Our venerable father Peter the Athonite was a ninth century monk who lived on Mount Athos. Peter was born of noble parents in Constantinople in the ninth century. Sent forth with the Roman army against the Saracens, he was taken captive and shut up in the prison of Samarra in Syria; this is no doubt the same prison in which the Forty-Two Martyrs of Amorion were kept (March 6). Released from prison through the prayers of Saint Nicholas of Myra and Saint Simeon the God-receiver, he fled to Rome, where he became a monk, and later came to the peninsula of Athos, where he lived in a cave as a solitary, suffering many temptations from the evil one, but also enjoying the manifest help of the most holy Theotokos. He reposed in peace and is commemorated June 12.