Anastasius the Apocrisiarius

Venerable Anastasius the Apocrisiarius, a monk of Constantinople, disciple of Saint Maximus the Confessor, was a confessor of the right faith against the Monothelites and reposed in the year 662. He is commemorated on 3 February.

He was born in a distinguished Byzantine family and received a brilliant education. Before his tonsure he was secretary to Empress Eudocia, the first wife of Emperor Heraclius. In 617 he came to know Venerable Maximus the Confessor and soon became his spiritual son. For the thirty-⁠seven years that followed he scarcely left his teacher, labouring with him in the monasteries of Chrysopolis and of Saint George at Cyzicus (now Bandirma, in Turkey), and accompanied him in his forced wanderings in North Africa (about 630 to 645) and Italy (645 to 653). He wrote the life of his teacher.

About 653 he was arrested together with Maximus for his struggle against Monothelitism and sent to Constantinople. At the imperial trial he rejected the slanderous charges, mostly political, brought against Venerable Maximus, and was sentenced to exile in the town of Perberis, on the border of Macedonia and Thessaly (in present-⁠day Greece); his teacher was exiled to Bizye in Thrace. At the beginning of 662, when Venerable Maximus was summoned a second time to Constantinople and condemned at a Council, Venerable Anastasius shared his confessor's labour: he was scourged, his tongue and right hand were cut off, and he was exiled to the fortress of Schemaris in Lazica (now Georgia) and then to a fortress in the land of the Svans. Venerable Anastasius reposed on the way, on 24 July 662, a few days before Venerable Maximus.