Peter the Iberian (ca. 417–491)

Monk; anti-Chalcedonian leader.

The son of Bosmarios, king of Georgia (Iberia), he was brought up in Constantinople as a political hostage at the court of the Emperor Theodosius II. Attracted to the ascetic life, he managed to escape, to become a monk in Palestine, eventually settling in a monastery near Gaza where he was a leading figure among opponents of the Council of Chalcedon (451). He was briefly bp. of Maiuma, but then had to take refuge in Egypt (455), only returning to Palestine twenty years later. Detailed biographies of him survive in Syriac (ed. with ET C. Horn and R. Phenix, 2008) and in Georgian (ET D. M. Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints [1956]). The former, translated from Greek, was perhaps composed by John Rufus . The latter (where Peter has become a supporter of the Council of Chalcedon) states that it was translated from Syriac; it is disputed whether this was the extant Syriac Life, or the lost one by Zacharias Rhetor .