He is only attested from the sole surviving manuscript of this text, and owing to textual contradictions and doubts over the authenticity of its provenance, there is no scholarly consensus on Peter's identity, or even his historical existence.
[1] According the narrative contained within the History, Peter was sent as a legate from the Byzantine emperor Basil I to the Paulician leader Chrysocheir in 869–70, negotiating for an exchange of prisoners.
Historians of the Paulicians have since debated the authenticity of the text inconclusively, with some scholars such as Nina Garsoïan arguing that it is a later, 10th-century forgery, and others such as Paul Lemerle defending its 9th-century background.
[5] Adding to the complexity of this debate, the text in its surviving form contains multiple narrative layers, the core content revolving around the mission to Tephrike to the east being couched within an appeal to suppress the spread of the heresy in Bulgaria.
The text in its existing form is subtitled "disguised as if written to the Archbishop of Bulgaria" (προσωποποιηθεῖσα ὡσ πρὸς τὸν ἀρχιεπίσκοπον Βουλγαρίας), perhaps a recognition by a later hand of the difficulty of reconciling these components.