Venerable Peter of Atroa

IMPORTANT DATE CORRECTION: the previous date "January 1" conflated the saint's date of death (indeed January 1, 837) with his liturgical feast day — these are different things. The correct feast day per several independent sources is September 13/26.

Venerable Peter (born Theophylact) was born in 773 near Ephesus. At eighteen he joined the ascetic Paul the Hesychast (Paul the Simple) at his hermitage in Phrygia and was tonsured with the name Peter. Together they moved to Bithynia, to Mount Olympus, where they founded a monastery dedicated to St. Zacharias near the town of Atroa. After Paul's death in 805, Peter became abbot.

During the iconoclastic persecutions of Emperor Leo V, Peter, concerned for his monks' safety, disbanded the monastery and wandered through Asia Minor, visiting Ephesus and Cyprus. Despite his desire for seclusion, his reputation as a clairvoyant healer and wonderworker spread widely; some hostile bishops accused him of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub, but he was vindicated through the intercession of St. Theodore the Studite, whose letters defending him survive.

After the persecution ended, Peter restored his monastic communities, but a renewed wave of iconoclasm forced him to disperse the brotherhood again. He spent his final years in a solitary cell at Atroa, where he died peacefully during evening prayers on January 1, 837. A detailed Life was written by his disciple Sabas.