From The Lives of the Popes from the Time of our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Accession of Gregory VII. Written Originally in Latin by B. Platina, Native of Cremona, and translated into English (from an anonymous translation, first printed in 1685 by Sir Paul Rycaut), Edited by William Benham, Volume I, London: Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh, [1888, undated in text]; pp. 115-116.
The Lives of the Popes,
BY
B. Platina
Volume I.
ANASTASIUS II.
A.D. 496-498.
ANASTASIUS the Second, a Roman, son of Fortunatus, was contemporary with the Emperor Anastasius. At which time Thorismund, king of the Vandals, shut up the churches of the orthodox clergy, and banished one hundred and twenty bishops into the Island of Sardinia. It is reported also that one Olympius, an Arian bishops, having publicly in the baths at Carthage declared his detestation of the doctrine of the Trinity, was immediately smitten, and his body burnt with three flashes of lightning. And when Barbas, another bishop of the same faction, was going to baptize a certain person in this form of words: “Barbas baptizeth thee in the name of the Father, by the Son, and in the Holy Ghost,” it is said the water disappeared; which miracle so wrought upon the man who was to be baptized, that he immediately came over to the orthodox.
It was this Bishop Anastasius, as some writers tell us, who excommunicated the Emperor Anastasius for favouring Acacius; though afterwards being himself seduced by the same heretic, and endeavouring privately to recall him from exile, he thereby very much alienated the minds of his clergy, who for that reason, and also because, without the consent of the Catholics, he communicated with Photinus, a 116 deacon of Thessalonica, and an assertor of the Acacian heresy, withdrew themselves from him. It is generally reported that, the Divine vengeance pursuing him for this apostasy, he died suddenly; and some say that the particular manner of his death was that, going to ease nature, he purged out his bowels into the privy. In his time Fulgentius an African, Bishop of Ruspæ, though he were among the other orthodox bishops of Africa banished into Sardinia by Thorismund, yet neglected nothing that might contribute to the propagating of the Catholic faith, whether by exhortation, preaching, or admonition. He likewise published several books of the Trinity, of free-will, and the rule of faith; and, besides the several elegant and grave homilies he made to the people, he wrote against the Pelagian heresy. The learned Hegesippus also, who composed monastical constitutions, and in an elegant style wrote the life of St Severinus the abbot, was at this time very serviceable to the Church. Moreover, Faustus, a Gallican bishop, was now a considerable writer; but among all his works, the most in esteem was his tract against Arius, wherein he maintains the persons in the Trinity to be co-essential. He wrote also against those who asserted any created being to be incorporeal, demonstrating both by the judgment of the fathers, and from the testimonies of holy writ, that God only is purely and properly incorporeal. But I shall here conclude the pontificate of Anastasius, who, at one Decembrian ordination, having made twelve presbyters and sixteen bishops, was buried in St Peter’s Church, November 19th. He sat in the chair one year, ten months, twenty-four days; and by his death the see was vacant four days.
Previous Pope: 51. Gelasius I. 52. Anastasius II. Next Pope: 10. Symmachus I.