saint Peter told the devil that it was not he himself, but God, who commanded him, that the devil began to speak. He said that he dwelt in the Taurus Mountains, and that he had entered the man as he drew water from a spring on the side of the road. Saint Peter again commanded the devil, with the authority of Christ, to depart – and he did; the fallâh was cured.

Blessed Theodoret relates two other miracles of Saint Peter the Galatian. The first is of a pious young woman, a cœnobitic nun, who had taken up the religious life to avoid the unwanted attentions of a cruel and lecherous master. She was afflicted with breast cancer, and suffered daily the pains from it. When the pain grew too much to bear, she called for Saint Peter, who came and prayed with her. Whenever he visited, the nun said that she felt no pain from her tumour, not even a slight discomfort. Saint Peter attended her also at her deathbed, and sang praises for her victory at her repose.

At another time, Theodoret’s mother fell ill with a terrible fever. Once again, no doctor could find a cure, and sæcular medicine had given her up for dead. The fever grew worse, burning away her flesh and sending her into delirium such that she could recognise none of them. The entire household – Theodoret, his father and the household servants – were in tears over her, thinking that she would soon die. Peter the hermit arrived as well, with the words: ‘Peace be with you, child.’ For the first time in her fever, Theodoret’s mother sat up and lay a look of recognition upon the hermit. She asked for his blessing. Saint Peter then asked the whole household to join him in prayer for her and offer their tears for her healing. At the end of this prayer from the household, Theodoret’s mother’s sweat broke and her fever lowered, and she was soon cured.

Saint Peter lived to the age of ninety-nine years, and he reposed in the Lord in the year 429. ‘After thus blazing forth and illuminating Antioch with his rays,’ writes Theodoret, ‘he passed from the contest, awaiting the crown laid up for the victors.’ Holy hermit Peter, pilgrim blessed manifold and wonderworker among the tombs, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Celtic ruin of Galatia, Turkey