Anastasius Sinaita

Anastasius Sinaita, also known as Anastasius of Sinai, was a Greek Christian monk, priest, and ecclesiastical writer of the seventh century, closely associated with the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai, of which he became abbot (hegumen). Very little can be established with certainty about his origins or early life. No reliable source records his place or date of birth, and later attempts to place his family in Alexandria, Syria, or elsewhere remain conjectural. He belongs to the generation of Greek theologians who lived through the Arab conquests of the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire and through the Christological controversies that followed the Council of Chalcedon, above all Monophysitism (Miaphysitism) and Monothelitism. He is distinct from earlier patriarchs of Antioch who also bore the name Anastasius.

He spent much of his mature life as a monk on Mount Sinai and eventually served as hegumen of the monastery there. From Sinai he undertook journeys into Egypt, Syria, and possibly other regions of the Near East, where he engaged in public disputations with non-Chalcedonian Christians and sought to defend the doctrine of two natures in Christ. Internal evidence in his writings shows familiarity with conditions in Egypt after the Islamic conquest and with the arguments of Severan and other anti-Chalcedonian teachers. He was still active after the year 700, which is the only reasonably secure chronological marker for the close of his career; the precise date and place of his death are otherwise unknown. There is no evidence that he ever held a patriarchal or papal see, and his life was that of a Sinai monk and priest rather than of a married cleric.

Anastasius is remembered chiefly as an author. His principal work, the Hodegos or Viae Dux (The Guide), is a polemical handbook intended to equip orthodox clergy and monks against Monophysite objections. It combines scriptural and patristic florilegia with logical argument and reports of debates. He also composed a collection of Questions and Answers (Quaestiones et Responsiones) treating pastoral, liturgical, and doctrinal problems that arose in the life of the church under new political circumstances. Homilies attributed to him include discourses on the Transfiguration and on Psalm 6. A Hexaemeron, or commentary on the six days of creation, has been transmitted under his name, though modern scholars have debated the extent of his authorship of that text. Several shorter anti-Monothelite pieces are likewise associated with him.

In later tradition Anastasius was numbered among the saints of the Eastern Church and is commemorated on 21 April; Latin Christianity likewise retained his memory, and excerpts from his works circulated in medieval florilegia. Because so few contemporary biographical notices survive, the reconstruction of his career depends almost entirely on the internal testimony of the writings that can be securely ascribed to him and on the later liturgical and manuscript tradition that preserved his name. He remains an important witness to Greek orthodox theology and monastic culture in the decades after the Arab conquest of Egypt and the Levant.