ANASTASIO L'APOCRISARIO. — Apocrisarius of the Roman Church in Constantinople, not to be confused with another monk Anastasio, who was his companion in martyrdom and died on 24 July 662. A disciple of s. Massimo il Confessore, A. was arrested by order of Constans II, exiled first to Trebizond (647–48), then to Mesembria, and finally brought back to Constantinople in 662, where, condemned by a conciliabulum, he had his tongue torn out and his right hand severed. Sent to Thusum, at the foot of the Caucasus, he died there a martyr on 11 October 666.
We possess from him an account of the trial brought against s. Massimo in Constantinople in 654 (PG 90, 109–30), another account of the interrogation undergone by the same saint at Bizya in 656 (ibid., 135–70), and a letter to Theodosius of Granga, in which he relates the persecutions and sufferings endured by himself and by two of his companions, the monk Anastasio and s. Massimo (ibid., 173–94). The letter, which closes with a patristic florilegium against Monothelitism, has come down to us only in a Latin translation. With considerable probability, certain critics, among them J. Stiglmayr (Byz. Zeitschr., 18[1909], pp. 14–40), attribute to our apocrisarius the patristic compilation entitled: Doctrina Patrum de incarnatione Verbi, published by F. Diekamp (Münster in V. 1907), a true panoply against the Christological heresies. Others, however, name Anastasio il Sinaita: thus D. Serruys, in Mélanges d'Archéologie et d'Histoire, 22 (1902), p. 155 following, and Diekamp himself.