Melitius

   1) (late third/early fourth century)

   Bishop and Sect Founder.

   Melitius was Bishop of Lycopolis, Egypt. He insisted that Christians who had lapsed during the Diocletian persecutions had been allowed to return to the Church too easily. Eventually he founded his own separate Church and ordained his own clergy. arius is said to have been one of Melitius’s ordinands. There was an attempt to bring the Melitians back to the mainstream Church at the Council of Nicaea in 325, but once athanasius became Bishop of Alexandria, the agreed arrangement broke down. The sect seems to have survived into the eighth century.

   ‘Melitian schism’, in F.L. Cross (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd edn (1974).

   2) (d. 381)

   Saint and Bishop.

   Melitius was Bishop of Sebaste and then was consecrated Bishop of Antioch. In Antioch he was sent back to Armenia for preaching a sermon against the doctrines of arius. Although he returned in 362, athanasius supported a rival orthodox leader, Paulinus, while an Arian Bishop had also been appointed. Melitius was banished twice more, but as a result of the efforts of basil of Caesarea, he fi- nally returned to his see in 379. He presided over the Council of Constantinople in 381 – during the course of which he died. Melitius is remembered as the much admired teacher of John chrysostom as well as for his part in the controversies of his time.

   W.A. Jurgens, ‘A letter of Meletius of Antioch’, Harvard Theological Review, liii (1960);

   J.N.D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom (1995).