Our Holy Father Peter the Patrician.

Commemorated July 1 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

This saint was a nobleman of Constantinople and a military commander in the time of the Emperor Nicephorus I (802-11). In a war against Bulgaria, the Emperor was killed and Peter, together with fifty other Greek generals and princes, was captured and cast into prison. He was miraculously delivered from prison by St John the Theologian. He then forsook all worldly glory, left his wife and son and withdrew to Mount Olympus, where, as a monk and a disciple of St Joannicius the Great, he lived in monasticism for thirty-four years. After the deaths of his wife and son, he settled in Constantinople, where he spent eight further years in fasting and prayer and entered into rest in the Lord in 865, at the age of seventy-seven.

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK