ANATOLIUS, patriarch of CONSTANTINOPLE. — Born in Alexandria, died 3 July 458. Patriarch Dioscorus caused him to be elevated to the see of Constantinople, which he occupied from December 449 to 3 July 458. At the Council of Constantinople (21 October 450), in the presence of four legates of the Pope, he subscribed the papal Letter to Flavian, known as the Tome of Leo. (For a Syriac fragment of the lost acts of the Council cf. P. Mouterde, in Miscellanea dell’Università di Beirut, 15 [1930], pp. 33–50; and for the Tome of Leo cf. Leonis Epist., 80, 85; PL 54, 912–922). At the Council of Chalcedon, which convened immediately afterward (October 451), he approved the deposition of Dioscorus; he was a member of the commission that drew up the Council’s definitive formula of faith; he approved the famous 28th canon on the privileges of the see of Constantinople and personally wrote to the Pope to request its confirmation (Epistola ad Leonem, 4; PL 54, 984 A). It is known, however, that his efforts, like those of the Council Fathers and the emperor in the same matter, were fruitless (v. CALCEDONIA).
After the Council of Chalcedon, A.’s relations with Pope Leo were rather tense. Having removed the archdeacon Aetius from office in order to replace him with a certain Andreas, suspected of Eutychianism, the Pope rebuked him and ordered and secured the restoration of Aetius to his office. The question of the two Eutychian priests, Atticus and Andreas, was the subject of negotiations between Leo and A. when the latter died. If, on the one hand, A.’s praiseworthy zeal in ensuring the triumph of Chalcedonian orthodoxy against the Monophysites of Egypt earned him the Pope’s congratulations together with exhortations to vigilance, on the other hand it is certain that St Leo placed only moderate trust in him. The Byzantines have made him a saint and, at the same time, a martyr, and celebrate his feast on 3 July.