Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/365

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PETER II. PETER (SAINT) 351 which Sweden ceded to her rival Livonia, Es- thonia, Ingria, a part of Karelia, the territory of Viborg, the isle of Oesel, and all the other islands in the Baltic from Courland to Viborg. For these concessions Russia agreed to surren- der Finland, which had been partly conquered, to pay $2,000,000, and to allow a free export of corn, to the annual value of 50,000 rubles, from the ports of Riga, Revel, and Arens- berg. Peter now built canals and factories, established a uniformity of weights and mea- sures, and paved the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg. He framed codes, organized tri- bunals, and instituted hospitals. To polish the manners of his court, he ordered the young nobles to visit western Europe in company with their wives. In 1723 he founded at St. Petersburg the academy of sciences. His last war was against Persia, in which he gained the Caspian territories of Derbend, Baku, Ghi- lan, Mazanderan, and Astrabad (1722-'3). At last, afflicted with a dangerous disease, he ap- pointed the empress Catharine his successor and caused her to be publicly crowned a few months before his death. His bicentennial an- niversary was celebrated with great pomp in Moscow and St. Petersburg, June 10, 1872. The Russian government undertook in 1873 to publish his letters and papers, under the direc- tion of Count Tolstoi, minister of public in- struction. Among the biographies and works relating to him are those of Halem (3 vols., 1803-'5), Bergmann (6 vols., 1823-'30), and others, in German ; Voltaire (new ed., 2 vols., 1864) and Count Philippe Paul de Segur (1829), in French ; and Golikoff (30 vols., 1788-'97) and Ust'reloff (6 vols., 1858-'63), in Russian. In 1874 appeared in Paris Reglement ecclesias- tique de Pierre le Grand, translated from the Russian by Father C. Tontini. See also Pierre le Grand dans la litterature etrangere, by R. Minzloff (St. Petersburg, 1875). PETER II., emperor of Russia, born Oct. 23, 1715, died Feb. 9, 1730. His father, Alexis, was the eldest son of Peter the Great by Eu- doxia Lapukhin. The empress Catharine I. named him in her will as her successor on the throne, mainly through the influence of Men- shikoff, who seized the control of affairs on the death of the empress in 1727 and the ac- cession of Peter II., then only 12 years old. He designed to perpetuate the influence of his house by intermarriages with the imperial fam- ily; but the Dolgoruki family frustrated his ambition and caused him to be banished to Siberia. The young emperor was about to marry a princess Dolgoruki when he died suddenly, and was succeeded by Anna, the widow of the duke of Courland and daughter of Ivan, half brother of Peter the Great, who recalled the Menshikoffs and exiled the Dol- gorukis. The male line of Romanoff became extinct on the death of Peter II. PETER III., emperor of Russia, born in Kiel, Feb. 21, 1728, died at Ropsha, July 17, 1762. He was the son of the duke Charles Frederick of Holstein and of Anna Petrovna, a daughter of Peter the Great, and was first known as Duke Charles Peter Ulric of Holstein-Gottorp. According to the right of succession estab- lished by Peter the Great, he was designated in 1742 by the latter's daughter and his aunt, the empress Elizabeth Petrovna, as cesarovitch and successor to the throne ; and he was also destined by her, at the suggestion of Frederick the Great, to become the husband of the prin-/ cess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Catharine II. The marriage took place in September, 1745, but he led an unhappy life with Catharine. He ascended the throne on the death of Eliza- beth, Jan. 5, 1762, and immediately made peace and an offensive alliance with Frederick the Great, restoring to him the province of Prus- sia, which had been conquered by the Russians, and supplying him with an auxiliary army of 15,000 men. He was about to take the field against Denmark to enforce the claims of the house of Holstein-Gottorp upon Schleswig, when his wife usurped the throne (July 8-9), and he was deposed, arrested, and strangled in prison. (See CATHARINE II.) PETER, or Pedro, the name of several mon- archs of Castile, Portugal, and Brazil. For the more important of them, see PEDEO. PETER, Saint, one of the twelve apostles, born at Bethsaida in Galilee. He was the son of one Jonas or John, whence Christ calls him on one occasion (Matt. xvi. 17) by the surname Barjona or son of Jonah. His original name was Simon. Before his calling to the apos- tleship he had married and removed to Caper- naum on the lake of Gennesaret, where with his brother Andrew he followed the occupa- tion of a fisherman. It is probable that like Andrew he was a disciple of John the Baptist. It is related by St. John the Evangelist that the Baptist, standing with two of his disciples, saw Jesus pass by, and exclaimed: "Behold the Lamb of God ! " whereupon the disciples followed our Lord and remained with him all that day. One of these two was Andrew, who had no sooner discovered that Jesus was the Messiah than he sought out his brother and brought him to our Lord. "And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona ; thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation a stone." (John i. 42.) From the Greek word Trerpof, the equivalent of Cephas, the apostle received the name of Peter, which on a subsequent occa- sion Christ expressly gave to him, saying : " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church." (Matt. xvi. 18.) After their first intercourse with the Saviour, Peter and Andrew returned for a season to their oc- cupation of fishing, and were engaged in wash- ing their nets when Jesus, shortly after the commencement of his ministry, walking by the sea of Galilee, entered into Peter's boat to avoid the pressure of the multitude. Peter had toiled all the night and had taken noth- ing ; but at Christ's command he let down the 653 VOL. xni. 23