Peter the Hermit of Galatia

Venerable Peter of Galatia, also called Peter the Hermit or Peter of Antioch, was a Syrian hermit of Galatian origin who, according to the sources, lived from 330 to 429 in a tomb near Antioch. His life is known from Theodoret of Cyrrhus, whose own family received benefits through the saint's prayers. His feast is on 1 February.

His ascetic life

According to Theodoret, Peter was born in Pontus, in Galatia. He stayed with his parents until the age of seven and then chose the monastic way; a Serbian source says that he left his parents' house in his seventh year and withdrew to the wilderness. At first he lived as a monk in Galatia, then set out for Palestine to see the holy places, and from there came to Antioch and decided to settle in it.

For a dwelling he chose a tomb belonging to someone else. Above it stood a room built of planks, which anyone could reach by a ladder. Shut in there, Peter spent very many years, drinking only cold water and eating bread, and that only every second day.

Deeds and the gift of healing

Theodoret visited him as a child. His mother allowed him once a week to receive the hermit's blessing, and Peter would seat him on his knees and give him grapes and bread. Theodoret recounts many miracles. Peter healed a possessed man named Daniel, who then asked to enter his service. With the Sign of the Cross he healed the diseased eye of Theodoret's future mother. She was a wealthy woman fond of adornment, wearing earrings, a necklace, other gold ornaments and colourful clothes, and Peter urged her not to disfigure the image of God with needless things.

He also healed a possessed slave cook in the service of Theodoret's mother, and a possessed farm labourer brought by her mother's mother. A former governor, a dissolute and cruel man, was pursuing a girl; the hermit struck him with blindness, and later healed the girl when she fell ill with cancer. By his prayer Theodoret's mother was saved from death in childbirth. The family also received from him a belt which, laid on the sick, brought healing.

His death and the name "the Silent"

Peter reached great old age and died in his ninety-⁠ninth year, around 429. In the Prologues and calendars he is called the Silent, but Russian sources point out that he took no vow of silence. The epithet comes from a poor rendering of a Greek word that means mainly quiet, peaceful or solitary. The Serbian Church commemorates him on 1 February by the Julian calendar, that is 14 February by the Gregorian.