Anastasius

The personal name Anastasius, from the Greek Anastasios meaning resurrection, was extremely common in late antique and medieval Christianity. It was borne by several bishops of Rome, by patriarchs and monks of the Eastern churches, and by a number of martyrs and confessors whose cults appear in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Coptic calendars. The present query gives no epithet, diocese, century, or feast day that would permit a unique historical identification. A careful historian therefore cannot assign a single verified year of birth, year of death, or place of origin to Anastasius as named.

Among Roman pontiffs, Anastasius I, who died in 401 after a short pontificate beginning in 399, is known from correspondence involving Paulinus of Nola and from his condemnation of Origenist opinions in the wake of the Rufinus controversy; later tradition placed his burial in the Catacomb of Pontian and assigned him a feast on 19 December. Anastasius II, pope from 496 to 498, attempted to restore communion with Constantinople after the Acacian schism and died in November 498; medieval Western memory of him was mixed. Anastasius III in the early tenth century and Anastasius IV in the mid-twelfth century belong to later medieval Rome. None of these identifications can be assumed from the bare name.

In the Christian East, Anastasius of Sinai, abbot of the monastery of Saint Catherine in the seventh century, composed the Hodegos against Miaphysite teaching and a collection of questions and answers on pastoral and doctrinal problems. A Persian soldier originally called Magundat, converted after the Sasanian capture of the True Cross in 614, took the baptismal name Anastasius, lived as a monk at the lavra of Saint Sabas, and was martyred in 628; his Greek passion circulated widely and relics associated with him were later venerated in Jerusalem and at Rome. Other local figures include Anastasius the Fuller, associated with Aquileia, and various Byzantine hymnographers and minor martyrs. Coptic sources also record a Pope Anastasius of Alexandria in the early seventh century, and Constantinople had a patriarch Anastasius in the eighth century during the first iconoclastic period.

Because these lives differ in date, geography, office, marital status, and manner of death, data fields that require one verified fact cannot be completed without an arbitrary choice among homonyms. Patronages, canonization processes, and burial sites likewise attach to particular cults, not to the name in the abstract. Until the subject is specified by a distinguishing title, see, or reliable source, those items must remain blank.