Enciclopedia Cattolica

PIETRO IBERO

Peter the Iberian

Volume IX · p. 871 · 1952

English translation · Testo originale italiano

PIETRO IBERO. - Vescovo monofisita di Maiuma, n. in Georgia nel 409, m. a Jamnia il 19 dic. 448.
PIETRO IBERO. - Vescovo monofisita di Maiuma, n. in Georgia nel 409, m. a Jamnia il 19 dic. 448.

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

In 421–22 P. was already at the Byzantine court. According to the accounts of his biographers, he was the son of King Bosmarius and had been sent to Constantinople as a hostage; but both these details are doubtful. He fled to Jerusalem, where he was received by St Melania (d. 439), who made him a monk (c. 430). There he founded a monastery near the Tower of David, later called the Iberian monastery. Persecuted as a steadfast Monophysite, he took refuge near Gaza, and after his priestly ordination (446) and consecration as bishop of Maiuma (453), he went to Egypt where he took part in the consecration of Timothy Aelurus (457). He returned to Palestine but, refusing to subscribe to the Henoticon (v.), he went into hiding in Phoenicia.

His influence among the Monophysites was immense, as is shown by the Pierfiorie of John Rufus (PO, 8).

BIBL.: R. Raabe, Petrus der Ihrer, Leipzig 1895; J. B. Chabot, Pierre l'Iberien, in Revue de l'Orient latin, 3 (1895), pp. 367–97; N. Marr, Vita di P. (in Georgian), in Palestinskij Sbornik, 16 (1896), pp. 1–119; J. Bidez – L. Parmentier, The ecclesiastical history of Evagrius, London 1898, pp. 62, 56, 132; W. Brooks, Historia ecclesiastica Zachariae rhetori vulgo adscripta, versio. I, Louvain 1924, pp. 108–18, 160; II, pp. 2, 4; U. Monneret de Villard, Una chiesa di tipo georgiano nella necropoli tebana, in Coptic studies in honor of W. E. Crum, Washington 1950, pp. 495–500.