Peter (Pierre) of Poitieks, was a modern Latin poet, who died after 1141. All that we learn of his life is that, having made a profession of the rule of St. Benedict in a monastery of Aquitaine, he was chosen by Peter the Venerable as secretary, and accompanied him first to Clugny, in 1134, then to Spain in 1141. His principal works are poems in elegiac verse, which, for verses of the 12th century, lack neither fluency nor ele- gance. Yet Peter the Venerable surpasses even the limit of hyperbole when he compares these verses with those of Horace and Virgil. The poems of Peter of Poitiers have been collected by the editors of the Bib- lioth. de Cluni. We find in the same collection, among the letters of Peter the Venerable, three letters written to this abbe by his secretary. A fourth letter from Peter of Poitiers to Peter the Venerable, published by Martene in his Amplissiina Collectio (ii, 11), contains this curious information, that Peter of Poitiers, being in Spain, contributed some part to the translation of the Koran demanded by the abbe of Clugny. See Hist. Lilt, de la France, xii, 349. — Hoefer, Nouv.Biog. Gene- rale, xl, 187.
Peter Ef.gui.ato (St.), a mediaeval saint, appears in the later Italian and Spanish paintings of the Fran- ciscans, to whose order he belonged. He is noted in ecclesiastical annals for his '-sublime gift of prayer." He died March 30, 1456.
Peter of Remigius, also known as Petrus Cellensis, flourished in the fourth quarter of the 12th century as abbot of St. Remigius, and afterwards as bishop of Char- tres. He published his Opera, containing Sermones, Liber de panibus, Mosaici tabernaculi mystica et moralis expositio, Ik- conscientia, De disciplina claustrali, Epis- tolarum libri ix (in Bibl. Max. Patr. xxiii. 636), Trac- talns (A dinciplina claustrali (D'Achery, Spicil. i, 452), Epislolarum libri ix (Sirmondi Opera Varia, iii, 659).
Peter of Sebaste, an Eastern prelate, was born at Caesarea, in Cappadocia, before A.D. 349. He was the youngest of the ten children of Basil and Emmelia, who numbered among their children those eminent fathers of the Church, Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. Peter's early education was conducted by his sister, St. Macrina, who, in the emphatic phrase of Gregory of Nyssa, " was everything to him — father, teacher, at- tendant, and mother." The quickness of the boy en- abled him readily to acquire anything to which his at- tention was directed; but his education appears to have been conducted on a very narrow system, profane learn- ing being disregarded. If, however, his literary culture was thus narrowed, his morals were preserved pure ; and if he fell short of his more eminent brothers in variety of attainments, he equalled them in holiness of life. The place of his education appears to have been a nun- nery at Annesi, or Annesa, on the river Iris, in Pont us, established by his mother and sister; and with them, or in the monastery which his brother Basil had estab- lished on the other side of the river, much of his life was passed. In a season of scarcity (A.D. 367, 368 ?), such was his benevolent exertion to provide for the destitute, that they flocked to him from all parts, and gave to the thinly peopled neighborhood in which he resided the appearance of a populous town. His moth- er's death appears to have occurred about the time of Basil's elevation to the bishopric of the Cappadocian Caesarea, about A.D. 370; soon after which, apparently, Peter received from Basil ordination to the office of presbyter, probably of the Church of Cfesarea ; for Basil appears to have employed his brother as his confidential agent in some affairs. A passage of Theodoret (//. E. iv, 30) shows that he took an active part in the struggle carried on during the reign of Valens by the bishops of the orthodox party against Arianism. It was probably after the death both of Basil and Macrina, about the year
380, as Tillemont judges, that Peter was raised to the bishopric of Sebaste (now Siwas), in the Lesser Armenia. His elevation preceded the second general council, that of Constantinople, A.D. 380-381, in which he took part. In what year he died is not known, but it was probably after A.D. 391, and certainly before the death of his brother, Gregory of Nyssa (who survived till A.D. 394, or later), for Gregory was present at Sebaste at the first celebration of his brother's memory, i. e. the anniversary of his death, which occurred in hot weather, and there- fore could not have been in January or March, where the martyrologies place it. The only extant writing of Peter is a letter prefixed to the Contra Eunomium Libri of Gregory of Nyssa, and published with the works of that father. It is entitled Sancti Patris nostri Petri Episcopi Sebasteni ad S. Gregorimn Nyssenum suum Epistola. Peter does not appear to have been ambi- tious of authorship, and probably felt the disqualification arising from his restricted education. Some of the works of his brother Gregory were, however, written at his de- sire, such as the above-mentioned treatises against Eu- nomius and the Expliealio Apologetica in Hexaemeron. The De Hominis Opificio is also addressed to him by Gregory, who, both in this treatise and in the Explica- tio in Hexaemeron, speaks of him in the highest terms. See Greg. Xyssen. In Vila S. Macrince; Basil, Marir timis Episcopis Epistola, cciii, ed. Bened. ; Tillemont, Memoires, ix, 572 ; Le Quien, Oriens Christianvs, vol. i, col. 424; Cave, Hist. Lilt, ad aim. 370. i, 246.— Smith, Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Biog. and Mythol. iii, 227.