Venerable Martyr
Venerable Martyr Anastasius the Persian
† 22 января 628
Also known as: Магундат (языческое имя)
Venerable Martyr Anastasius the Persian — before baptism Magundat, a Persian Zoroastrian magus who converted to Christ after encountering the relic of the Life-Giving Cross, carried off by the Persians from Jerusalem in 614; he was baptized and tonsured, denounced the Persian magi, was seized, and after cruel torture was strangled near Caesarea in Palestine in 628.
Venerable Martyr Anastasius, who before baptism bore the name Magundat, was born in the Persian village of Rasnuni, in the region of Razikh, to a Zoroastrian magus's family; he was trained in sorcery. He served in the army of Shah Khosrau II during the Byzantine-Persian wars.
He converted to Christ after the Persians, in 614, carried off from captured Jerusalem the greatest relic — the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord. Leaving military service, he went to Hierapolis (Manbij, Syria), and then to Jerusalem, where around 620 he was baptized with the name Anastasius. He was tonsured a monk at the Monastery of Venerable Anastasius near Jerusalem.
Seven years later he withdrew to Caesarea in Palestine, where he openly denounced Persian magi offering sacrifices near a Christian church. He was seized, tortured repeatedly, brought to trial before Shah Khosrau II himself, and finally strangled together with about 70 other Christians near a river in 628. His body was untouched by dogs; it was ransomed by local Christians.
His relics were later translated — first to Caesarea (after 10 years), then to Constantinople (a church built by Empress Irene/Constantine VI in the late 8th c.), while his head eventually ended up in Rome (the Aquae Salviae monastery, the basis of the "Tre Fontane" tradition).
His feast is kept on January 22/February 4; in some menologia also January 24/February 6.
IMPORTANT CORRECTION: category martyr→venerable_martyr (he was tonsured a monk). The previously empty feast_days field has been filled in. The entry's sole image turned out to be a photograph of the interior of a cathedral in Zadar (Croatia) — entirely unconnected to Anastasius the Persian (whose relics traveled through Persia, Jerusalem, Caesarea, Constantinople, and Rome, never Dalmatia) — removed as a clear file-attachment error.