Peter of Alexandria

Life and Ministry

Peter was the seventeenth bishop of Alexandria in the line from Mark the Evangelist, elected c. AD 300 just as the Diocletian persecution was about to break. He had been catechist at the great Alexandrian school under Theonas and was a learned exegete in his own right, of whom fragments of biblical commentaries survive. As bishop he governed the Egyptian church through the persecution from hiding, going in and out of Alexandria, ordaining pastors, and writing the Canonical Letter, a set of pastoral rules for the readmission of the lapsed that became the standard for Eastern penitential discipline. He is called by the Coptic and Greek liturgical tradition the seal of the martyrs because his death was the last under the persecution.

Circumstances of Death

After the persecution had nearly ended and the Galerian edict of toleration was already in force, the local pagan party in Alexandria, supported by a faction within the imperial administration, secured an order for Peter's arrest. He was seized at the church of Saint Mark on 25 November AD 311. To prevent a popular uprising in his defense the soldiers carried him by night to a private place outside the city walls, near the tomb of Saint Mark, and beheaded him there before dawn. His body was recovered by the Alexandrian faithful and buried at the place of his death. He is reckoned by the Eastern tradition as the last martyr of the Great Persecution.

Legacy

Peter's Canonical Letter became foundational for the Eastern Orthodox treatment of those who failed under persecution, distinguishing between those who sacrificed and those who only signed certificates, between those who recanted under torture and those who did not, and laying out graded restorations to communion. His witness is the witness of the bishop who knew the persecution was almost over and went out to die anyway, because the local order had been given. His Coptic title — Khatim al-Shuhadaa, the Seal of the Martyrs — marks him as the man whose blood closed the door of the centuries of imperial Roman persecution.