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St. Anastasius
St. Anastasius
Bishop of Antioch, A.D. 559, distinguished for his learning and austerity of life, excited the enmity of the Emperor Justinian by opposing certain imperial doctrines about the Body of Christ. He was to he deposed from his see and exiled, when Justinian died; but Justin II carried out his uncles purpose five years later, and another bishop, named Gregory, was put in his place; on the death of that prelate in 593, Anastasius was restored to his see. This was chiefly due to Pope Gregory the Great, who interceded with the Emperor Maurice and his son Theodosius, asking that Anastasius be sent to Rome, if not reinstated at Antioch. From some letters sent to him by Gregory, it is thought that he was not sufficiently vigorous in denouncing the claims of the Patriarch of Constantinople to be universal bishop. He died in 598, and another bishop of the same name is said to have succeeded him in 599, to whom the translation Gregory's "Regula Pastoralis" is attributed, and who is recorded as having been put to death in an insurrection of the Jews. Nicephorus (Hist. Eccl., XVIII, xliv) (declares that these two are one and the same person. The same difficulty occurs with regard to certain Sermons de orthodoxâ fide, some ascribing them to the latter Anastasius; others claiming that there was but one bishop of that name.
Acta, SS., 21 April; BUTLER, Lives of the Saints, 21 April; MICHAUD, Biog. Univ.; VENABLES in, Dict. Christ. Biog.
T.J. CAMPBELL
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St. Anastasius
St. Anastasius
St. Anastasius, once a magician, became a convert of the Holy Cross and was martyred in 628. He was a soldier in the army of Chosroes when that monarch carried the Cross from Jerusalem to Persia. The occasion prompted him to ask for information; then he left the army, became a Christian, and afterwards a monk in Jerusalem. His Persian name, Magundat, he changed to Anastasius. After seven years of the most exact monastic observance, he was moved, as he thought, by the Holy Ghost to go in quest of martyrdom and went to Cæsarea, then subject to the Persians. Reproaching his countrymen for their magic and fireworship, both of which he had once practised, he was taken prisoner, cruelly tortured to make him abjure, amid finally carried down near the Euphrates, to a place called Barsaloe, or Bethsaloe, according to the Bollandists, where his sufferings were renewed while at the same time the highest honours in the service of King Chosroes were promised him if he would renounce Christianity. Finally, with seventy others, he was strangled to death and decapitated, 22 January, 628. His body, which was thrown to the dogs, but was left untouched by them, was carried thence to Palestine, afterwards to Constantinople, and finally to Rome.
Acta SS., 3 Jan.; BUTLER, Lives of the Saints, 22 Jan.
T.J. CAMBELL
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