He was born in Persia. His father, Vav, was a magician, a famous teacher of witchcraft, who also taught his son. Anastasius, while serving as a soldier for the Persian king Khozroi, heard about the Life-giving Cross of the Lord, the rumor about the glory and power of which spread throughout Persia. The Tree of the Cross amazed with unusual wonders, so many said: "The Christian God came to Persia."
When the young man heard about this, he began to ask about the Savior's earthly life, and the grace of God touched his heart, and the fire of faith kindled in his soul. When he was sent to war in Greece, he reached Chalcedon and stayed with a Persian Christian who instructed him in the true faith. When he came to Jerusalem, he was baptized and entered a monastery, where he labored, adorning himself with humility, meekness and diligence. After seven years of staying in the monastery, on the eve of the feast of the Resurrection of Christ, it was revealed to him that he was awaiting a martyr's death for Christ.
Arriving in Caesarea, St. Anastasius was captured by soldiers who mistook him for an infiltrator. At the trial before Khan Marzavan, he confessed himself a Christian, for which he was chained in iron chains and taken to stone-cutting. Seeing that the martyr could not be shaken, he was brutally tortured along with 70 prisoners, many of whom were Christians. They were all strangled on the riverbank. The head of St. Anastasia was cut off and brought to the tsar, and the body was thrown to the dogs, but none touched him. A monk sent from the Jerusalem monastery where St. Anastasius labored bribed the guards and buried the martyr. The saint's martyrdom followed in 628.