Anastasius The Quaestor Or The Stammerer (ANASTASIO IL QUESTORE O IL BALBO)

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

ANASTASIO the QUAESTOR or the BALBO. - An original hymnographer and melodist of the 10th century. All that is known of him is that in 907 he held the office of quaestor at Constantinople. One of his celebrated Funeral Canticles helped to restore to favour a poetic genre then almost overwhelmed by the canons. In the canons he composed, departing from common Byzantine versification, he employed the second ode in an original manner, not in rhythmic verses but in iambic metres.

Article illustration — (from Serafini, *Monete e Bolle pontificie*) ANASTASIO III, pope - Silver coin.

He cultivated melody successfully, as is shown by the Hymns or model Strophes he left us; he also wrote a Panegyric or Encomium for St. Agathonikos, martyr, published in the Analecta Bollandiana, 5 (1886), p. 396.

As the probable author of epigrammatic verses, he has been credited with the epigram which appears under the name of Anastasio il Balbo in the Anthology (XV, 28; ed. F. Didot, II, Paris, p. 512), in 14 dactylic hexameter verses on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

BIBL.: E. Bouvy, Le cantique funèbre d'Anastase, in Echos d'Orient, 1 (1898), p. 262 ff.; S. Pétridès, Les deux mélodies du nom d'Anastase, in Revue de l'Orient Chrétien, 6 (1901), p. 444 ff.; C. Hémérus, Hymnographi Byzantini, in Echos d'Orient, 21 (1922), p. 264.