Pedro de Mezonzo was born about the year 930 at Curtis in Galicia. His father was Martín Placentiz, a Galician knight of the family that had founded the monastery of Santa Eulalia de Curtis; his mother was Mustacia Exióniz. Among his brothers and sisters were Adelfio, who also became a monk, Vimara, father of a bishop of Ourense of the same name, and his sisters Aragaonta and Mustacia. From childhood he was consecrated to God's service: his mother placed him as chaplain in the household of Paterna Gundesíndez, wife of Count Hermenegildo Alóitez and mother of Bishop Sisnando II of Iria.
He then entered the monastery of Santa María de Mezonzo, from which he took the name by which the Church remembers him. The house was described as "exceedingly abundant in books," and there the young monk drank deeply of the classical authors and of the Fathers of the Church, gaining a reputation for both intellectual and human wisdom. When in 955 the great abbey of Santa María de Sobrado absorbed Mezonzo, Pedro passed to Sobrado, where he served as notary.
In 965 he was elected abbot. Under his government the prestige of Sobrado rose so high that Bishop Sisnando with his brother Rodrigo and his sister Elvira donated to it all their goods, and King Ramiro III of León granted it important royal privileges, so that it became one of the foremost religious centers of Christian Spain. Yet those were years of terror. The lands of Sobrado suffered the horror normandorum, the bloody incursions of Viking invaders which left the countryside shaking with fear. While the crown of León proved unable to defend Galicia — the raiders were finally put to flight by Saint Rosendo of Celanova and Count Gonzalo — Pedro's task was to keep hope and trust alive in a terrified and restless people. When the storm passed, he labored to rebuild the ruined monastery of Santa Eulalia, to reorganize the lands and households dependent on Sobrado, and to console the helpless and succor the wounded and the ruined.
Later he was placed at the head of the monastery of San Pelayo de Antealtares in Compostela, his government favored by Saint Rosendo, then presiding over the see of Iria Flavia–Santiago; he accompanied Rosendo to the council held at León for the suppression of the bishopric of Simancas. In these same years Bermudo II, raised up by the Galician nobility, came to reign in Galicia and then over the whole kingdom of León. Pedro's authority suffered no diminution under the new king; in 985 he received donations from Count Tello Alvítez with the blessing of Bishops Saint Viliulfo of Tui, Hermenegildo of Lugo, Armentario of Dumio, Gonzalo of Ourense and Payo of Iria–Santiago.
When Payo Rodríguez resigned the mitre, every vote converged upon Mezonzo. On 16 November 985 he signed a document as bishop of Iria and of the Apostolic See. That year he took part in the assembly convoked by Bermudo II to confirm his peaceful lordship over the whole realm of León; in January 986 he confirmed a royal diploma for the monastery of San Salvador de Celanova, and on 7 February received from the king a privilege granting his church the lands of knights captured and martyred by Almanzor after the devastation of Simancas. Later the king gave him the domains of Salvatierra in southern Galicia and Portomarín in the center, some of them granted in usufruct even should he ever resign the see of Compostela — a clear sign of the affection and veneration the king bore toward his charismatic bishop.
When the Galician magnates Suero Gundemariz, Gonzalo Menéndez, Galindo and Osorio Díaz, dissatisfied with the new order and drawn toward alliance with the victorious Almanzor, rose in revolt, Pedro remained faithful to his king and was never a cause of division or turbulence. In those hours of anguish and uncertainty king and bishop together favored the hermits of Mount Ilicino, the Pico Sacro, that they might assist the people with prayers and supplications. He also settled peacefully certain disputes between Sobrado and the diocese of Lugo, signed agreements of concord with the monastery of Samos, restored the lands and buildings of the convent of San Estevo de Boiro, ruined by the Northmen, annexing it to Antealtares, and at San Martiño Pinario built a fitting church for the monks so that divine worship might continue at a time when that house lay outside the city walls and going up to the cathedral was perilous.
In 997 Almanzor launched another of his terrible and victorious campaigns. His infantry embarked at Córdoba and entered by the Duero to join his cavalry, reinforced by Galician and Leonese counts who had gambled on the Muslim commander's superiority. They crossed the Miño, laid Salvatierra waste, destroyed the city of Tui and sacked the convent of Saints Cosmas and Damian while the monks fled to the mountains and to the island of San Simón; after storming the castle of Ponte Sampaio they turned toward the lands of Santiago. Mezonzo ordered the evacuation of the city, carrying away with him the relics of the Apostle and saving the lives of a people he would not expose to a manifestly useless fight. Silent and deserted, Compostela was left to the invader. For eight days there was nothing but pillage and burning; the spiritual capital of the Christian West was reduced to ashes, and Almanzor returned with four thousand prisoners, forcing some of them, as a final humiliation, to carry on their shoulders the bells and the doors of the apostolic sanctuary to be set up in the great mosque of Córdoba.
After this torrent of destruction the bishop gave himself to an intense and rapid work of restoration of his cities, towns and monasteries, among them the convent of San Lorenzo de Carboeiro, and above all to renewing the desolate and disconsolate spirit of his faithful. In 999 King Bermudo II died, leaving several illegitimate sons and one legitimate heir, a child of five. To prevent fresh upheavals in the Christian kingdoms, the boy's guardian, the Galician count Menendo González, and Pedro himself hastened to have him anointed at León; and at the very moment of the coronation the child king Alfonso V, guided by the count's hand, signed a privilege confirming Pedro de Mezonzo as the first among the bishops of his kingdoms.
The documents of the age, especially the royal ones, bear witness to his moral stature: they call him "beloved of God," guardian of his flock in things material and spiritual. Queen Elvira, once widowed, called him her father and pontiff. On the strength of such testimonies and of local tradition, Antonio López Ferreiro described him as "father of the poor, guardian of the helpless, defender of the weak against the continual abuses and outrages of the powerful; and all who came to him received from him a kindly and fatherly welcome." Pedro himself, in his own writings, used no title but that of a sinner.
A venerable tradition, gathered by Pope Benedict XIV from the Benedictine Annals of Mabillon under the year 986 — where it is said of "Peter the Bishop, surnamed of Moson, who before his episcopate had been abbot of the monastery before the Altars in the same city of Compostela," that "he is said to have composed the holy antiphon of the Blessed Virgin, namely the Salve Regina" — attributes to him the beloved cry of the Christian people in tribulation and anguish, in which Mary is invoked as our life, our sweetness and our hope, and her merciful eyes are implored. Tradition adds that he composed it inspired by the image of Our Lady of the Great Eyes, patroness of Lugo, during the flight of the people of Compostela after Almanzor's sack of the city.
He died in 1003, after a lifetime of monastic fidelity, pastoral courage and fatherly charity, and has been venerated as a saint, a spiritual leader given to Galicia in its hour of greatest tribulation.
May Saint Pedro de Mezonzo obtain for us the hope that does not fail in disaster, and let us today, like him, turn to the Mother of Mercy on behalf of all who mourn and weep in this valley of tears.
