ABSTRACT
Who ever heard of Anastasios of Sinai? This question needs to be asked not so much of today's readers (many of whom no doubt will have heard something of the author and his works1), but of the people who lived in the centuries that we now recognize as those of the middle and late Byzantine Empire: in this case from early in the eighth century, which is as near as we can get to the year in which Anastasios died, down to the fall of Constantinople in the middle of the fifteenth century. The question arises because if he was a relatively unknown or highly abstruse writer, then his influence must have been minimal and his importance very secondary. However there is sufficient evidence for us to be fairly certain that his name at least was quite well known, and several works circulated that were attributed to him. Thus we have not only the Hodegos, a sort of layman's theological vademécum, but some half-dozen sermons, various collections of stories, and perhaps most characteristic of all a collection of Questions and Answers that appear and reappear in very many manuscripts and in somewhat different versions. For the purpose of this chapter I shall be quoting from the new edition of the original collection that I am preparing, but with references where possible to the published text.2 So far we have at our disposal good editions of only about one third of all his works.
