ANASTASIUS II, POPE. — Successor of Gelasius I, he was consecrated on 24 November 496 and died on 19 November 498. He first of all concerned himself with restoring relations with the Churches of the East, which had been severed since 484 because of the schism of Acacius. He therefore sent two bishops, Cresconius and Germanus, to Constantinople with the task of communicating his election to Emperor Anastasius I and delivering a friendly letter to him. In it, the Pope exhorted him not to break the unity of the Church on account of a single individual justly condemned, and asked that the name of Acacius be removed from the diptychs; however, he declared that he recognized the baptisms and ordinations conferred by Acacius (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 744). The results of this mission were, however, meagre, despite the personal intrigues of the senator Festus, an envoy of Theodoric.
The conciliatory attitude of A. aroused critical reactions among the clergy of Rome, especially after the Pope’s benevolent reception of the deacon Photinus, delegate of Andrew, bishop of Thessalonica—once a staunch supporter of Acacius—to report, it seems, on the strong anti-Acacian reaction that had occurred in the aforementioned diocese (cf. letter of 497: Jaffé-Wattenbach, 746). Indeed, according to the *Liber Pontificalis* (ed. Duchesne, I, p. 258), part of the Roman clergy would have even separated from communion with A. The same source, very hostile to the Pontiff, sees in his premature death a punishment from God and attributes to him the intention of rehabilitating the memory of Acacius. This is false and contradicts the Pope’s genuine letters. Nevertheless, the unfavourable judgment of the *Liber Pontificalis* contributed greatly to defaming his memory in the Middle Ages, so much so that Dante (Inf., XI, vv. 6-9) places him in the sixth circle among the heretics.
Of this Pope, we possess one letter from 497, containing a profession of faith in Christ (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 747), and another sent to the bishops of Gaul in 498 (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 751), in which he condemns traducianism (v.). It is now almost universally accepted that the letter which A. is said to have sent to Clovis (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 745) on the occasion of his baptism is a forgery from the 17th century, due to Girolamo Vignier.
Pietro Goggi – A. Pietro Frutaz