Anastasius II

Anastasius, a Roman priest's son elected on 24 November 496, took the view that the schism with Constantinople had gone on long enough. He wrote to the emperor Anastasius I in conciliatory terms, offering to accept the baptisms and ordinations Acacius had performed if the dead patriarch's name were dropped from the diptychs, and he received in communion a deacon of Thessalonica named Photinus who had come to Rome as an envoy of the Acacian party. To the hard-liners in the Roman clergy, formed under Felix and Gelasius, this was surrender. A number of them withdrew from communion with their own bishop.

Then he died, suddenly, on 19 November 498, and his enemies drew the conclusion. The Liber Pontificalis, compiled a generation later by men of their party, says he was "struck down by divine will," and that judgment traveled: eight centuries on, Dante placed "Pope Anastasius, whom Photinus drew from the straight way" in the tomb of the heretics in the sixth circle of hell.

He is the first pope of this timeline after Liberius not counted a saint, and for the same reason: he was accused of compromising with the East. He was buried in Saint Peter's, and his reputation was buried with him until modern historians dug it up.