CONCERNING SAINT PETER, BISHOP OF SEBASTE IN ARMENIA, AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FOURTH CENTURY
CommentaryPeter, Bishop of Sebaste in Armenia Minor (Saint)
The veneration and cult of this holy Bishop is suggested by Saint Gregory of Nyssa in a letter to Flavian the Bishop in these words: At last, when I had performed the memorial of the most blessed Peter, The ancient veneration of Saint Peter, Bishop of Sebaste: which had then first begun to be celebrated, among the people of Sebaste, and likewise of the holy Martyrs who, just as they had lived at the same time as Peter, so were accustomed to be celebrated together with him; turning my journey back I was returning to my Church. Cardinal Baronius indeed supposed in his Notes to the Roman Martyrology on January 9 that Peter, the brother of Saints Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, was here signified: whom he therefore judged to have died during the time of the Emperor Valens, his era. and thus before both brothers: but just as we showed there that this Peter, at the death of Basil, had only recently been consecrated Presbyter by him: so it is not sufficiently certain whether he was, when Gregory wrote to Flavian, the Bishop of Sebaste: far from it that his feast was already being celebrated after his death. But who were those Martyrs of Sebaste of the same time? But our Forty had already had a famous cult there for at least sixty years, and throughout all Armenia and the neighboring Churches, distinct from the brother of Saint Basil, concerning whom see January 9. and their Relics, as we shall presently see, Bishop Peter collected upon divine revelation. The only scruple that could be raised from the cited passage of Nyssa concerns the time of the feast, long since established for the Martyrs, then shared with Peter; namely that Gregory in the same Letter complains of the heat by which he was oppressed on his return journey toward his Church, visiting the neighboring mountains (namely the ridges of the Anti-Taurus, midway between Nyssa and Caesarea), where Bishop Helladius was celebrating the commemoration of the Martyrs, that is, one or two days after the feast at Sebaste. But this scruple is easily answered by saying that, just as the cold by which the Martyrs were tortured was unusual and beyond the season's character in Armenia, which at the same elevation of the pole as Spain was accustomed then especially to enjoy vernal beauty; so it should not seem very unusual if in another year some days in March were more serene, with a hotter sun, which was troublesome to travelers in those regions, the labor of the journey increasing the heat.
Peter, moreover, the one mentioned above, whom in respect of the later one elevated to the Episcopate under Theodosius we can call the First, he collected the relics of the 40 Martyrs. was the successor of Saint Blasius, whose Acts we gave on February 3: and the Passion of the Forty Martyrs from the translation of John the Deacon at number 19 has the following concerning him: Three days therefore having passed after the blessed ashes were thrown into the river, it was revealed to the most blessed Peter, Bishop of the same city, that he should go and most diligently recover those sacred remains from there. Who, not hesitating at all about the vision, having gathered the Clergy and pious men, arrived at the bank of the river. A wondrous thing: wherever any of those Relics lay, it gleamed as if it were a bright light. Which they most carefully collected and placed in prepared shrines with the utmost veneration. Similar things, but without expressing the name of Peter, are found in the same Latin Acts, in which he is called a worshipper of God. In those things which we related above from the testimony of James, the Armenian Bishop, and in the Acts published under the name of Metaphrastes, he is called Peter: he appears to have been succeeded by Eulogius, or Eulalius, who attended the first Council of Nicaea in the year 325.