om Valentia into Languedoc. See his
account in Bollandus, which yet the Spaniards deny, and say it could
only be a small part of these bones: or the body of another martyr
of the same name.
6. De Gk. Mart. l. 1, c. 90.

ST. ANASTASIUS, MARTYR.

From his genuine acts, which are commended in the seventh general
council, abut one hundred and sixty years after his death.

A.D. 628.

ST. ANASTASIUS was a trophy of the holy cross of Christ, when it was
carried away into Persia by Chosroes, in the year 614, after he had
taken and plundered Jerusalem. The martyr was a Persian, son of a
Magian, instructed in the sciences of that sect, and a young soldier in
the Persian troops. Upon hearing the news of the taking of the cross by
his king, he became very inquisitive concerning the Christian religion:
and its sublime truths made such an impression on his mind, that being
returned into Persia from an expedition into the Roman empire, he left
the army with his brother, who also served in it, and retired to
Hierapolis. In that city he lodged with a devout Persian Christian, a
silversmith, with whom he went often to prayer. The holy pictures which
he saw, moved him exceedingly, and gave him occasion to inquire daily
more into our faith, and to admire the courage of the martyrs whose
glorious sufferings were painted in the churches. At length, desirous of
baptism, he left Hierapolis, which city was subject to the Persians, and
went to Jerusalem, where he received that sacrament by the hands of
Modestus who governed that church as vicar during the absence {197} of
the patriarch Zachary, whom Chosroes had led away captive into Persia.
In baptism he changed his Persian name Magundat, into that of
Anastasius, meaning, according to the signification of that Greek word,
that he was risen from death to a new and spiritual life. He had
prepared himself with wonderful devotion for that sacrament while a
catechumen, and he spent in no less fervor the several days after it,
which persons baptized passed in white garments, in prayer, and in
receiving more perfect instructions in the faith. At the end of this
term, Anastasius, the more easily and more perfectly to keep inviolably
his sacred baptismal vows and obligations, desired to become a monk in a
monastery five miles distant from Jerusalem. Justin, the abbot, made him
first learn the Greek tongue and the psalter; then cutting off his hair,
gave him the monastic habit, in the y