THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
kinds of fear: worldly fear, fear of divine punishment, fear which comes from love of God, and filial fear, which divides into reverence and fear of separation, from the last of which Christ was free. The unison between this Peter and the Lombard was so great that the latter overshadowed the former, in spite of his numerous illustrations.
Besides the foregoing, two other men bore the name of Peter of Poitiers: a monk of Cluny, secretary to Peter the Venerable, who left a couple of writings which are in MPL, clxxxix. 52 sqq., 56 sqq., 661 ; and a canonist of St. Victor, who left an unpublished work De poenitentia seu confessions.
(S. M. DEUTSCHf.)
Bibliography: C. Oudin, Commentarius de scriptoribus ecclesice, ii. 1499 sqq., Leipsic, 1722, reproduced in MPL, ccxi. 779 sqq.; Histoire litteraire de la France, xvi. 484 sqq., xii. 349 sqq.; H. Denifle, Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis, i. 8, no. 8, note 1, and p. 61, Paris, 1890; KL, ix. 1934-35.
PETER OF SEBASTE: Youngest brother of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Macrina the Younger (qq.v.); b. before 349; d. between 391 and 394. He was brought up and educated by his sister Macrina, who early instilled in him the desire for the ascetic life and was accompanied by him when she and their mother retired to their retreat on the Iris. He was skilful in handicrafts, by which he contributed to the support of his mother and sister and to their charities. He succeeded Basil in the presidency of the latter's monastery on the Iris, and in 370 was made presbyter by Basil, whose messenger he was on missions which required diplomacy and delicate handling. In 380 he was made bishop of Sebaste in Lesser Armenia, in succession to Eustathius (q.v.), and took part in the First Council of Constantinople, 381. He served as almoner for Olympia the deaconess in the distribution of funds to the poor.
The only extant literary work of Peter is a letter to his brother Gregory (in the latter's Opera, ii. 268), beseeching him to refute Eunomius and defend Basil from charges brought against the latter. Yet all accounts, as well as his own letter, seem to make him the intellectual equal of his more renowned brothers, give him a character for a lovely modesty and for talents which sought a practical not a literary outlet, and show that his was really the stimulus which resulted in several of Gregory's works, notably the Explicatio apologetica and the De hominis opificio.
Bibliography: Sources are his brother Gregory's " Life of the Holy Macrina"; Nicephorus, Hist, eccl., xi. 19; Theodoret, Hist, eccl., v. 8. Consult: Tillemont, Memoires, ix. 572-580; Ceillier, Avteurs sacris, iv. 349, 618; DNB, iv. 345-346.
PETER THE VENERABLE (MAURICE DE MONTBOISSIER) : Abbot of Cluny; b. in 1092 or 1094; d. at Cluny (11 m. n.w. of Macon) Dec. 25, 1155. Of noble lineage, he was devoted by his mother to the religious life before his birth, and was educated in the abbey of Soucilanges in the diocese of Clermont. His ability led the abbot, Hugo I. of Cluny, to make him prior of Vezelay and Domne at an early age; and on Aug. 27, 1122, he was .elected abbot of CJuny to succeed Hugo II. Aided
by his loyal friend Mathieu, prior of St. Martin-des- Champs, later cardinal bishop of Albano, he reformed the mother house at Cluny; and by his tours of inspection secured discipline in the cloisters of the Cluniac congregation. While he was absent on a tour of inspection in Aquitaine, the former Abbot Pontius, who had resigned his office, returned to Cluny and seized the abbey, only to be deprived of it by Pope Honorius II., and to die at Rome in 1126. Peter succeeded, by his wise financial course, in gradually repairing the damages which the monastery had suffered from the extravagance of Pontius.
The next task of Peter was to check the dissension between the monks of Cluny and the Cistercians. In this he was at least partially successful, largely through his profound and sincere regard for Bernard of Clairvaux; and the schism which threatened the Church at the papal election of 1130 was averted chiefly through the combined efforts of the two abbots, both of whom supported the cause of Innocent II. Yet on the other hand, when Abelard, who had been condemned as a heretic by the Synod of Sens under Innocent II. at the instance of Bernard, sought refuge at Cluny, he was welcomed by Peter (see Abelard).
In 1146 Peter submitted to the chapter general of Cluny his Consuetudines Cluniacenses (see Cluny, Abbey and Congregation op, § 5), a series of seventy-six statutes providing stricter discipline and abolishing the chief abuses censured by the Cistercians; and in 1148 he supplemented these statutes by an ordinance governing the domestic economy of the monastery, adding a report of the conditions which he had found at Cluny when he became abbot.
With advancing years Peter again felt the longing of his youth to pass the close of his life in complete solitude as a hermit; but though he besought this privilege personally of Eugenius III. at Rome, the pope refused.
Among the extant writings of Peter the Venerable, his six books of collected letters, though not in chronological order, belong to the most important historical documents of the twelfth century. They include letters to popes Innocent II., Celestine II., Lucius II., and Eugenius III.; to kings Sigward of Norway, Roger of Sicily, Louis VII. of France, and his minister Suger of St. Denis; to the Greek Emperor John Comnenus; to the king and patriarch of Jerusalem; to Bernard of Clairvaux, the Carthusian Prior Guigo, Cardinal Mathieu of Albano, Bishop Henry of Winchester, and many others. Since, however, he lacked the gift of popular preaching, he strove to refute the foes of the Church by means of his pen. The earliest of his treatises is probably the Contra dicentes Christum nunquam se Deum dixisse, in which, while conceding that Christ nowhere in the Bible calls himself simply and unmistakably God, he declares doubt as to Christ's divinity to be a Mohammedan error and that the reserve in Christ's own expressions concerning his person was due to his deference to the Jews. An important source in connection with the sect of the Petrobrusians (see Peter of Bruys) is found in Peter's treatise Contra Petrobrusianos, in