Biography
Pope Anastasius I
About Pope Anastasius I
Anastasius I became bishop of Rome on November 27, 399. The Vatican’s register identifies him as a native of Rome and dates the end of his pontificate to December 19, 401. His time in office was brief, but his correspondence preserves his response to a dispute over reading and translating the works of the Christian scholar Origen.
In a letter to Simplician, bishop of Milan, Anastasius described his responsibility through images of a shepherd, a watchman and a ship’s captain. Theophilus of Alexandria had asked him to oppose teachings attributed to Origen. Eusebius of Cremona brought passages for his consideration. Anastasius condemned those passages and extended his condemnation to other writings by the same author, urging that they should not be read. His appeal linked the faith of the Roman Church with the apostle Peter. He presented vigilance against disputed teaching as a duty shared with other bishops, not simply a concern confined to his own congregation.
Rufinus, who had translated Origen into Latin, addressed a defense to the pope. He said that illness and family circumstances prevented him from traveling to Rome. His reply set out his beliefs about the Trinity, Christ’s incarnation, bodily resurrection and judgment. On the origin of individual souls, he described several explanations found in earlier writers and acknowledged that he could not confidently choose among them. He insisted that resurrection meant the restoration of the same body, freed from corruption, rather than its replacement by another body. This precise affirmation answered one of the accusations circulating against him.
He also disputed the assumption that translating a book meant endorsing everything in it. Other Christians had translated Origen before him, he argued, and he had undertaken the work at the request of fellow believers. His translation was not wholly neutral: Rufinus admitted removing passages that he believed others had inserted into Origen’s writings. He asked Anastasius to protect him from partisan accusations and appealed to the faith he had received in the Church. His defense lets the reader hear the person under suspicion as well as the authority judging the disputed books.
Anastasius’s letter to John of Jerusalem makes a distinction between Rufinus’s conscience, which he entrusted to God, and the published translation, which he considered dangerous. That distinction did not produce a conciliatory conclusion. He welcomed an imperial prohibition on reading Origen and ended with a sharp rejection of Rufinus. The letter also acknowledges how little he had previously known about Origen. It therefore records both a determination to defend Christian teaching and the limited basis from which he entered the controversy.
His friendships were less easily divided into opposing parties. Paulinus of Nola remembered a warm reception from Anastasius during a visit to Rome in 400. The pope later invited him to the anniversary of his episcopal appointment, an honor usually shared with bishops even though Paulinus was then a priest. When Paulinus declined, Anastasius accepted his explanation without taking offense.
Historian Geoffrey Dunn cautions that Paulinus’s account also served his own wish to show that he was respected. Even so, it complicates a picture of the controversy as two uniform camps. Jerome and Anastasius both opposed Origenist teaching, yet Jerome was suspicious of Paulinus while the pope treated him favorably. Dunn suggests that shared ascetic commitments and Paulinus’s social position may have mattered to Anastasius. These are interpretations of a limited record, rather than certain knowledge of the pope’s private motives.
African bishops also sought his advice about receiving clergy associated with the Donatist division. Their practical concern was a shortage of ministers. Anastasius urged continued opposition to Donatism, but the surviving evidence does not establish his answer to their requests about admission or reinstatement. His correspondence cannot support a confident claim that he settled every question brought to him.
Other familiar claims need similar care. A letter associated with the rule that worshippers stand during the Gospel has serious problems of date and borrowed wording. Pollastri therefore questions its authenticity. She also notes disagreement about the year of Anastasius’s death: 401 is the preferred chronology, while some scholars have used 402. His burial was in the cemetery of Pontian on the Via Portuense.
His remembrance eventually reached Gandersheim. The town’s historical chronology identifies relics of Popes Anastasius I and Innocent I among the gifts brought from Rome before the foundation of its community of canonesses in 852. These are records of relic devotion; they do not independently establish the identity of the surviving remains.
The collegiate church still bears the names of Anastasius and Innocent. Its crypt contains remains venerated under their names, and the church now serves an Evangelical Lutheran congregation. The University of Göttingen’s record likewise lists Anastasius among the foundation’s patrons. That specific dedication provides a firmer basis for describing his patronage than transferring occupations or places associated with other saints who shared his name.
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