subordinates. Moreover, Basil's enemy Dorotheus, visiting Rome to enlist Western sympathies in favour of MeIetius as against Paulinus, met Peter in company with Damasus. Peter fired up at the name of Meletius and exclaimed, "He is no better than a Arian." Dorotheus, angered in his turn, said something which offended Peter's dignity and Peter wrote to Basil, complaining of this and of his silence in regard to the exile's conduct. Basil answers in effect: "As to the first point, I did not care to trouble you, and I trust it will come right by our winning over the Marcellians; as to the second, I am sorry that Dorotheus annoyed you, but you who have suffered under Arians ought to feel for Meletius as a fellow-sufferer, and I can assure you that he is quite orthodox."
Peter's exile ended in the spring of 378. The troubles of Valens with the Goths encouraged the prelates he had banished to act for themselves. Fortified by a letter of commendation from Damasus, Peter returned to Alexandria; the people forthwith expelled Lucius, who went to Constantinople; and Peter was thenceforth undisturbed in his see. Jerome taxes him with being too easy in receiving heretics into communion (Chron.); and in one celebrated affair of another kind, his facility brought him no small discredit. Early in 379 he had not only approved of the mission of Gregory of Nazianzus to act as a Catholic bishop in Constantinople, but had formally authorized it, had "honoured" Gregory "with the symbols of establishment" (Carm. de Vita Sua, 861), and thereby apparently claimed some supremacy over Constantinople (Neale, Hist. Alex. i. 206). Yet ere long he allowed himself to become the tool of the ambitious Maximus, who pretended to have been a confessor for orthodoxy, and thus perhaps reached Peter's weak side. He aimed at "securing the see of Constantinople; and Peter, contradicting himself in writing," as Gregory words it (de Vita Sua, 1015), commissioned some Egyptian prelates to go to Constantinople and consecrate Maximus. The scheme failed disgracefully: Maximus had to leave Constantinople, and after attempting in vain to propitiate Theodosius, went back to Alexandria and tried to intimidate Peter, "putting the old man into a difficulty" (ib. 1018), but was expelled by secular force. Peter reconciled himself to Gregory, who panegyrized him as "a Peter in virtue not less than in name, who was very near heaven, but remained in the flesh so far as to render his final assistance to the truth," etc. (Orat. 34. 3). Peter died Feb. 14, 380. In ignorance of this event, Theodosius, a fortnight after wards, named him with Damasus as a standard of Catholic belief in the famous edict of Thessalonica (Cod. Theod. xvi. 1, 2; see Gibbon, iii. 363). He was succeeded by his brother Timotheus.
[W.B.]
Petrus (6), surnamed Mongus (Stammerer), Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria, ordained deacon by Dioscorus, and said to have taken part in the outrages against Flavian at the Latrocinium (Mansi, vi. 1017). On the death of the Monophysite patriarch Timotheus Aelurus in 477, and in the absence of the orthodox Salofaciolus whom he had displaced, the Monophysites determined to place Peter in the see. The emperor Zeno, indignant at the boldness of the Monophysites (Neale, Hist. Alex. ii. 17), ejected Peter, and ordered his expulsion from Alexandria (Mansi, vii. 983–985). Accordingly, Peter was driven out of Egypt; John, surnamed Talaia, steward of the great church, was chosen patriarch, but neglected to announce his accession to Acacius, who, piqued by this omission, prevailed on Zeno to expel John, and to restore Peter on condition that he should support an attempt to promote doctrinal unity without enforcing the authority of the council of Chalcedon. Zeno ordered Talaia to be expelled from Alexandria and Peter Mongus enthroned after accepting the HENOTICON, or instrument of unity (a.d. 482). This was addressed to the bishops, clergy, monks, and laymen of the Alexandrian patriarchate; it recognized the creed of "the 318" at Nicaea as "confirmed by the 150" at Constantinople, the decisions of the council of Ephesus, together with the 12 articles of Cyril; it employed language as to Christ's consubstantiality with man which Cyril had adopted in his "reunion with the Easterns"; it rejected the opposite theories of a "division" and a "confusion" in the person of Christ, and included Eutyches as well as Nestorius in its anathema. Instead of renewing the explicit censure directed by Basiliscus in a previous circular against the council of Chalcedon, Zeno employed an ambiguous phrase, "We anathematize every one who thinks or ever has thought differently, either at Chalcedon or at any other synod," words which might be explained as pointed at those who were admitted to communion at Chalcedon after disclaiming Nestorianism, while, as their adversaries alleged, they were still Nestorians at heart. At the same time all recognition of that council was omitted (Evagr. iii. 14; Liberat. c. 18, and note thereon; Galland. Bibl. Patr. xii. 149). Peter was accordingly enthroned amid a great concourse, at Alexandria. His instructions were to unite all parties on the basis of the Henoticon. This, for the time, be effected at a public festival, when as patriarch he preached to the people, and caused it to be read (Evagr. iii. 13; Liberat. c. 18). In letters to Acacias, the patriarch of Constantinople, and pope Simplicius, he professed to accept the council of Chalcedon (Liberatus); and by playing the part of a time-server (κόθορνος, Evagr. iii. 17) disgusted the thorough-going Monophysite John, bp. of Zagylis in Libya, and various abbats and monks of Lower Egypt, who raised a tumult in the Caesarean basilica (Liberat. u.s.). Peter could not afford to quarrel with them, and probably thought himself secure enough to shew his hand. (See Valesius on Evagr. iii. 16. He accordingly anathematized the council of Chalcedon and the Tome of pope Leo, substituted the names of Dioscorus and Timotheus Aelurus for those of Proterius and Timotheus Salofaciolus on his diptychs, and gratified his own vindictiveness by taking the body of Salofaciolus from its place among the buried patriarchs and "casting it outside the city" (Liberat.; cf. Felix. ap. Mansi, vii. 1076. This caused a great excitement; the
