### ANASTASIA, Saint, Martyr
This is a martyr venerated on December 25, whose principal center of devotion was Sirmium. However, the late Latin *Passio*, which is the original source, imagines that A., having become a widow, left Rome to follow Chrysogonus, who had been imprisoned by order of Diocletian. After Chrysogonus was martyred, several other events of an absolutely romantic character follow. Among these is the martyrdom of the holy women Agape, Chione, and Irene, the priest Zoticus, and others (Theodota and her three sons). What we can be certain of is that the patriarch of Constantinople, Gennadius (458–71), had the body of A. brought from Sirmium and deposited in the sanctuary dedicated by him as τοῖς δαμόνιον ἐμᾶς δαλίας (Theodore the Reader, II, 65; PG 86, 216; Synax. Constantinop., p. 336). For the Greeks, the saint bore the epithet φερμακόλυπτα, perhaps in relation to miracles against poisonings. Legendary writers later added another A. called “the Roman” or “the Virgin,” thus complicating an already difficult and embellished problem.
In the Roman basilica of St. Anastasia, the introduction of the cult of the martyr of Sirmium is merely the result of a later association with the name of the foundress of the title. This basilica, located at the foot of the Palatine, received donations from Pope Damasus (366–84; cf. De Rossi, *Inscrip.*, II, Rome 1861, p. 150) and thus predates the cult of A.; it is only in the 6th century that the *titulus sanctae Anastasiae* is mentioned. Rejecting the hypothesis of Grisar, who thought of a parallel with the Jerusalem sanctuary of the Anastasis, the identification of the foundress proposed very acutely by Whitehead as a member of the Constantinian family remains plausible.
The basilica arose amid imposing imperial structures between the Palatine and the Circus Maximus. Among classical and Christian constructions, no fewer than nine periods can be distinguished. Perhaps the basilica originally (according to Krautheimer) had a single nave and may have been of cruciform type. Later it was transformed into a majestic three-aisled basilica. — See Pl. XCIV.
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### ANASTASIUS THE APOSTLICUS
Apostolicus of the Roman Church in Constantinople, not to be confused with another monk named Anastasius who was his companion in martyrdom and died on July 24, 662. A disciple of St. Maximus the Confessor, A. was arrested on the orders of Constans II, first exiled to Trebizond (647–48), then to Mesembria, and finally brought back to Constantinople in 662, where, condemned by a synod, he had his tongue torn out and his right hand cut off. Taken to Thusum at the foot of the Caucasus, he died there as a martyr on October 11, 666.
There survives a report of the trial held against St. Maximus in Constantinople in 654 (PG 90, 109–30), another account of the interrogation he underwent at Bizya in 656 (ibid., 135–70), and a letter to Theodore of Granga in which he recounts the persecutions and sufferings endured by himself and two companions, the monk Anastasius and St. Maximus (ibid., 173–94). The letter, which concludes with a patristic florilegium against Monothelitism, has come down to us only in a Latin translation. With considerable plausibility, some scholars, including J. Stiglmayr (*Byz. Zeitschr.*, 18 [1909], pp. 14–40), attribute to our Apostolicus the patristic compilation entitled *Doctrina Patrum de incarnatione Verbi*, published by F. Diekamp (Münster in V. 1907), a veritable armory against Christological heresies. Others, however, name Anastasius II Sinaita: thus D. Serruys, in *Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire*, 22 (1902), pp. 155 ff., and Diekamp himself.
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