ANASTASIUS THE APOCRISARIUS. - Apocrisiary of the Roman Church at Constantinople, not to be confused with another monk Anastasius who was his companion in martyrdom and who died on 24 July 662. A disciple of St. Maximus the Confessor, 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 cut off. Sent to Thusum, at the foot of the Caucasus, he died there as a martyr on 11 Oct. 666.
We have from him an account of the trial instigated against St. Maximus at 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 Gangra, in which he narrates the persecutions and sufferings endured by him and by two of his companions, the monk Anastasius and St. Maximus (ibid., 173-94). The letter, which closes with a patristic florilegium against Monothelitism, has come down to us only in a Latin translation. In all likelihood certain critics, among them J. Stiglmayr (Byz. Zeitschr., 18[1909], pp. 14-40), attribute to our apocrisiary the patristic compilation entitled: Doctrina Patrum de incarnatione Verbi, published by F. Diekamp (Münster in W. 1907), a veritable panoply against the Christological heresies. Others, however, give the name of Anastasius the Sinaite: thus D. Serruys, in Mélanges d'Archéologie et d'Histoire, 22 (1902), p. 155 and add., and Diekamp himself.
Bibliography3 works
Martino Jugie