Anastasius II Pope of Rome

Anastasius II was bishop of Rome from 24 November 496 until his death on 19 November 498. A native of Rome and, by the accounts that survive, the son of a priest, he succeeded Gelasius I and held the see for barely two years. His short pontificate is remembered chiefly for his attempt to heal the Acacian schism, the rupture between Rome and Constantinople that had begun in 484 over the Henoticon issued by the Emperor Zeno in an effort to settle disputes arising from Monophysitism.

Where his predecessors Felix III and Gelasius I had held a firm line against the East, Anastasius adopted a markedly conciliatory approach. Soon after his election he dispatched legates to Constantinople to announce his accession and to test the disposition of the Emperor Anastasius I toward reconciliation. He was prepared to recognize the validity of baptisms and ordinations conferred by the late Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople, asking in return that Acacius's name be struck from the diptychs; he continued nonetheless to insist that Acacius himself be condemned.

These overtures provoked sharp resistance among the Roman clergy. When the pope received deacon Photinus, an envoy of the archbishop of Thessalonica who had supported Acacius, a portion of the clergy renounced communion with him, and the factions that formed over his policy hardened into the divisions that produced the disputed papal election after his death. Anastasius died suddenly in November 498; the Liber Pontificalis records that he was struck dead by the divine will, a hostile verdict that modern historians treat as legend rather than fact. He was buried in the portico of Saint Peter's. He is commemorated as a saint in the Orthodox tradition, among the Latin saints of the pre-schism West, though he was never canonized in the Roman Catholic Church.