WEAVING THE PILGRIM'S CROWN WEAVING THE PILGRIM'S CROWN: JOHN RUFUS'S VIEW OF PETER THE IBERIAN'S JOURNEYS IN LATE ANTIQUE PALESTINE1 CORNELIA B. HORN Martyrdom and pilgrimage were central experiences in the lives of early Christians. Those two elements seem closely interwoven in the career of Pe- ter the Iberian, the influential fifth-century anti-Chalcedonian monk and bishop of Maiuma, Gaza. Their connectedness in Peter's life is an important key for understanding how anti-Chalcedonians interpreted their experiences of being a repressed minority in Palestine in the fifth and early sixth centu- ries A.D. PETER'S JOURNEYS Peter the Iberian was born in A.D. 412 or 417 in Georgia as son of the royal couple Bosmarios and Bakurduktia.2 He died on December 1, 491 A.D., on an estate of the late Empress Eudocia in the vicinity of Jamnia in South- Western Palestine.3 Jamnia was about a day and a night's journey north of Maiuma, the port-city of Gaza,4 where Peter had been both the anti- 1 I am grateful to Janet A. Timbie, Jason Zaborowski, Sidney H. Griffith, Susan Ash- brook Harvey, and especially Philip Rousseau for constructive criticism and useful sugges- tions on earlier drafts of this paper. 2 Vita Petri Iberi 5. Reference will be made throughout to the pages of the critical edition of the Syriac text of Peter's biography. It is published, accompanied by a German transla- tion, in Richard Raabe, Petrus der Iberer: ein Charakterbild zur Kirchen- und Sitten- geschichte des 5. Jahrhunderts; syrische Übersetzung einer um das Jahr 500 verfassten griechi- schen Biographie (Leipzig, 1895); abbreviated as Vita Petri Iberi. 3 For a discussion of the chronology of Peter's life see Paul Devos, ‘Quand Pierre l'Ibère vint-il à Jérusalem?’, Analecta Bollandiana, 86 (1968), pp. 337-350. For an account of his stay on Eudocia's property in Jamnia see Vita Petri Iberi 123 and 126. 4 Cf. Vita Petri Iberi 138 and 141, from where it becomes clear that Peter's disciples went on their way with the dead body of the saint after the early morning service. They arrived in Maiuma shortly before daybreak on the following day. 172 CORNELIA B. HORN Chalcedonian bishop and the head of a monastic community of anti- Chalcedonians.5 One of the striking characteristics of Peter's life is the fact that he was a constant traveler, often covering great distances over long periods of time. Already when the young prince was only twelve years old, conflicts between the Eastern Roman Empire, Georgia, and Persia were such that Theodosius II demanded that Peter be sent as hostage to the imperial court in Constan- tinople in order to ensure Georgian allegiance to Byzantium.6 Thus Peter went on his first long journey from Georgia to Constantinople, accompa- nied by an entourage of confidants and servants, well befitting a prince.7 Having grown up to young adulthood at the imperial court and showing early signs of a commitment to the ascetic life,8 Peter also conceived a burn- ing desire to embark on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, a second journey. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Places supplied him with the model for understanding the rest of his life as that of a pilgrim. In the Holy Land, he became an influential member of the monastic community, en- dowed with authority both through his ascetic achievements and through his imperial connections.9 For a while, Peter dwelt in Jerusalem's monastic quarters on the Mount of Olives and south of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In a third journey, he moved from the busy, pilgrim-centered life 5 For a preliminary study of Peter's monastic settlements in the Gaza area, see Cornelia Horn, ‘Peter the Iberian and anti-Chalcedonian Monasticism in Gaza in the Light of Old and New Sources’, unpublished manuscript of a paper presented at the Mid-Atlantic Re- gional Meeting of the American Academy of Religion / Society of Biblical Literature, Glen Mills, PA (March, 2000). 6 For a detailed discussion of Theodosius II's demand, the difficulties King Bosmarios faced, and Peter's role as a hostage at the imperial palace in Constantinople see Cornelia Horn, ‘Befriending the Christian Romans or the impious Persians? – The Vita Petri Iberi on Byzantine-Georgian Relations in the Fifth Century AD,’ unpublished manuscript of a paper presented at the Byzantine Studies Conference, University of Maryland (November, 1999). 7 Vita Petri Iberi 16, where Rufus describes Peter as traveling ‘with a great train and honor.’ 8 Vita Petri Iberi 16-19. 