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Petrus, Bishop of Apamea

Wace's Dictionary of Early Christian Biography

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Petrus (12), bp. of Apamea, the metropolis of Syria Secunda, under Anastasius, c. 510; a Monophysite, a warm partisan of Severus the intruding patriarch of Antioch, the leader of the Acephali, and charged with sharing in the violent and sanguinary attempts to force the Monophysite creed on the reluctant Syrian church. Peter was accused of having taken forcible possession of his see, in violation of all ecclesiastical order, not having received canonical ordination either as monk or presbyter (Labbe, v. 120). The first formal complaint against him was made before count Eutychianus, governor of the province, by the clergy of Apamea, substantiated by their affidavits ( ib. 219, 243). In these he is charged with declaring himself the enemy of the Chalcedonian decrees, erasing from the diptychs the names of orthodox bishops and fathers, and substituting those of Dioscorus, Timothy Aelurus, and other heresiarchs. Evidence is given of insulting language and overbearing conduct toward his clergy, acts of violence and grossness, and intercourse with females of loose character. He was accused with Severus of having hired a band of Jewish banditti, who slew, from an ambuscade, a body of 350 orthodox pilgrims and left their corpses by the roadside ( ib. 119). Clergy were violently dragged from the altar by his emissaries and ruthlessly butchered if they refused to anathematize the Chalcedonian faith. On the accession of Justin, a.d. 518, the bishops of Syria Secunda laid their complaints against Peter and Severus before the council assembled at the imperial city, July 518, asking the emperor to deliver them from so intolerable a tyranny (ib. 215). Their prayer was granted; Peter was deposed and sentenced to exile as a Manichee—as the Monophysites were popularly designated (Theoph. p. 142). Nothing seems known of Peter between his banishment and reappearance at Constantinople with Severus, on the temporary revival of the fortunes of the Monophysites, through the influence of the empress Theodora. In 536 Mennas was appointed to the patriarchal chair, and lost no time in summoning a council to pronounce the condemnation of Monophysitism and its chief leaders, Peter and Severus being cut off from communion as men who had "voluntarily chosen the sin unto death," and "shown no signs of repentance and a better mind" ( ib. 153). Justinian confirmed this sentence. Peter was forbidden to reside in or near Constantinople, or any other important city, commanded to live in complete retirement, and abstain from association with others lest he should poison them with his heresy (ib. 267). Nothing more is known of him. Letters to him from Severus exist among the Syriac MSS. of the Brit. Mus. (Wright, Catal. p. 559, No. 5, No. 20). Le Quien, Or. Christ. ii. 913; Fleury, Hist. eccl. livre xxxi., 40, 44; livre xxxii., 52, 54, 57.

[E.V.]