ANASTASIUS, LIBRARIAN. - Born probably in Rome around 817, he received in the urban monasteries a solid cultural formation in Latin and Greek. Created cardinal priest of St. Marcellus by Leo IV around 847, he was excommunicated and struck with anathema by the same pope in a synod held in Rome on 19 June 853 for having abandoned his post and refused to return to it despite repeated summonses. Ambitious, of a very elastic conscience, he militated in the imperial party in the hope of ascending to the papal throne. In 855, as soon as Benedict III was elected, he returned to Rome with a strong army, but his attempt to occupy the Lateran failed. Defeated, he received the Pope's pardon, who reduced him to the lay state. When Nicholas I ascended the papal throne in 858, A. returned to favor and became the Pope's adviser, a position he also maintained under the subsequent pontificates of Adrian II and John VIII, becoming one of the most important figures of the time. He took a prominent part in the controversies with Photius, which opened the schism of the Eastern Church. He attended the last session of the Eighth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople (869-70), from which he brought back to Rome a copy of the Acts that, at the invitation of Adrian II, he translated into Latin (871) and which is the only one preserved. Later (873), by order of John VIII, he also translated into Latin the Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, held at Nicaea (787). After 877 the name of A. no longer appears in documents, and we do not know the year of his death.
Almost all of A.'s works are Latin translations from the Greek. Among these, those particularly concerning ecclesiastical history are: Versiones gestorum synodorum VII et VIII (Pl. 129, 205-542, 27-196); Collectanea, that is, translations concerning the question of Monotheletism and of Pope Honorius I (ibid., 557-690); Acta s. Martini papae (ibid., 585-609); Historia ecclesiastica (ed. C. De Boer, Theophanis Chronographia, II, Leipzig 1885, pp. 31-346), expanded in accordance with the tripartite history of Cassiodorus from the histories of Nicephorus, Syncellus and Theophanes, translated into Latin by A. The remainder of the works are translations of lives of Greek saints. To each of these A. prefixed prefaces or explanatory letters (MGH, Epist., VII, pp. 395-442), some of which are of singular importance, especially those that relate to the acts of the councils VII and VIII (ibid., pp. 403-18).
To A. was attributed, wrongly, by Onofrio Panvinio the Liber Pontificalis, an attribution often repeated down to our own days. It seems, on the other hand, beyond doubt that A. is the author of the life of Nicholas I, but there is no lack of scholars who contest it.
Bibliography4 works
Benedetto Pesci