Revisiting the floruit of Anastasius of Sinai

Abstract

Modern scholarship commonly places the floruit of Anastasius of Sinai between ca. 640 et ca. 700 CE, that is, in the first decades after the Muslim conquest of Egypt. This dating perhaps relies on, and combines information from, several writings of (or attributed to) Anastasius, but does not seem to do full justice to his career as polemicist. Through a close re-examination and contextualisation of Anastasius’ defence of Chalcedonian doctrine and of dyothelitism, I argue that Anastasius could not have died “shortly after 700”, as is generally believed