ASTERIO, bishop of AMASEA. — He lived between the 4th and 5th centuries, and we have no information about his life except that, before becoming bishop of Amasea, he was a rhetorician and lawyer in Pontus toward the end of the 4th century. One of his sermons (Against the Feast of the Calends; PG 40, 224–25) was delivered in the year 400. The Seventh Ecumenical Council (Second of Nicaea) appeals to his testimony to prove the antiquity of the cult of images (Mansi, XIII, cols. 16–17, 305, 308–309).
Twenty-one complete sermons and discourses by him survive, published by various authors between 1615 and 1681 and collected in PG 40, 163–478. Long excerpts from six other sermons, which have been lost, are provided by Photius (Bibliotheca, cod. 271; PG 104, 204–16, 221–24; cf. Quaestio 312 ad Amphilochium; PG 101, 1161). The authenticity of the discourse on St. Stephen the Protomartyr is disputed: it may belong to St. Proclus. On the other hand, sermons 13 and 14 are genuinely his, although they have sometimes been printed under the name of St. Gregory of Nyssa (cf. PG 46, 539).
The brief discourse on the martyr St. Euphemia of Chalcedon is more a rhetorical exercise than a sermon. From this passage, the Second Council of Nicaea draws a valuable testi-
testimony concerning the cult of images. The Acta SS. Aprilis, III, Paris 1866, pp. 420–27, published under A.’s name a life of St. Basil of Amasea. A. appears in the calendar on 30 October (cf. V. Buck, De sancto A. in Acta SS. Octobris, XIII, Paris 1883, pp. 330–34). In his sermons, whose language is pure and style exceptionally polished, he presented Demosthenes as his model (Oratio XI; PG, 40, 333). A. aimed above all at the instruction of the faithful. He dealt little with dogma and did not engage in polemics against heretics at all.