Eikon

Anastasius the Fuller

The Holy Martyr Anastasius the Fuller of Salona

Martyr · d. c. 304

Commemorated 25 October — Martyrdom by drowning at Salona in Dalmatia

Anastasius the Fuller was a craftsman — a fuller, who cleaned and dyed cloth — who lived at Salona in Dalmatia, the great Roman city near the modern Split, at the height of the persecution of Diocletian. Coming (by the tradition) from Aquileia in northern Italy, he settled at Salona and lived his faith so openly that he painted the sign of the Cross on the door of his house and workshop. Arrested and brought to trial for his confession of Christ, he refused to sacrifice, and was condemned to death: a stone was tied about his neck and he was cast into the sea, about the year 304. A Christian noblewoman recovered his body and enshrined it, and his relics became a treasure of the Dalmatian and later the Italian church. He is commemorated on October 25.

The fuller of Salona

Anastasius plied the trade of a fuller (gnapheus, Latin fullo) — the worker who scoured, whitened and finished woven cloth — and the calendars keep his craftsman's name as the mark of a saint who was neither cleric nor noble but a working man of the city. Salona, on the Adriatic coast of Dalmatia, was one of the great cities of the later Roman Empire and the seat of its provincial administration, close to the palace the emperor Diocletian raised for his retirement. The Western tradition brings Anastasius from Aquileia, the port city at the head of the Adriatic, to Salona, where he settled and worked. There he lived in the years of the last and fiercest imperial persecution, opened by Diocletian's edicts of 303–304, which fell with special weight on the cities of the emperor's own residence.

Confession and martyrdom

In a time when many hid their faith, Anastasius did the opposite: he painted or fixed the sign of the Cross upon the door of his dwelling, openly professing that the house was Christ's. The act could not be overlooked. He was arrested and brought before the tribunal, where he confessed Christ as the true God and Creator of all and refused to offer sacrifice to the idols. Condemned by the court, he was put to death by drowning: the executioners bound a heavy stone about his neck and cast him into the sea, that his body might not be recovered. The tradition places his martyrdom about the year 304.

Relics and later cultus

His body was not lost. A devout and wealthy woman of Salona, named in the tradition as Asclepia, sought out and recovered the martyr's remains from the sea and buried them with honour, raising over the tomb a basilica that became one of the great shrines of Salona — its ruins, with the martyr's sarcophagus, were among the celebrated Christian antiquities excavated at the site. When Salona fell and its people withdrew to the fortified palace of Diocletian that became the city of Split, the cult of Anastasius passed to the new city, where he is venerated together with Saint Domnius as a patron. Portions of his relics were carried to Italy — a translation associated with the church of Sant'Anastasio — and his memory took root in the Venetian and wider Western calendars as well as the Byzantine synaxaria.

Feast and commemoration

October 25 (church date; Old Calendar civil November 7). He is commemorated on this day in the Byzantine synaxaria alongside the martyrs Marcian and Martyrius and the righteous Tabitha. In the Western church his memory is kept on other days (the Roman martyrology commemorates a fuller-martyr Anastasius of Salona in late summer), a divergence of calendar that reflects the spread of his relics to Italy.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 4

Thy Martyr, O Lord, in his struggle received an incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessed of Thy might, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the powerless insolence of the demons. By his supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

Anastasius is depicted as a martyr in lay dress, holding the cross of his confession; his particular attribute, drawn from his passion, is the millstone or heavy stone hung about his neck by which he was drowned, and he may be shown with the fuller's tools of his trade or beside the sign of the Cross he set upon his door. No pre-modern icon of the saint has yet been secured for this repository; the commemoration is recorded here without a stored image.

Disputed questions

  • Date and century. The received Byzantine notice styles him a martyr "of the third century," but the circumstances it describes — the open persecution, the edicts, and the Salonitan setting — belong to the Diocletianic persecution of 303–304; this entry follows the latter dating while noting the older reckoning.
  • Origin. The Western tradition makes him a native of Aquileia who came to Salona; the Eastern notice knows him simply as the fuller of Salona.

Sources

  1. Synaxarion of Constantinople, October 25 — the Byzantine notice of the fuller-martyr.
  2. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, October 25 (consulted for the received account and calendar data).
  3. Western passio and martyrological tradition of Anastasius of Salona/Split (the Passio transmitted with the Salonitan martyrs), and the archaeology of the martyr's basilica at Salona — for the relics, the noblewoman Asclepia, and the translation to Italy.