Anastasio di Terni

Who they were

Anastasio is placed with reasonable certainty as bishop of Terni in the course of the 7th century, in an Umbria then a contested border region between the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna and the Lombard Duchy of Spoleto. He was unknown until the 9th century, and the surviving accounts, coloured by local civic pride, date only from the 15th century, recounting the finding and translation of his body said to have taken place in the time of King Lothar (840): the saint is said to have appeared to a farmer near Terni and ordered him to find his body buried to the left of the entrance of the church of the Virgin.

The farmer at first ignored the command, but the saint persisted, and though the search itself found nothing, the tomb of Anastasio was found soon after by chance, while digging a grave for someone else, his body still clothed in precious pontifical vestments. The bishop of Spoleto, informed and convinced by miracles worked by the saint, had an altar built for him. If the account is trustworthy in substance, Anastasio must have lived long before his body was rediscovered, since by then all memory of him at Terni had been lost.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

Bishop of Terni in the 7th century, whose body was rediscovered and venerated after being lost to memory; feast 17 August.