9 For the importance of Peter's connections to the imperial court in Constantinople, see, e.g., Plerophoriae 56. Reference is made to the section numbers in the critical edition of the Syriac text of the Plerophoriae. F. Nau published it together with a French translation by M. Brière and supplementary sections of related Greek materials in Jean Rufus, Évêque de Maïouma, Plérophories, c.-à-d. témoignages et révélations, PO, 8/1 (Paris, 1911). It is abbreviated in the following as Plerophoriae. WEAVING THE PILGRIM'S CROWN 173 of the Holy City to the quieter area of Maiuma, where again he lived in a monastery. In the aftermath of the Council of Chalcedon and the revolt of the Palestinian monks against Bishop Juvenal of Jerusalem, Peter became the anti-Chalcedonian bishop of Maiuma. Juvenal's return to the see of Jerusa- lem and the subsequent expulsion from Palestine of anti-Chalcedonian monks and bishops also urged Peter to take off to Egypt and Alexandria in a fourth significant journey.10 While living in Egypt for more than two dec- ades, he made a fifth set of journeys between Alexandria and Oxyrhyn- chus,11 visited ‘places in the Thebaid’,12 and went to ‘many other cities and villages of Egypt’.13 He assisted in the teaching and proclamation of the anti-Chalcedonian faith wherever he went. In a sixth journey, which took place before A.D. 475, Peter returned to the greater Gaza area, where he be- came instrumental in turning that southern region of Palestine into a center of anti-Chalcedonianism.14 For the sake of convenience, one may summa- rize the final one and a half decades of his life under the heading ‘missionary travels’. These travels constitute a remarkable seventh period of journeying in the eastern parts of Palaestina Prima, including the greater Jerusalem area, in Arabia, and in Phoenicia. Throughout that last period of traveling, Peter brought about the conversion of non-Christians and Chalcedonian Chris- 10 On the basis of Zachariah the Rhetor, Chronicle III.5 and III.7, one could be led to think that Peter was never physically forced to leave Palestine, but rather was granted ex- plicit permission to stay if he wished to do so. For an English translation of the Chronicle, see Zachariah of Mitylene, The Syriac Chronicle, Known as That of Zachariah of Mitylene, translated by F. J. Hamilton and E. W. Brooks (London, 1899), here pp. 52 and 54. Note also the useful German translation, published by K. Ahrens and G. Kruger as Zachariah Rhetor under the title Die sogenannte Kirchengeschichte des Zacharias Rhetor in deutscher Übersetzung (Leipzig, 1899). Rufus's text at Vita Petri Iberi 57-58 merely says that in con- formity with Bishop Theodosius's advice Peter ‘was departing to Egypt’. It seems reason- able to assume that even if Peter was granted an exception to the rule and not expelled together with the rest of the anti-Chalcedonian bishops, the psychological pressure urging him to follow his fellow believers out of solidarity may have been the decisive element which prompted him to leave. In the end, also Zachariah states that Peter ‘joined those who were expelled, and departed with them’. See The Syriac Chronicle, p. 54. 11 For an account of Peter's stay in Egypt, see Vita Petri Iberi 58-77. Rufus seems to think of Alexandria as a part of Egypt when, e.g., at Vita Petri Iberi 77, he says, ‘[w]hen he had thus passed a considerable time in Alexandria and in the rest of Egypt’. 12 Vita Petri Iberi 60. 13 Vita Petri Iberi 71. 14 Vita Petri Iberi 77 and 79. Peter was back in Palestine before Timothy Aelurus's return from exile in A.D. 475. 174 CORNELIA B. HORN tians to the anti-Chalcedonian faith. On his return journey from Phoenicia, while lodging in Ashdod late in the summer of A.D. 491, Peter clearly ex- pressed his wish not to return to his home monastery, but to ‘be perfected in a foreign country and weave also in the end the crown of a good pil- grimage’.15 This very brief overview of Peter's many journeys shows already that in part, his travels were forced upon him and in part he sought them out by himself. The motives for his travels varied: political considerations, the de- sire to be a pilgrim, the pressure of persecutions, which anti-Chalcedonians experienced in Palestine, and missionary endeavors in an effort to spread the anti-Chalcedonian faith and strengthen existing anti-Chalcedonian commu- nities. Most fundamental among the motivations was Peter's desire for pil- grimage, which framed his whole life. However, before turning to an investi- gation of what being a pilgrim and desiring to gain ‘the crown of a good pilgrimage’ meant for Peter, one should first take a look at the main sources of information about him. JOHN RUFUS: TRAVEL COMPANION AND BIOGRAPHER When Peter died in A.D.