Confessor Meletius

Meletius of Antioch, commonly honored in hagiography as Confessor Meletius, was a fourth-century bishop of the imperial Church who held the see of Antioch and is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and in Catholic martyrological tradition. He was born at Melitene in Lesser Armenia (Armenia Minor) to a family of standing; no reliable source records the year of his birth. Before Antioch he had been bishop of Sebaste in Armenia, a post he did not retain amid the tangled episcopal politics of that region. In 360 or 361, under Constantius II, the deeply divided church of Antioch elected him bishop. Factions that had hoped for a doctrinal compromise were disappointed when, at his installation, he preached on the Son’s divinity in a sense aligned with the faith of Nicaea. Within about a month the emperor sent him into exile and installed the Arian Euzoius in his place.

Meletius was recalled after Constantius’s death and the accession of Julian, then banished again under the Arianizing emperor Valens, and yet again after a brief return. These repeated exiles, undergone for adherence to Nicene teaching, are the reason later tradition styles him a confessor rather than a martyr. During his absences a large body of Antiochene Christians continued to regard him as their canonical bishop, forming the Meletian community. A separate Nicene congregation remained attached to Paulinus, who had been consecrated for the older Eustathian group. The resulting schism among people who otherwise professed the same creed occupied Basil of Caesarea, Athanasius of Alexandria, and the Roman see for many years. Basil consistently recognized Meletius as the legitimate bishop of Antioch.

After Valens died in 378, Meletius was able to resume the see. He ordained the future John Chrysostom to the diaconate. In 381 Emperor Theodosius I convened at Constantinople the synod later received as the Second Ecumenical Council; Meletius opened and presided over its early sessions. He died in the capital while the council was still sitting, in 381. Gregory of Nyssa delivered a funeral oration over him. His remains were afterward translated to Antioch and laid near those of the martyr Babylas. The local schism did not end with his death: Flavian, chosen by the Meletians, was not immediately accepted by the Paulinians or by Rome and Alexandria.

Later memory praised Meletius for personal mildness and for steadfastness under imperial pressure more than for a large body of writings. A few sermons and a confession of faith are ascribed to him. John Chrysostom, who had known him, devoted homilies to his memory. His feast is kept on 12 February in the Byzantine rite and appears on that date in a number of Western martyrologies. Because the ancient Church did not use the later juridical processes of canonization, no individual pope or later synod is recorded as having formally enrolled him among the saints; his cult rests on continuous liturgical commemoration from late antiquity. Precise details of his family life, any marriage, and the year of his birth are not preserved in the ecclesiastical historians.