Pierius of Alexandria

Pierius of Alexandria was a priest, teacher and preacher of the Church of Alexandria at the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century, probably head of the Catechetical School of the city, at times together with Achillas. He lived in the time of Bishop Theonas of Alexandria and died at Rome after 309. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 4 November.

The surviving sources about his person are few and contradictory. Eusebius of Caesarea shows him as a teacher at the catechetical school and a preacher in a church. Philip of Side and Photius call him head of the same school. Saint Jerome, who gives him chapter 76 of "On Illustrious Men", says that he went to Rome, where he lived until the end of his life. According to Epiphanius and Photius, he was martyred in Alexandria with his brother Isidore and there was a church there dedicated to them. Greek scholars believe that these disagreements come from confusing him with another Pierius, a locum tenens of the see of Alexandria in the persecution of Decius, who is said to have agreed to sacrifice to idols and then gone to Rome to repent of his lapse. Jerome assures us that he survived the persecution of Diocletian; the term "martyr" can thus mean only that he suffered for his faith, not that he died. The years in which he led the school are given differently: from 281 to 300 according to one patrologist, or from 248 on according to another.

He was known for his poverty, his philosophical learning, his interpretation of the things of God and his excellent sermons in church. He taught people successfully and attained such grace of language and published so many treatises on various subjects that he was called "Origen the Younger". He stood out for self-⁠discipline and was skilled in dialectic and rhetoric. A disciple of his was Pamphilus, later a martyr.

His writings

Pierius wrote a great deal, but only fragments of his works survive. Photius, who read a collection of twelve of his books, called the "Biblion", with twelve treatises or sermons (logoi), praises the richness of his arguments and his clear, smooth and gentle style. Known are a sermon on the Gospel of Luke; an Easter sermon on the prophet Hosea; a sermon on the Mother of God; a few other Easter sermons and a eulogy of Saint Pamphilus. Jerome also mentions the "Exemplaria", a critical edition of the New Testament. The fragments were edited by Martin Joseph Routh and in the Patrologia Graeca; Carl de Boor added some. The tenth volume of the Patrologia Graeca in fact holds no works of Pierius himself, only the chapter on him by Eusebius, chapter 76 of Jerome and codex 119 of Photius's Myriobiblion.

His teaching

According to Photius, Pierius was orthodox on the relation of the Father to the Son: he used of them terms such as "two natures" and "two substances", but in the sense of two hypostases, not in the sense of the Arians. On the Holy Spirit his views were dangerous: he held that the glory of the Spirit is less than that of the Father and the Son. He also shared Origen's unorthodox opinion on the pre-⁠existence of souls. In his writings on Hosea and on Easter, speaking of the cherubim, he thought that Moses made the cast cherubim on the ark of the covenant out of folly and wrote that cherubim have no form, only the look of wings.