ON SAINT PETER, PRIOR OF THE MONASTERY OF EYGAG AND DOCTOR.
AMONG THE ABYSSINIANS IN ETHIOPIA.
From the manuscript Hagiology of that nation.
CommentaryPeter, Monk and Doctor in Abyssinia (St.)
D. P.
Of this excellent man among the Abyssinians, Peter, His teaching is presumed to have been sound, we can presume that his teaching—by which, set forth to all and spread far and wide, he is chiefly commended—was stained by no graver errors; and that he himself either existed prior to the Council of Chalcedon, or at least was divinely granted, under some Orthodox Patriarch even after it, for the instruction of the nation; until some positive reason should occur for doubting of him. For why should that nation, once so fervently embracing the Christian faith, be in a worse position with us than the nation of the Greeks, whose Saints, even after the times of Photius, we receive from the Synaxaria, and much more and more gladly those of whose age we have learned nothing, presuming that they were free of the schism or prior to it? This Peter the Poet-Hagiologist addresses thus: although his age is uncertain, "I salute Peter, good in constitution and law, called Prior of the monastery of Eygag. Of his teaching, which flowed limpid like a river and not at all turbid, boys and old men slaked their thirst." So to us the disciple of the illustrious Job Ludolf, the interpreter of the Hagiology: who I wonder whence he received the title of Prior. For that word is ambiguous to us, signifying either the first after the Abbot, or absolutely the First and Antistes or Prelate of all. But this matters little; I would esteem more highly to know the condition and site of the monastery of Eygag; then to obtain some Acts of his, if any are extant.